The bride's cake which so invariably accom panies an English wedding, and which should always bo cut by the bride, may be traced back to the old Roman form of marriage by eonfar reatio or eating together. The Fiji islanders have a very similar custom. The act of eating together is, amongst the Burmese, the ceremony of union. Among the Tiperali race of the hill tribes of Chittagong, the bride prepares some drink, sits on her lover's knee, drinks half and gives him the other half ; they afterwards crook together their fingers. But marriage amongst the Romans was of three kinds,—the eonfarreatio, which was ac companied with the most awful religious rites, was practically indissoluble, and was jealously re stricted to patricians ; the Coemptio, which was purely civil, and which derived its name from a symbolical sale, and which, like the eonfarreatio, gave the husband complete authority over the person and property of his wife ; and the Usus, which was effected by a simple declaration of a determination to cohabit. The Usus became general in the Roman empire, and in it the married woman remained in her father's house and under his guardianship. Her dowry passed into the husband's hands, but, with that exception, she held her property in her own right; she inherited her share of her father's wealth, and she retained it altogether independent of her husband ; —and thus a very considerable portion of Roman wealth passed into the uncontrolled possession of women. During the ascetic stage of morals in Europe, many Romans and Christians regarded a second marriage as improper.—American Expedi
tion ; Bowring's Ethnol. of India ; Burton's Scinde, Mecca, and City of the Saints ; Major Bushby in Berar Gazetteer ; Balfour on Tribes, in Jameson's Ed. Journ. ; Cameron's Eastern Possessions ; Mr. (Sir George) Canzpbell's Ethnol. of India ; Dalton's Etlazol. of Bengal ; Davy's Ceylon ; Doolittle's China ; Elliot's Glossary and India ; Fraser's Himalaya Mountains ; Frere's Antipodes ; Forbes' Rasamala ; Graham's Kha»desh Bhil Tribes ; Gray's China ; Hodgson's Aborigines of India ; Ilistoire Abregee des Cultes ; Journs. Beng. As. Soc., Ethnol. Soc., Indian Archipelago, Royal As. Soc. ; Imperial Gazetteer; Kearns' Tribes of S. India ; Layard's Nineveh ; Lecky's European Morals ; Lubbock, Civilisation ; Lewin's Chitta gong Hill Tracts ; Mahabharata Selections ; Mateer's Travancore ; M'Lennan's Primitive Marriage; 3larsden's Sumatra ; Metz, Neilgherry Tribes ; Menu, Institutes ; Perry's Bird's- eye View of India ; .Newbold's Malacca ; Raffles, Java ; Ramayana ; Recherches Phil. sur les Chinois; Calcutta, Westminster Reviews; Robert's Oriental Illustrations ; Rogers' Domestic Life in Palestine ; Shorit's Hill Ranges, and in Ethnol. Soc. Journ. ; Mrs. Spiers, Ancient India ; Tod's Rajasthan ; Vishnu Purana ; Ward's Hindoos ; lVatson and Kaye's People of India ; JVeber's Literature; 1Villialni Nala and Damayanti ; IL H. Wilson's Hindu Theatre, Glossary, and Sects; Dr. Wilson's India.3000 Years Ago.