Some outmoded institutions live on as anachronisms because enduring qualities in them continue to appeal to people. Royalty is one example. Marriage is another. Royal marriage? Well, naturally.

Royalty survives here and there as pageantry and as a reminder, always timely, that the present was shaped by a very different past. Marriage, despite abundant, mounting, universally acknowledged evidence to the contrary, endures as a symbol — the symbol — of domestic bliss.

Last month, Britain's Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton announced their engagement. Who first dubbed it "the marriage of the century?" It doesn't matter. That's what an enchanted world immediately and unanimously agreed it will be, and maybe even the London students whose rousing protest against jacked-up university fees engulfed Prince Charles' limousine two weeks ago would not have caviled.