she is entitled to claim the protection of a
magistrate, who is empowered by law to protect her from such oppression.
If the parents are insistent, the magistrate may take the girl from her
father's house and act as her guardian until the time of her majority,
when she is free to marry according to her own fancy. Nor is any such
rebellious action to be construed as prejudicial to the daughter's right
to inherit that portion of her father's estate to which she would
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