Although marriages are often made up by the parents and guardians, as in France, without any freedom on the part of the bride at least, custom or law gives the Spanish woman much more power than even in England.  A girl desiring to escape from a marriage repugnant to her can claim protection from a magistrate, who will even, if necessary, take her out of her father’s custody until she is of age and her own mistress.  More than that, if a girl determines to marry a man of whom her parents disapprove, she has only to place herself under the protection of a magistrate to set them at defiance, nor have they the power to deprive her of the share of the family property to which by Spanish law she is entitled.  I do not know if these things are altered now,—­one does not hear so much of them,—­but I know of several cases where daughters have been married from the magistrate’s house against the wishes of their parents.  In one case, the first intimation a father received of his daughter’s engagement was the notice from a neighbouring magistrate that she was about to be married, and in another, a daughter left her mother’s house and was married from that of the magistrate to a man without any income and considerably below her in rank.  In all these cases, the contracting parties were of the upper classes.

While on this subject, I must mention what seems to us the barbarous manner in which infants are clothed and brought up, though the English fashions of baths, healthy clothing, and suitable food are now largely followed amongst the upper classes.  When the King was still an infant a great deal of his clothing came from England, and he was brought up in the English method.  This probably set the fashion, and the little ones playing in the Park now are much like those one is accustomed to see in London.  But among the poor, and even some of the bourgeois class, the old insane customs prevail, and it is not surprising to hear that the death-rate among infants is extraordinarily high.  From its birth the poor child is tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes, confining all its limbs, so that it presents the appearance of a mummy, swathed in coarse yellow flannel, only its head appearing.  So stiffly are they rolled up that I have seen an infant only a few weeks old propped up on end against the wall, or in a corner, while the mother was busy.  There is a superstition, too, about never washing a child’s head from the day it is born.  The result is really indescribable.  When it is about two years old, a scab, which covers the whole head, comes off of its own accord, and after that the head may be cleansed without fear of evil consequences.  Some English servants who have married in Spain set the example of keeping their infants clean, and, therefore, healthy, from the first, and, seeing the difference in the appearance of the children, a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of courage to break away from old traditions and set one’s face against the sacred superstitions of ages—­and the mother-in-law!