The people are betrothed by the practice of the Lutheran Church a long time before the actual marriage. This is considered as nothing more than a wholesome check upon hasty unions in a general point of view. In Norway, however, this probationary period is extended to a limit beyond the endurance of flesh and blood. The wedding is a prodigious merry-making, and it is absolutely indispensable that the means for an extravagant hospitality should have been accumulated before the parties dare attempt the public ceremony. The profusion is so great as sometimes to dissipate a whole year's earnings. The obligation to this expense increases the delay required by the Church, and it frequently happens that the affianced cohabit before the nuptial benediction is pronounced. As the betrothal is a half-marriage, the arrangement loses part of its offensive character in the eyes of the parties themselves, and also of their neighbors. The children are legitimatized by the subsequent marriage, which takes place in by far the largest number of cases. In those occasional instances where the wedding ceremony is not duly completed, there is a particular legal act by which a child can be acknowledged. Failure of marriage under such circumstances, or failure of natural duty to offspring, is against the sentiment of the people. While these facts do not alter the actual concubinage or illegitimacy, it is easy to understand that a considerable difference exists between such conduct, however reprehensible, and those habits which may be fairly characterized as licentiousness or profligacy. Norway is very far from being free of syphilis. Bayard Taylor says, "Bergen is, as I am informed, terribly scourged by venereal diseases. Certainly I do not remember a place where there are so few men, tall, strong, and well made as the people generally are, without some visible mark of disease or deformity. A physician of the city has recently endeavored to cure syphilis in its secondary stage by means of inoculation, having first tried the experiment upon himself, and there is now a hospital where this form of treatment is practiced upon two or three hundred patients, with the greatest success, another physician informed me. I intended to have visited it, but the sight of a few cases around the door so sickened me that I had no courage to undertake the task." We have no means of ascertaining whether the malady exists with the same virulence in the interior as on the coast. The habits of the people would seem adverse to the supposition that it does. CHAPTER XXIII. GREAT BRITAIN.--HISTORY TO THE TIME OF THE COMMONWEALTH.