otherwise have a legal claim. Madame Higgin relates the following cases
which came within the range of her personal experience: "In one case,
the first intimation a father received of his daughter's engagement was
the notice from a neighboring magistrate that she was about to be
married; and in another, a daughter left her mother's house and was
married from that of the magistrate, to a man without any income and
considerably below her in rank, in all these cases the contracting
parties were of the highest rank."

With regard to the wedding service, customs have changed greatly during
the course of the last century. It was natural that Spain, in common
with all other Catholic countries, should have given the Church entire
control of the marriage sacrament for many years, and it was not until
the republicanism of the nineteenth century forced a change that the
civil marriage was instituted as it had been in France. While not
compulsory, the religious service is almost always performed, in
addition to the other, except among the poor, who are deterred by the
cost of this double wedding; and sometimes the religious service is held
at the church and sometimes at the home of the bride. It was generally
the custom in the church weddings for all the ladies in the wedding
party, including the bride, to dress in black; but there was finally so
much opposition to this sombre hue at such a joyous occasion, that the
fashionable world within recent times has made the house wedding a
possibility, and at such a function there was no limit to the brilliant
display possible. The English and American custom of taking a wedding
journey immediately after the ceremony is not common in Spain, and the
Spaniards, in their conversation and sometimes in their books, are not
slow to express their opinions with regard to the matter, insisting that
it is much preferable to remain at home among friends than to "expose
themselves to the jeers of postilions and stable boys," to quote a line
from Fernan Caballero's _Clemencia_. In spite of this firmly rooted
opinion, however, that the national customs are best, and in this
particular it seems indeed as if they were more reasonable, the wedding
journey is slowly being adopted in what they call "_el_ high life," and
it may some day become one of the fixed institutions of the land, as it
is with us. All this is but another proof of the fact that fashions are
now cosmopolitan things, and that among the ed