That the customs of courtship in many parts of the United Kingdom at the present day, are precisely what they were in some parts of New England, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, fifty years ago, is evident from the revelations of the _Royal Commission on the Marriage Laws_, in the year 1868. Dr. Strahan, a physician and surgeon, who for nearly forty years has practiced in the Scottish county of Stirling, testifies before the commission, that his attention was first drawn to the subject in consequence of observing the very great extent of immorality among the working classes, not only as evidenced by the large number of illegitimate children, but also by the still larger number of marriages after the woman was with child; and the number of children born within eight months of wedlock. He found, to his astonishment, that among the working classes (i.e., the agricultural laborers), nine out of ten women, when married, either had had illegitimate children, or were pregnant at the time of marriage. "I have," he says, "a large midwifery practice, and I very rarely attend a woman with her first child, where the child is not born within a few months of wedlock, or else she has had an illegitimate child before." He believes it is very common for women to allow themselves to be seduced in the hope of being married. They go on until they are _enceinte_, and then, if the young man is at all a decent fellow, the friends interfere and the marriage is hurried on. The sketch which Dr. Strahan supplies of Scotch courtships, explains all this part of his observation. Young men and women meet together at night, and the ordinary time is the middle of the night, when every one else is in bed. "It is universal," says Dr. Strahan to the commission, "among the working classes, to have this manner of courtship of which I speak; there is no other courtship, in any other form; the fathers and mothers will not allow their daughters to meet a young man in the day-time; the young man never visits the family, but the parents quite allow this; they have done it themselves before, and there is no objection to it. The young man comes, makes a noise at the window; the young woman goes out, they go to some outhouse; or perhaps the young man is admitted to the young woman's bedroom after all are in bed, and there is an hour or two of what is called courtship, but which would more properly be called flirtation, because it is not necessary that there should be any engagement to marry in these cases." Lord Lyveden inquired: "Do these meetings take place at particular periods, such as harvest time, or is it over the whole of the year?" _Answer_: "The whole of the year; very commonly the young man visits the young woman once a week." Lord Chelmsford said: "In England that would be called _keeping company_. It is a very extraordinary way of keeping company when the parents allow their daughter to go out with the young man at midnight, or the young man to come into her bedroom."