SHOCKING CIRCUMSTANCE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1317, 18 October 1872, Page 3

SHOCKING CIRCUMSTANCE.

There has been a great shock occasioned J to Melbourne " society " during the last *• few days. A man of the utmost respect- ' ability, a leading light of the. Church of England, although a layman; a Judge of County Court, who had temporarily acted at a member of the Bench of the Supreme \ Court, and is looked upon as the next to be promoted to that position, a man great j at Bible Societies and in Societies for the i Advancement of Morality, has done a . frightful thing, which strikes at the very foundation of society. He has married his housemaid. Good heavens ! It is not long since our wretched pseudo-aris-tocracy was shaken to its centre by a young lady quitting the house of a soft goods plutocrat and marrying a betting man, and now this dark nefarious deed repeats the shock. Worse than all, it is believed that many fair daughters of "society" would willingly have married the old Judge themselves had not this too attractive housemaid stepped to the front and assumed the mistress-ship of the house which once ihe dusted. While society has viewed this affair with feelings in which horror and amazement are wildly blended; the Church, too, feels itself out- . raged. For this man— long a pillar of . the sacred edifice, Anglican to the backbone, who wore a hat of the most saintly and ecclesiastical pattern— has trampled on every law, human and divine, by getting married in a Congregationel chapel. This is another upheaval of the depths, and strict churchmen view it with despair. You may well think that church and society have set themselves to invent plausible hypotheses to account for the act, and many have obtained circulation which it would be libellous even to hint at. The best of it is, that there b not the smallest reason to believe that , they are true, and they ma? be fairly ascribed to the vengeance of society against a man who has defied its code of petty laws in so wilful a manner.