As so secondary a town as Nuremberg had at least three academies, we may infer that such {17} institutions were abundant in Germany, in the seventeenth century: that of the Pegnitz shepherds lasted at least till the beginning of the eighteenth. In _Der Thörichte Pritschmeister_, a comedy printed at Coblenz, 1704, one of the characters is "Phantasirende, ein Pegnitz Schäffer," who talks fustian and is made ridiculous throughout. The comedy is "von Menantes." I have another work by the same author: _Galante, Verliebte, und Satyrische Gedichte_, Hamburg, 1704. I shall be very glad to be told who he was, as his versification is often very good, and his jokes, though not graceful, and not very laughable, are real. H. B. C. U. U. Club. * * * * * MARRIAGES EN CHEMISE.--MANTELKINDER.--LEGITIMATION. (Vol. vi., pp. 485. 561.) The popular error on the legal effect of marriage _en chemise_ is, I think, noticed among other vulgar errors in law in a little book published some twenty years ago under the name of _Westminster Hall_, to which a deceased lawyer of eminence, then young at the bar, was a contributor. I believe the opinion to be still extensively prevalent, and to be probably founded, not exactly in total ignorance, but in a misconception, of the law. The text writers inform us that "the husband is liable for the wife's debts, _because_ he acquires an absolute interest in the personal estate of the wife," &c. (Bacon's _Abridgment_, tit. "Baron and Feme.") Now an unlearned person, who hears this doctrine, might reasonably conclude, that if his bride has no estate at all, he will incur no liability; and the future husband, more prudent than refined, might think it as well to notify to his neighbours, by an unequivocal symbol, that he took no pecuniary benefit with his wife, and therefore expected to be free from her pecuniary burdens. In this, as in most other popular errors, there is found a _substratum_ of reason.