The rights and disabilities of minors are clearly and definitely stated. The legal incapacity of insane persons, excepting during lucid intervals, when publicly recognized to be in possession of their faculties, is declared. The questions of _lis pendens_, _res judicata_, judgment by default, and vendors’ lien, are treated in much the same way as in modern treatises on those subjects. The laws of inheritance, and the descent of estates, are explained at great length, and with a minuteness corresponding to their importance and effect upon social and domestic life. The relations of husband and wife are exhaustively discussed; no marriage was valid without a dowry, which was given by the husband; the amount was proportioned to the wealth and position of the latter; and a sum in excess of that established by law could not be bestowed through affection, or exacted by improper influence. Patrimonial estates, in the possession of widows, could not be alienated without the consent of a council of relatives; a provision which was, for centuries, the law in Portugal. In the penal legislation of the Code there is a curious mingling of the barbarous and the civilized. The compounding of crimes was permitted by law. The amount of damages to be assessed, like the penalty for the offence, was estimated according to the dignity and possessions of the culprit. The law of retaliation was sanctioned and enforced in cases where the injury was of a personal character; and, in support of this barbarous custom, the authority of the Bible was constantly invoked. The inhumanity of the punishments imposed is another striking indication of the survival of barbarism. Decapitation was the ordinary sentence for capital crimes. The penalty for arson was death by fire. Branding, maiming, scalping, and castration were inflicted for offences not deemed of sufficient gravity to require the imposition of the extreme penalty. Blinding, probably the most cruel of all, though abolished by the Code of Justinian, had been retained by the degenerate Greeks of the Byzantine Empire, from whom the Visigoths acquired it. Scourging was frequently inflicted; the number of blows varied from fifty to three hundred; they were almost always given in public; and even a judge who had been guilty of misconduct in office, was liable to the lash, symbolical at once of suffering and disgrace, and only surpassed in infamy and horror by scalping with fire, or decalvation. Torture, though authorized by law, was sparingly used. Under the Roman system it could only be inflicted upon slaves; the Visigoths, however, countenanced its exercise where the crime sought to be discovered by its means was one implying great moral turpitude; but it was solely employed as a method of eliciting evidence, and never as punishment for crime. With a people so jealous of their liberties, false imprisonment was naturally regarded as one of the greatest of wrongs; while, on the other hand, few penalties are more common