Florentia or Francesco.

The large collection of tapestries and embroidered vestments contains none of any exceptional importance, though most are rich and magnificent.

Among the Persian carpets one fragment much worn is of unrivalled beauty. It is nearly half of one of those long, narrow carpets made to cover the raised daïs at the end of a Persian room; it is woven of camels' hair and silk, mixed with gold and silver thread. Both design and colours are of the rarest beauty: gorgeously coloured birds are introduced among the usual foliage and arabesques. This exquisite piece of Oriental textile work belongs to the best period of the art-the

DEWINT.

66

cen

portion of his highly finished drawings, whether

these were successes, as they were sometimes,
or failures, as they were often. Only it is the
proper task of criticism to insist upon the fact
that, as a rule, it is by the curious and rapid
felicity of his sketches that Dewint will in the
future be prized; and, therefore, it is permissible
to regret that, in the choice of works to repre-
sent the forty years of his industrious labour,
care was not taken to ensure an ampler presence
of the sketches through which the connoisseur
admits his exalted rank.
FREDERICK WEDMORE.

BEAUX-ARTS.

Paris: March 7, 1884.

THIS exhibition is in a certain sense unique,
as affording almost for the first time an oppor-
tunity of studying and comparing a compre-
hensive collection of the drawings and studies
of the great masters of the French schools of
the last hundred years. The series begins with
Fragonard, Greuze, and David, and ends with
the most successful painters of the day. The
general impression received from a study of the
drawings shown is perhaps even a higher one
than that which would be derived from a collec-
tion of finished paintings by the same masters.
It is now proved in many cases that some painters
whom the tendencies of the age have led into
the lower paths had greater capabilities and a
deeper insight into the essential truths of nature
than could have been guessed from their better-
known works. The series of the designs
of David is scarcely representative; and the
drawings shown are, like his finished works,
cold and conventional, and do not exhibit all the

