Even in the Low Countries the friendly kiss was much in vogue. Adrianus Höreboord, a professor at the University of Leyden, has, in a Latin treatise, investigated the question as to whether the custom of allowing strangers to kiss young girls, widows, and other persons’ wives, on paying a visit, can be said to be in conformity with the laws of chastity. Höreboord’s opinion is that such practice is in no way objectionable: as a kiss can be given without any _arrière pensée_ the kisses demanded by politeness may be quite chaste. Erycius Puteanus, the learned Dutch philosopher, on the contrary, holds that the aforesaid custom is not without danger--at any rate to more sensually-disposed temperaments. In a letter on the education of a young Italian girl he writes that he would never suffer any one to kiss his pupil, adding: “Our Flemish girls never do so; they are not so ardent. They do not comprehend the language of love in glances and kisses. In the matter of Italian girls on the other hand, things are quite different, and I teach my pupil the speech of our country and our customs, kissing excepted.” The kiss of friendship was so general in Germany, even in the eighteenth century, that Klopstock could write to a friend in 1750: _Vergessen sie nicht zu mir auf einen Kaffee und auf einen Kuss zu kommen_. It seems, however, soon to have fallen into disuse. As far back as 1747, Lessing had ridiculed it in a poem: The kiss with which my friend will greet me Is not what’s rightly termed a kiss, But only formal salutation Because cold fashion bids him this. W. F. H. VII VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES Einen Kuss in Ehren Darf niemand wehren. _German Proverb._ No one should take amiss An honest-hearted kiss. W. F. H. CHAPTER VII VARIOUS KINDS OF KISSES It has been previously shown by numerous examples that kissing occupies a prominent place in certain ceremonies. It would be easy to multiply instances of this. We know from Roman law that the so-called _osculum interveniens_, which concerned gifts, was exchanged between engaged couples. The law enacts that, in the event of one of the contracting parties dying before the marriage, only a moiety of the presents are to be returned, provided a kiss was exchanged at the betrothal, but, if no kiss had been exchanged, all the presents were to be returned.[23] The kiss was regarded as the introduction, as it were, to matrimonial cohabitation--_initium consummationis nuptiarum_; it was symbolical of marriage--_viri et mulieris conjunctio_. Certain ancient jurists have even discussed the question whether a married woman who has suffered herself to be kissed by a stranger has not thereby rendered herself guilty of adultery.