“ It is in accordance with that sentence that I offer Terence in another English garb.
Reader, you have reflected here the manners of the Roman Republic some 150 years before our Saviour. There are startling laws and manners shown forth in slavery and infanticide, but most strange of all the manner in which Roman youth wooed and won their wives. It may have derived from the recorded story of Romulus and the Sabines; but modes of marriage are nothing more than forms and fashions with different nations and people, and varied by circumstances and laws. ”

“ Neither does Terence ever descend to anything not possible, such as the statue of the warrior supping with Don Juan. His facts are all such as were probable, and find their main plot in infanticide; and the recognition by means of the token appended to obtain their funeral rites; and in the paucity of women, which affords a sufficient cause for a forcible abduction of the wife. ”

“ That which approaches it is our opera singers and actresses, who, although proscribed as servants by the aristocracy supporting them, live in luxury, and ever and anon carry off a noble scion in matrimony. ”