globe, is an enigma which awaits the solution of a northern Edipus.

To us it does not appear so difficult an undertaking, notwithstanding the difference of soil and climate, to call up a city equal in wealth and extent to Calcutta on the banks of Lake Baikal, and to make Orenburg or Astrachan rival Bombay or Madras. The only talisman we should seek would be the eradication of the Russian police, a body no less inimical to the progress of civilization than the Strelitzes or janissaries of former days, and the conversion of the minister of the finances to the opinion that the sum of the items of national trade, and not their difference, forms the true object to which a statesman ought to direct his attention; in other words, that the prosperity of a country can be much more correctly estimated according to the extent of its trade, than according to its apparent balance.

ARTICLE II.

1. Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, comprising Laws enacted under the Anglo-Saxon Kings from Ethelbirht to Cnut, with an English Translation of the Saxon; the Laws called Edward the Confessor's; the Laws of William the Conqueror, and those ascribed to Henry the First; also Monumenta Ecclesiastica Anglicana, from the seventh to the tenth century; and the Ancient Latin Version of the Anglo-Saxon Laws, with a compendious Glossary, etc. Printed by command of His late Majesty King William IV., under the direction of the Commissioners on the Public Records of the Kingdom. MDCCC.XL. 1 vol. fol. and 2 vols. royal 8vo.

2. Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. Opera JOHANNIS M. KEMBLE. 8vo. vols. 1 and 2. Printed for the English Historical Society, 1839 and 1840.

THE two works whose titles we have placed at the head of this article, supply nearly all the documentary evidence we

are now likely to obtain respecting the early institutions of this country, and the system of law under which our Teutonic forefathers lived. The rest can only be discovered by a careful search through the local customs of various districts, and a jealous induction from the similar or contemporaneous codes of cognate nations; while here and there a maxim of our own unwritten law may be referred to these, its earliest source. But, unfortunately, neither of these laborious works nearly exhausts the subject; not even when taken together— and, if taken separately, each loses half its importance-do they give anything approaching to a complete view of the laws by which this country was ruled, prior to the Norman conquest. So clearly is this deficiency felt by both editors, that Mr. Thorpe disclaims, even on his title-page, the emphatic The, merely calling his work Ancient Laws,' etc., and not content with this, enters in his preface an elaborate protest against the belief that these fragments constitute the whole Corpus Juris. Mr. Kemble is equally explicit on this point, and having stated the incompleteness of the codes, makes it the very ground for collecting the charters.

In spite of this, we entertain the opinion that sufficient materials have been supplied for forming a definite notion of what the system of law really was. Henceforth, at any rate, we shall hold inexcusable any repetition of the crude guesses with which we have been met in grave works of Law and History, revolting to common sense, defying the universal experience of man, and deeply sinning against that piety which a nation owes to its progenitors. It would be ungenerous in us, who have profited by the profound investigations of Eichhorn, Savigny and James Grimm, to hold up to ridicule the errors of their English predecessors. While we acknowledge with regret that strangers have dealt most worthily with what Englishmen should have looked upon as their own peculiar treasures, we shall do well to emulate for the future their zeal and their conscientious and unwearied industry in the investigation of these important subjects. To the Germans the Anglo-Saxon laws offer only an object of scientific study, distantly bearing on their own legal antiquities; to us they are the very cradle of the law itself: on them is based much of the most valuable portion

of our institutions, political, municipal and judicial; they are the indispensable clue to the historian who traverses the labyrinthine mazes of our Antenorman story; above all, they are the inheritance which Englishmen a thousand years ago bequeathed to the Englishmen of to-day. Of the earlier editors of the Anglo-Saxon laws, and those whom they betrayed into error, we shall say no more; yet we must be allowed (more as a warning for the future than blame for the past,) to express our regret that they did not qualify themselves to judge the customs and character of the Anglo-Saxons, by learning their language. A competent knowledge of this tongue, hardly very difficult to acquire in a country where it cannot yet be said to be extinct, would have made some laborious authors a good deal more trustworthy, and eliminated from some ponderous works a good deal of matter which can only serve to mislead and confuse. Nor can the old Latin translations, found in Brompton and elsewhere, satisfactorily supersede this study, as even a very cursory comparison of them with Mr. Thorpe's version will abundantly prove. To understand the institutions of a people, it is absolutely necessary to understand and comprehend their national character; and no one can pretend to do this, except through an extensive acquaintance not less with their literature than their history.

