The windows were closed with blinds of linen or plates of horn, but more generally with shutters of wood. During the time of the emperors, a species of transparent stone, cut into plates, was used for the purpose. Glass was not used for the admission of light into the apartments until towards the fifth century of the christian era. A villa was originally a farm-house of an ordinary kind, and occupied by the industrious cultivator of the soil; but when increasing riches inspired the citizens with a taste for new pleasures, it became the abode of opulence and luxury. Some villas were surrounded with large parks, in which deer and various foreign wild animals were kept, and in order to render the sheep that pastured on the lawn ornamental, we are told that they often dyed their fleeces with various colours. Large fish ponds were also a common appendage to the villas of persons of fortune, and great expense was often incurred in stocking them. In general, however, country houses were merely surrounded with gardens, of which the Romans were extravagantly fond. CHAPTER XXII. _Marriages and Funerals._ A marriage ceremony was never solemnized without consulting the auspices, and offering sacrifices to the gods, particularly to Juno; and the animals offered up on the occasion were deprived of their gall, in allusion to the absence of every thing bitter and malignant in the proposed union. A legal marriage was made in three different ways, called _confarreatio_, _usus_ and _coemptio_. The first of these was the most ancient. A priest, in the presence of ten witnesses, made an offering to the gods, of a cake composed of salt water, and that kind of flour called "_far_," from which the name of the ceremony was derived. The bride and bridegroom mutually partook of this, to denote the union that was to subsist between them, and the sacrifice of a sheep ratified the interchange of their vows. When a woman, with the consent of her parents or guardian, lived an entire year with a man, with the intention of becoming his wife, it was called _usus_. _Coemptio_ was an imaginary purchase which the husband and wife made of each other, by the exchange of some pieces of money. A plurality of wives was forbidden among the Romans. The marriageable age was from fourteen for men, and twelve for girls. On the wedding day the bride was dressed in a simple robe of pure white, bound with a zone of wool, which her husband alone was to unloose: her hair was divided into six locks, with the point of a spear, and crowned with flowers; she wore a saffron colored veil, which enveloped the entire person: her shoes were yellow, and had unusually high heels to give her an appearance of greater dignity. Thus attired she waited the arrival of the bridegroom, who went with a party of friends and carried her off with an appearance of violence, from the arms of her parents, to denote the reluctance she was supposed to feel at leaving her paternal roof.