Museum. Around the plate is an explanatory
inscription—“Qui se lavora de pignate": "Here DEWINT has been dead thirty-five years; he
pots are being made." There are also three
was born exactly a hundred years since; and
fine specimens of the rarest of all porcelain the Messrs. Vokins, who have long had reason
that made for the private use of Francesco de' to pride themselves on their association with
Medici about 1580, of which only about thirty- the master, have thought fit to open a
four pieces are known. They are of fine, trans- tenary" exhibition of his work. Of course, it
lucent, artificial porcelain, thickly glazed, and needed no such exhibition to make manifest his
are highly valued, not only from their great excellence among the true connoisseurs. These
rarity, but also because they were the first have, for a long while, been informed as to
pieces of porcelain successfully made in Europe, his merits. But the great public was in a
the earlier attempts at Venice having come to different case. Sensational prices recently
nothing. They were extremely costly to pro- obtained under the hammer at Christie's may
dace, both the paste of which they are made have opened its eyes a little, it is true; yet
and the glaze being very elaborate preparations, even sensational prices are swiftly forgotten.
containing a large proportion of powdered rock- As it is, the public will hear much of the MODERN DRAWINGS AT THE ECOLE DES
crystal, which must have made the firing very exhibition, and will go to it. Whether they will
difficult. None were made after the death of altogether appreciate is, indeed, another matter.
Francesco. The three specimens in the Castel- We do not ourselves believe it. They will be
lani Collection consist of a large ewer, ovoid in seduced by the more obvious potency of the
form, with moulded handles and spout, slightly finished drawings, and will, perhaps with diffi-
decorated in cobalt blue under the glaze. An-culty, be brought to understand that it is by
ther is a deep bowl, painted with a seated his slightest efforts that Dewint is greatest.
figure of St. Mark, and signed by the artist An effect hardly, if at all, less admirable than
G. P. The third is a small plate, with simple
that which he attained habitually in his com-
flowers of Oriental style. All the paintings are pleted work has been attained over and over
in cobalt blue only, and all the pieces are again by inferior painters; but there resides
marked with the distinguishing badge of this
a magic in his sketches which has been at
fabrique-viz., Brunelleschi's dome on the the command of scarcely another landscape
Florentine cathedral, and the letter F, for artist. How much knowledge there was at the
back of his sketches! How many years of
work, one would say, must have been con-
sumed before the artist could convey so much
quality with so little labour! In a sense that
is true, yet it will have to be noted that Dewint
was still a young man when he had become
capable of some of the most masterly of his
performances. The best of these often remain
in the hands of the true collectors. They are
among the most admirable property in the
best-equipped portfolios. The large public is
more familiar with his more elaborate work.
And we could wish that the Messrs. Vokins
had been able, or had chosen, to include in
their extensive show a larger proportion of the
sparkling and direct sketches which ensure the
best fame of this unique master of water-colour.
Dewint lived in a generation of very strong
or very subtle sketchers. Turner was of his
day, and so was David Cox, and so too_was
Muller, while in his youth Girtin and Bon-
ington were still living. Yet, though the
faculty of sketching with power was largely
possessed by his contemporaries, the works of
none of these, however familiarly they may be
known, lessen in any respect our sense of the
individuality of Peter Dewint. Such a finished
drawing as that entitled "On the Dart,"
which may rank for completeness and unity
about with his "Cricketers " at the South
Kensington Museum, is indeed as individual as
are the prompt and decisive sketches; but its
merit is of a very rare order-it is seldom met
with-and, even when we fully acknowledge it,
it cannot be said that the effect obtained by
the elaboration of the labour was really quite
worth having at the expense of so much time.
Had Dewint lived in our own day, when, however
great and widespread may be the ignorance of
art, there are at least a few connoisseurs who
can appreciate the rapid and the learned selection
of material and line which affords us the best
examples of a Corot or a Collier, a Whistler or a
Degas, it is highly probable that he would have
exhausted himself less over the often sterile
labour that was needed for "exhibition draw-
ings" that he would have rested more content
with the delightful achievements which were
the result of half-an-hour's well-advised execu-
tion in the presence of nature. But we have
to deal with him as he was-an artist often
erroneously disposed to lose in labour the
freshness of an impression received in enjoy-
ment. From this point of view, the Messrs.
Vokins had a right to include a certain pro-

end of the fifteenth century.

Space will not allow any description of the plendid collection of fifteenth- and sixteenthCentury Venetian glass-many pieces finely Enamelled in colours; or of the many rare Pontifical rings, mostly of massive gold or rl: bronze, embossed with shields of arms, and set with large gems or foiled crystal. One is perhaps the finest known, and may have been the workshop of Cellini himself; it is of ail gold, ornamented with grotesque figures and richly enamelled; the bezel is set with sapphires and other gems of

"table"

great value.

This short sketch will give but a very inequate notion of the importance of this Lagnificent collection-a really astonishing to have been got together by the energy and artistic taste of one man. Owing to the pression of the monasteries in Italy and the of Church goods, Alessandro Castellani had opportunities such as can never come again; d his official position as an archaeologist ught to him first news and first power of tion when any of the rich sepulchral asures of Etruria and Magna Graecia were trought to light. His antiquarian knowledge and good taste, combined with the command f a large fortune, enabled him to make the est use of his exceptional advantages. It is hoped that the museums of England will lose so rare an opportunity of making able acquisitions at the forthcoming sale. has been some proposal in Rome that Italian Government should buy the whole tion, but the price asked (three million fans, or £120,000) is probably more than the Aation is prepared to pay.

J. HENRY MIDDLETON.

accomplished draughtsmanship that might have
been expected from so ardent a classicist. The
most important design exhibited is the finished
study for the celebrated "Serment du Jeu de
Paume." There is an exquisite series of char-
coal drawings and pastels by Prudhon. Even
more completely than in his pictures, he here
triumphs over the conventionalities imposed by
the pseudo-classical style of his time. His female
heads, in particular, reproduce the ineffable
charm of Leonardo da Vinci. As a decorative

designer, too, he appears in endless variety.
One of the great attractions of the collection
is

the series of pencil portraits by Ingres, which
show his unsurpassed finish of draughtsmanship
with a remarkable power of characterisation
sometimes obscured in his oil paintings. The
famous portrait of Bertin is one of the set.
Delacroix is well represented; but, as might
have been expected, without the aid of colour
his genius does not find full vent. The drawings
and water-colours of Decamps here shown are
not of his best, and cannot compare with those
in the collection of Sir Richard Wallace. Not
the least attraction of the exhibition is a
numerous and complete series of the drawings
and pastels of Jean-François Millet. Never has
the tragic grandeur, and yet unexaggerated
realism, of his style been more evident. There
has been a tendency during the last two or
three years among Parisian critics to qualify the
worship accorded to Millet since his death,
but these fresh proofs of his great genius should
go far to silence the detractors. Among the
exhibited drawings are the well-known "Vig-
neron " and "La Fin de la Journée."
remarkable study is a pastel drawing of a level
plain seen to the very horizon under an overcast
sky, through which the rays of the sun strive to
pierce. The admirable "fusains" of Lhermitte,
of which there is a good show, are, notwith-
standing their extraordinary merit, seen to a
slight disadvantage by the side of the more
deeply felt works of Millet. By the late Henri
Regnault there are two important and little-
known studies of Oriental interiors in pure

A

water-colour, showing great power over that
medium; and by Fortuny an exquisite interior
of a mosque with an Arab at prayer, showing, in
addition to his usual perfection of technique, a
pathos not always at his command. Meisonnier
exhibits a brilliant series of studies from the
human figure, both nude and draped, besides
some accurate landscape studies. In all he
appears, as in his pictures, astonishing, various,
and always successful, but, on the other hand,
cold, unsympathetic, and wanting in that
deeper insight which genius alone confers.
Among the surprises of the exhibition are
some magnificent studies from the nude by
Puvis de Chavannes which in point of style
suggest the finest period of the art of the
sixteenth century. These prove conclusively
that, in reducing drawing and design to their
simplest elements in his finished works, and
affecting an almost Giottesque severity, he is not
actuated, as his critics have declared, by a desire
to conceal deficiencies of training. Cabanel
exhibits also a fine series of drawings from the
nude, far nobler in his style than his later
somewhat insipid compositions. A female
figure, prone on the ground in an agony of
grief, is especially fine. Among the painters
of the younger school, Gervex shows studies
of great power, and Vollon some fine land-
scape studies in charcoal; but young France is
scarcely fully represented. The collection in-
cludes a brilliant series of the caricatures of
Daumier and Gavarni, and also some remark-
able architectural studies by Viollet-le-Duc,
including a clever restoration of the Greek theatre
of Taormina, in Sicily. The exhibition closes on
March 16.
CLAUDE PHILLIPS.

SALE OF TURNER PAINTINGS.

In the collection of Mr. Cosmo Orme, which was dispersed at Christie's on Friday in last week, there occurred four important drawings by Turner done for Whitaker's Richmondshire. Richmond

the series

voluntarily forewent the presentation of many a
permanent fact. The Richmondshire drawings
take account of complicated facts so much, and
of impressions so little, that, with all their ex-
quisiteness and all their mastery, they must
hold rank, as art, with the poetry which makes
obvious sign of dainty and elaborate labour
rather than with that which expresses a fuller
inspiration with the seeming simplicity of un-
questioned power. Turner may have been
greater than others when he wrought upon the
Richmondshire, but the Turner of the Richmond-
shire was, in some points, destined to be dis-
tanced by the Turner of yet later years.
On the following day, Saturday, March 8, it
happened that two Turner drawings were sold
at Edinburgh-"The Rialto," eight and a-half
by five and a-half inches, for 225 guineas; and
Berwick-on-Tweed," six by three and a-half
inches, for 190 guineas.