The grounds upon which we base our belief, that it is possible, even out of the fragments which remain, to form a tolerably complete and consistent system, lie in the nature of Law itself, and the form in which it necessarily develops itself during what may be called the spontaneous or constructive periods of a nation's existence; and by these terms we intend those periods during which the nation is unconsciously developing both its language and its law, before it begins to reflect upon and systematize what it is doing, and while it has in fact both a literature and institutions, but neither grammarians nor lawyers. If we bear in mind that law is not the creature of caprice, that there is nothing in it arbitrary or accidental, and that it is in fact the correlative and outward form of an idea, we shall see that their law must be the strictest educt and fullest representative of the nationality of any people at such periods as we have described. For that by which they have a nationality, that is, a separate existence, a

bond of union among themselves and of distinction from others, is precisely what we call their idea, the indwelling principle of their being, by which they are what they are and not other than they are; and this it is which their law most completely imbodies. But inasmuch as it does completely imbody this, it is throughout consistent, and each part exists only in harmonious subordination to the whole. It is then only when conquest and other external influences have rendered the life of the people itself inconsistent, that their laws become so also, and that an artificial system springs up which may be learned by rote, or by continual practice, but which is not based upon fixed principles from which every one of its details is derived; and this last-named case is that of the law in every European state at this moment. From what has been said, it follows that, due diligence being used, we should be able, from the fragments, to reconstruct the whole system of which those fragments were portions, even as the great naturalist of our days, from a single bone or joint, knew how to describe the form of the whole animal to which it had belonged, its habits of life and the climate in which it was framed to live.

Will this great work be accomplished in our time? Perhaps it may; we know not yet who may buckle on armour massive enough for the struggle, but we think the tendency of our age is in a direction favourable to such a result; and the energy of men amply endowed with all the necessary qualifications, is incessantly occupied in preparing the way. A wider and more generous system of philology, while it has pointed out the importance of the undertaking, has supplied the means of making it successfully; and the earnestness with which it is even now pursued, has its deep foundations in an enlightened spirit of patriotism. We look then with some confidence for this consummation. But before we can commence the work of reconstruction with any reasonable hope of success, we must learn to shut our eyes to everything which springs from our own high state of political and moral cultivation, to familiarize ourselves with a state of society the most unlike our own,-nay, to conceive the very face of the country itself totally different. The "everlasting hills" and the streams are indeed still there; but instead of populous VOL. XII.-No. XXIII.

E

cities, forming centres of civilization in all directions, the eye must rest upon dense forests, wild uncultivated heaths and trackless morasses. The peaceful husbandman and artisan, pursuing in profound quiet the occupations which are to furnish them the means of life, must give place to rude, armed herdsmen, prepared to defend their cattle against the wild beasts that tenant the forests, or the yet wilder neighbour that trespasses on their pastures. Here and there, indeed, a church raises its modest and unassuming dimensions; but in the deep woods, by clear wells and under hoary stones, a worship which knows and endures no temples is yet paid to national gods. Few of the popular characteristics would the Englishman of to-day recognise, save the sound heart, plain sense and stalworth limbs of his Anglo-Saxon ancestor*.

The

Let us now suppose a land such as we have described, to be thinly peopled by families or tribes of families, settled upon the portions which are clear of wood, either through natural causes or the energy and industry of man, but which are on all sides surrounded by forests; and on the large open spaces let a rude system of agriculture prevail, while in the uncleared and wooded district herds are tended, and especially swine fattened on the mast of acorns and beech-nuts. law of such a people must be twofold: the agriculturist will strive to maintain inviolate a property in the land which he has reclaimed from the waste; the herdsman will struggle to prevent the clearing (essart) from extending so far as to diminish his means of wealth, viz. food for his cattle. These two opposing tendencies in the same community, eternally interlacing, eternally asserting somewhat and yielding somewhat, in a compromise necessary to enable the tribe to subsist at all, lie at the bottom of all their early laws. Yet it is not a position of hostility, and both classes will make common cause to prevent the general boundary from being invaded, and the lands of the community trespassed upon by the members of other not kindred tribes. Thus each com

If very well acquainted with those provincial dialects which are daily yielding to the powers of the steam-engine and the schoolmaster, he might find a correspondence, little looked for, in the modes of thought and speech of the peasantry. One interesting fact must arrest the attention of the philologist: the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon dialects are still those of the counties in which those different languages prevailed nine centuries ago.