SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Soks of the week as hate not been reamed for review in other forms.1 The Abbey of St. Alban's. By Vivian Galbraith. (B. H. Black- well, Oxford. 2s. 6d.)—Here we have printed the essay which won the Stanhope Prize in 1911, and very instructive it is. We see fluctuations of fortune as we follow the story, but it is difficult to resist the inference that the monasteries had outlived their usefulness. Even economically they were out of keeping with the time. St. Alban's was oppressive in its dealings with its town tenants, and adverse to improvement where its rural estates were concerned. Yet it had able and zealous men from time to time who worked for it. Do la Mare, who ruled during almost all the second half of the fourteenth century, was one of them. Wetham- dodo (1420-1440 and 1452-1461) was another. Such, too, must have been the ruler who set up a printing-press. On the whole the story of the Abbey does not tell in favour of monasticism. Such appears to be the conclusion which the painstaking author of this volume has reached.
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