Three oil-paintings by Turner were also to be sold with the Osmaston Collection at Derby yesterday. They comprised "A View of the Grand Canal, Venice; "The Sol-di-Venezia putting out to Sea" (the sketch for the picture in the National Gallery); and an unfinished work called "The Girl with the Cymbals." An early drawing by Turner of Edinburgh Castle" is also among the lots.

66

EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND.
(Communicated by REGINALD STUART POOLE, British
Museum, Hon. Sec.)

THE GREAT TEMPLE OF SAN.

Sán-el-Hagar: Feb. 19, 1884.

As no brief and accurate account has yet
been published, either in English or French, of
the ruins of Zoan or Tanis, it will not be out of
place to give an outline of what is already
known before describing from time to time
what may be discovered here by the work of
the Egypt Exploration Fund.

The main mass of the ruins is over half-ashire was published in 1823, the services of many mile each way, forming a girdle of high mounds excellent engravers having been wisely secured around the great temple of Rameses II.; beside for it; and, though, from the connexion of all which there are lower outlying districts, halfthe plates with one given and not very ex-a-mile or more distant, but around these latter tensive locality, a certain monotony, not per- the ground is too wet at this time of year ceptible in England and Wales, or in Southern for them to be examined. The great mounds Coast, or in Liber Studiorum, attends upon the about one hundred feet high are of Ptolemaic compositions, the excellence of the craftsman- and Roman date (down to the third century) on ship secures for the work the permanent respect the surface, and a few excavations show the of the collector. The finest water-colour drawing same age for some yards below. The temple is that has, of late years, appeared in public of the only part which we know down to the was unquestionably the Ingle- foundations, and of that perhaps all has not borough," which passed under the hammer yet been uncovered. The great temple may be about three years ago, when about £2,200 was divided into five parts, beginning at the east paid for it. Next to that in exquisiteness come end:-(1) pylon; (2) hypostyle hall; (3) the Simmer Lake" and the "Crook of Lune," obelisks and statues of Rameses II., with earlier which were offered for sale last week. The sphinxes and statues of the Middle Kingdom "Crook of Lune" fetched 1,100 guineas, the and Hyksos times re-arranged; (4) sanctuary "Simmer Lake" 650 guineas, and their two of Rameses II., with colonnade in front of it of companions, Wycliff, near Rokeby," and Si-amen (XXIst Dynasty); and (5) behind all, "Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard," 590 guineas at west end, obelisks and other remains. Around and 820 guineas respectively. The "Simmer the temple is an enormous wall of crude brick, Lake" and the "Crook of Lune" were in the about eighty feet wide and still about twenty feet best condition, and the amateur had good reason high, built by Pi-sebkhanu (XXIst Dynasty), to perceive and admire in them the finest and it is the mud washed down from the upper characteristics of that period of the artist's part of this wall, now destroyed, that has labour in which they were executed. We cannot, largely filled up the area of the temple. The however, accept them-admirable though they whole of the temple has been overthrown with are-as really among the crowning instances of the exception of a part of the pylon, and all Turner's art. It may be they would have suf- the obelisks are broken; while the blocks which ficed to secure for any other painter the reputa-rested directly on the floor have been upset and tion of supremacy in the control of intricate line disarranged in the course of destroying the fine and of delicate and palpitating light, but the limestone pavement, the temple having served greater achievements in luxuriant colour, of as a quarry from before Ptolemaic times until which the later years of Turner were to afford to-day. abundant evidence, are yet more capital examples of his most complete mastery. And not only did the artist, at a later epoch of his career, concern himself with colour more amply and nobly-he also, in those later years, in the research of glowing hues and vivid light,

