MORGANATIC MARRIAGES. THE ancient Romans had three forms of marriage-the confarreatio, the coemtio, and the usus. The first was a civil as well as religious contract, effected in the presence of a priest and of ten witnesses, and the offspring of such union were patrimi et matrimi. Less dignified and important in the eyes of the law was the coemtio. It was a merely civil engagement, completely binding, yet conferring not the honour of the patrimi and matrimi on the children. Still less honourable was the third form of matrimonial union, the usus. To constitute it binding in law, no forms or ceremonies whatever were required, but merely twelve months' uninterrupted cohabitation. With the overturn of the mighty empire of the Caesars, Roman laws and customs were diffused all over Europe, and while the confarreatio was adopted by nearly all the rest of Christendom, the coemtio got into fashion with German princes and nobles. The Roman secondary form of marriage was found to be extremely convenient to counteract the effects of the lex salica, and the absence of a law of primogeniture; and thus there arose, not long after the fall of Rome, first among the Lombards, and afterwards in the Teutonic empire north of the Alps, the matrimonium ad morgengabam, or, as subsequently called, ad morganaticam. The barbaric word was of Lombard origin; an allusion to the ancient German custom of making a present to the newly married wife the morning after the celebration of the nuptials-literally, a'morning-gift.'According to this new form of matrimonial union, a revival of the coemtio, a German prince or great noble, when allying himself to a person of inferior rank, conferred only his hand, but not his title and fortune; or at least not more than was conveyed of the latter in the Morgengabe, the free gift on or after the wedding-day. In Germany, about the fifteenth century, the matrimonia ad legem morganaticam contracta came to be greatly in fashion with younger sons of royal and princely houses. At the death of Duke William of Brunswick-Lüneburg, in 1490, his seven sons, among whom, according to custom, the land was to be divided, made a common agreement, to the effect that only one should take unto himself a princely consort, and the rest be content with morganatic spouses. The lot for a royal bride fell on the sixth son, Prince George, who accordingly married a high-born princess; while his VOL. XVII.