what it is now. At the time of the Council of Constance, the refined
Poggio relates with great satisfaction how at Baden near Zurich, the
most fashionable bath of the fifteenth century, he had seen German men
and women bathing together, and how delightfully naive their
familiarity was. And even a century later Hutten praises this German
custom in contradistinction to the Italian morals, which would have
made this practice impossible. So tolerant still were the German
Humanitarians.

Marriage, however, was considered by our ancestors less as a union of
two lovers, than as an institution replete with duties and rights, not
only of married people towards one another, but also towards their
relatives--as a bond uniting two corporate bodies. The relations of the
wife became also the friends of the man, and they had claims on him as
he had on them. Therefore in the olden time, the choice of husband and
wife was always an affair of importance to the relatives on both sides,
so that a German wooing, from the oldest times up to the last century,
had the appearance of a business transaction, which was carried out
with great regard to suitability. This perhaps takes away from German
courtship, somewhat of the charm which we expect to find where the
heart of man beats strongly; but this circumspect method of weighing
things is a characteristic sign of an earnest and great conception of
life. If a man desired to ask a woman in marriage he had to go through
several solemn family negotiations. First the wooing, for which he had
to employ a mediator; not always the lather or any other head of his
family, but often some man of consideration in the town or country.
This ambassador was generally accompanied by the wooer himself with a
troop of his companions: if it took place in the country, they rode in
solemn procession. If the family of the maiden was favourably disposed,
they considered this as the preliminary step, and fixed a time for the
negotiations between the families to take place. Formerly the man had
to buy his wife from her family; but when this old custom fell into
disuse, there still remained the arrangements concerning the dowry
which the bride had to bring to her husband, and the jointure which he
had to settle upon her. There were added to this, though not compulsory
yet as a standing custom, presents of the man to the parents, brothers,
and sisters of the bride, or from the bride to the family and best-men
of the bride