Beginning at the entrance, the pavement in front of it was uncovered and partly removed by Mariette. Of the great red granite pylon itself, built by Rameses II., and also sculptured by Sheshonk III., some stones remain in place up to seventeen feet high; but they

are much weathered, and it is only on the
fallen or buried blocks that fine sculptures may
be found remaining. Of the hypostyle hall or
avenue of columns there are but three or four y
shafts left; these are of red granite four feet
and a-half in diameter, and thirty-five feet and
a-half long, and were erected by Rameses II., as
also were two obelisks just beyond them. A
little way farther, on the south side, are the
fragments of a great red granite sphinx
of the Middle Kingdom, appropriated by
Rameses II., as are all the earlier sculptures.
The fellow-sphinx is the large one at the.
door of the Egyptian Gallery in the Louvre,
Close beyond the site of these sphinxes is the k
second pair of great granite obelisks. Next are th
seen the shattered fragments of a colossal statue
of Rameses II. in sandstone, which was aba
twenty-five feet high; this was probably
matched by another opposite to it, of which
some blocks remain. Then follow a third pair
of granite obelisks, and then another pair of
colossi of Rameses II. in sandstone; these were
twenty-five feet and a-half high, with bases two
feet high, each monolith being twenty-seven
feet and a-half high; the mouths of the figures
are a foot long and the eyes each seven inches.
About this part are the remains of a brown basalt
pavement, like that near the Great Pyramid at
Gizeh in material and similar (but inferior) i
workmanship. There is also a fragment of a
granite entablature belonging to Usertesen III

-the only piece of the first temple that is to be
seen. Here, on each side of the axis of the temple,
lies a heap of broken pieces of Hyksos sphinxes,
of dark-gray granite; there are parts of at least
three on the north and two on the south side.
One of them is in fairly good condition as far
as the haunches, not much inferior to those
removed to the Boulak Museum. There are
also three pieces of a Hyksos figure with fishes
and papyri, like that at Boulak. A Rameside
figure here in gray granite is in an unusual
attitude, kneeling on one knee, and leaning for
ward with the other leg stretched out behind;
the head is lost, and most of the inscribed base.
Just beyond these there stand, close together, a
fourth pair of obelisks (forty-seven feet high
and five feet eight inches square); a pair of
monolith shrines of sandstone, one nearly
broken up (eight feet and a-half long, and
about five feet wide and high), covered with
scenes of Rameses II. offering to various divini-
ties; and a fifth pair of obelisks. Then comes
the great line of early statues across the axis of
the temple, running towards the north gate.
These appear to have been arranged by Rameses
in pairs, matching each other on opposite sides
of the temple; and that king also placed his
name and titles, with profuse repetition, upon
the back and base of each figure. The pair of
colossi of Mer-masha-u, in black granite, in-
scribed later by the Hyksos Apepi, are not much
defaced, though broken in two or three pieces.
The fellow-statue to the great pink granite
Sebakhotep III. in the Louvre is lying here in
two pieces, and is but slightly defaced. Here
is also a similar statue of Ammemhat I.,
scarcely at all defaced, but broken in three
pieces. The finest work, however, is shown
in two colossi of black granite, one of User-
Usertesen is
tesen I., the other unknown.
in four pieces, besides the leg in Berlin.
and it has been much defaced; but the brilliant
polish, the delicate inscriptions, and the artistic
work place it above any Egyptian statue
after the period of realistic sculpture of the
IVth Dynasty. The unknown figure is nearly
its equal, and is better in style than any other
of the statues here; the head is lost, and the
part of the throne with the name, but the torso
is of excellent workmanship, and the throne is
very finely engraved. There is a fragment of
the feet of apparently the fellow-statue to this
on the opposite side; but the name is there

ology at the Bibliothèque nationale, began his lectures on Wednesday last with an éloge on his two predecessors, Beulé and François Lenormant, alluding also to the claims of Adrien de Longpérier to the respect of learned Europe. The subject of the course, which is delivered on Wednesdays and Saturdays, will be 'Olympia: its History, its Topography, its Games'-with special reference to the results of the excavations undertaken by the German Government. M. Rayet is a former pupil of the Ecole d'Athènes. He has won distinction_recently by the publication of two volumes-Les Monuments de l'Art antique (Quantin) which are no less instructive for the learning displayed in the text than for the examples chosen for illustration."

