On the other hand, June is a highly popular month for marrying, one reason perhaps being that the earth is then clothed in her summer beauty, and that this is a season of plenty. At any rate, this notion may be traced up to the time of the Romans, and thus when Ovid was anxious about the marriage of his daughter, he-- "Resolved to match the girl, and tried to find What days unprosp'rous were, what moons were kind; After June's sacred Ides his fancy strayed, Good to the man and happy to the maid." Among the other seasons admitting or prohibiting matrimony may be mentioned the following, contained in a well-known rhyme:-- "Advent marriages doth deny, But Hilary gives thee liberty; Septuagesima says thee nay, Eight days from Easter says you may; Rogation bids thee to contain, But Trinity sets thee free again." Equal importance has been attached by some to the day of the week on which the marriage is performed. Thus Friday, on account of its being regarded as an inauspicious and evil day for the commencement of any kind of enterprise, is generally avoided, few brides being found bold enough to run the risk of incurring bad luck from being married on a day of ill-omen. In days gone by, Sunday appears to have been a popular day for marriages; although, as Mr. Jeaffreson, in his amusing history of "Brides and Bridals," remarks, "A fashionable wedding, celebrated on the Lord's Day in London, or any part of England, would now-a-days be denounced by religious people of all Christian parties as an outrageous exhibition of impiety. But in our feudal times, and long after the Reformation, Sunday was, of all days of the week, the favourite one for marriages. Long after the theatres had been closed on Sundays, the day of rest was the chief day for weddings with Londoners of every social class." The brides of Elizabethan dramas are usually represented as being married on Sunday. Thus in the _Taming of the Shrew_, Petruchio, after telling his future father-in-law "that upon Sunday is the wedding-day," and laughing at Katharine's petulant exclamation, "I'll see thee hanged on Sunday first," says:-- "Father, and wife, and gentlemen, adieu; I will to Venice; Sunday comes apace: We will have rings, and things, and give array; And, kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday."