Baron Rosen was sent a captive to Siberia, in consequence of political tumults which occurred on the accession of the Emperor Nicholas to the throne of Russia. On his arrival he was searched, and some family trinkets taken from him. He was then required to give up a gold ring which he wore on his finger. He replied: ‘It is my wedding-ring, and you can only have it by taking the finger also.’ Fortunately the ring was spared. However, like everything, humanly speaking, the wedding-ring has had its vicissitudes, and, from being the emblem of all that is pure and holy in life, has been desecrated to the vilest and most impious of usages. Nothing can be more humiliating to good faith and rectitude than to read the accounts of what took place not many years ago concerning the ‘Fleet Marriages.’ In Burns’ ‘Registers’ of these mock celebrations we read sad cases of this abominable system, which prevailed in the last century, of clandestine marriages. A case is there mentioned of a young lady who had been inveigled into the trap of a marrying parson (?), and, finding herself unable to escape without money or a pledge, told her persecutors, who wanted to force a marriage upon her, that she liked the gentleman who desired to marry her so well that she would meet him on the next night. She gave them a ring as a pledge, which she said was her mother’s ring, who enjoined her that if she should marry it was to be her wedding-ring. By this contrivance ‘she got rid of the black doctor and his tawny crew.’ Great was the disgust of the respectable portion of the community for these disgraceful alliances. It is recorded in the ‘Daily Post’ for 1742, of a gentleman possessed of a considerable fortune, that he bequeathed it in the hands of trustees for his wife, with the proviso that if she married an Irishman they were to pay her ten guineas for a ‘Fleet’ marriage, a dinner, and ring; the remainder, about eight thousand pounds, to devolve on his nephew. On a trial for bigamy in 1731, Samuel Pickering deposed: ‘The prisoner was married at my house in the “Fleet.” I gave her away, and saw the ring put upon her hand, and broke the biscuit over her head.’