Correction. In the notice of "Mr. Albert Hartshorne and the Archaeological Institute in the ACADEMY of last week, his name was throughout misspelt "Hartshorn." The name of his maternal grandfather also ought to have been given as Kerrich," not "Kerrick."

nearly all the American performances in detail, someone who heard her for the first time, and VIC

SATURDAY, MARCH 22, 1884.

No. 620, New Series.

THE EDITOR cannot undertake to return, or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscript.

It is particularly requested that all business letters regarding the supply of the paper, &c., may be addressed to the PUBLISHER, and not to the EDITOR.

LITERATURE.

It is

regulated and sustained by custom.
possible that in the change which is leading
us in all directions to pass back "from con-
tract to status" something may yet be done to
gain for the copyholders of the South some of
the permanent privileges which the bold
yeomen of the North obtained by their courage
and persistence.

Blackstone himself is credited with only one
lapse from severity in a description of running
water as a wild and wandering thing. Mr.
Pollock has the gifts of humour and imagina-
tion. The Manor of Dale assumes under his
treatment the appearance of an antique ruin,
in which those who have the secret of "the
crabbed spell-book" may call up again "the
ghosts of a vanished order of the world." The old Teutonic customs permeated the
The mediaeval seigneur rises before our eyes, social economy of the manor and township;
grasping his petty dues and casual profits of and this was especially the case in the long-
waif and stray and treasure-trove, or riding settled districts, which were the first to be
on his nag of assize to seize a deodand, or a bit seized by the invaders from Germany. But
of wreck, or the heriot which" added a sorrow from another point of view the scheme of our.
to death."
The steward sits in court-leet and land-law may be described as a modified
administers the ancient oaths to the Pinder and feudalism. All land is, in theory, the pro-
the Aletaster and the other officials of the town-perty of the Crown, to be administered for
ship, or settles the quarrels of the fair and the defence of the realm-a fact which may
market at the Dustyfoot Court on the barrow be commended to the notice of those who
or under the immemorial oak. The memory would "nationalise' 19 or "communalise" the
of a still older time, before the Black Death property of the land-holders. The highest
had dislocated the organisation of labour, fee-simple estate may be regarded as a mili-
shows us the lord of Dale in more majestic tary office held on condition of doing some
state, with powers of life and death and rights adequate service for the State. But, as a
of pit and gallows, "with sac and soc and matter of history, the unorganised militia of
infang-thief and outfang-thief," and all the the feudal tenants was soon found to be
other barbarous franchises which the Norman useless; and the military services were at first
lawyers thought it safer to enumerate by their commuted for fixed dues, and afterwards
English names. In the times which imme- altogether abolished. This last change became
diately followed the Norman Conquest, the inevitable when the distribution of the abbey
lord of the manor had wide prerogatives indeed lands among the members of a new aristocracy
on strand and stream, by wood and field;" led to a general confusion of tenures, and it
and the peasants whose forced labour main-was carried out as a matter of course after
tained his estate were not much better off the change in popular feeling produced by
than serfs, even where they could prove their the great Civil War.
freedom from slavish blood. The copyholders
of to-day represent the separate classes of the
free labourers and of the "natives" or bond-
men who advanced into the ranks of the
customary tenants" when slavery was
silently abolished. The quaint customs of
the country-side preserve remnants and sur-
vivals of old dooms and laws of kingdoms
which disappeared during the making of
England, and rites and ceremonies of an
archaic symbolism of which in some instances
the origin and meaning are forgotten.

66

The Land Laws. By Frederick Pollock.
"English Citizen Series." (Macmillan.)
MR. POLLOCK has certainly earned the gratitude
of lawyers as well as laymen for the brilliant
essay in which he has so clearly expounded
the principles of our English real-property
law, and has thrown light upon the strange
customs and wondrous scholastic fictions which
to some minds are mere monstrosities, and to
others have appeared to be the perfection of
reason. His readers will be forced to admit
that the system has very little "intrinsic
coherence" and hardly any principle of growth,
so that it can only be rendered intelligible
"in the light of its historical conditions."
The relations of the lord and the copyholder,
the rights of the commoner on the waste or
the villagers upon the green, are matters
which demand for their comprehension the
help of persons possessing a knowledge of
the most ancient Teutonic traditions surviving
only in an imperfect form and defaced or
nearly obliterated by lapse of time. To
understand the intricacies of the doctrine of
tenures one must wade back into "the mire
of feudalism," and learn the art of dealing"
with the Norman military system in phrases
and under modes of reasoning derived from
the Roman law. A full knowledge of the
machinery of a family settlement implies an
acquaintance with metaphysical subtleties as
to the nature of equitable estates which found
favour in the law courts long after the ideas
from which they were derived had been
abandoned by the schools. The apparently
unmeaning conflicts between the decisions of
the judges and the plain language of the
mediaeval statutes are the signs of a real
struggle between the king and his barons or
between the laity and the ecclesiastical land-
ds; and we owe to the same cause the
clumsy fictions by which, even in the last
generation, the cutting off an entail or the
conveyance of a freehold estate was made to
assume the shape of a long-contested lawsuit.
An introduction to the learning of manors
and copyholds is afforded by the picturesque
description of a manorial estate, with park
and demesne, and strips of Lammas land, and
a common "covered with brilliant gorse and
heather in their season, and fringed and
crested with wild woods." This is a distinct
improvement on the arid style of the older
legal essays, which were so rarely enlivened
with a graceful or poctical illustration.
There are books on jocular tenures, of which
the wit is now a trifle musty, and a few
ballads of monastic conveyancers about him
who "bit the white wax with his tooth," or
elaimed a bow and a bright arrow "when he
came to hunt upon Yarrow;" but, as a rule,
our jurists seldom dropped into poetry, and

The rule of primogeniture is our principal legacy from the feudal times. Mr. Pollock explains how it was imported into England for the protection of the military estates, and was extended to the holdings of the rustics in furtherance of the policy of the law. There are traces of an old custom of primogeniture which prevailed in the North of England as early as the days of Bede; but the rule, which became part of our Common Law, was in fact a local custom of the Pays de Caux imported for English use on account of

peculiar strictness. The quiet way in which the rule was extended to lands of every tenure is partly to be explained by the fact that the rules of inheritance were, up to the reign of Edward II., treated as matters for arrangement between lord and tenant, as when De Montfort abolished the succession of the youngest at Leicester, and the archbishops withdrew estates in Kent from the operation of the custom of gavelkind.

Mr. Pollock corrects the mistake of Black-its stone which has puzzled generations of lawyers, misled by his authority into supposing that all the customary privileges of the small landowners, and indeed most of the rights and liberties of Englishmen, were due to the caprice or generosity of their Norman masters. Sir Edward Coke himself, who was learned but not very high-minded, thought it to be "the height of a grand and superlative ingratitude to cry aloud and A great part of our legal history is taken clamour" against these good and great bene-up with the struggles of the laity to limit factors. Copyholders, as they now exist, may the acquisition of land by the Church, which be divided into four principal classes-the first resulted in the introduction for general purcomprising the "statesmen "in the North of poses of the conveyances by fictitious actions England, holding their estates from ancestor and the machinery of secret trusts which were to heir by the ancient and laudable custom of borrowed by the clergy from the civilians. tenant-right; the second class comprising the The trust, which at first was merely an honourordinary copyholders, liable to a constantly able understanding, was in course of time proincreasing rent in the shape of fines of two tected by the Court of Chancery and developed years' value paid to the lord for admittance; into an "equitable estate; and it was disthe third being the customary estates for lives covered that the new kind of property was by the West-of-England tenure; and the last free from the exactions and inconveniences of taking in those conventionary tenants who the feudal law. A desperate attempt was seem to hold on the same terms as the tenants made to abolish the whole system of trusts of the Celtic lords in this island and in by the "parliamentary magic" of the Statute "Britain beyond the sea." Many of these of Uses; but the ingenuity of the lawyers estates are still of a precarious nature, being was too strong for the ill-drawn statute, and treated as depending on contract alone, though the popular wish was gratified when land