BOOKS.

](IMBLE'S SAXONS IN ENGLAND.* SPECIMENS of history by means of an exposition of society and its in- slitutions, in place of a narrative of events and a delineation of characters, may be found in classical writers, especially in Ctesar's interesting ac- count of the ancient Gauls, Britons, and Germans. The " libellus" of Taeitus "De Situ, Moribus, et Populis Germaniaz," may perhaps take rank as a complete work, as it certainly is a model of this kind of writing. Original authors in later times—as Cortes—occasion- ally mingled with their narrative of events, descriptions of such traits of the country, the people, and their customs, as fell under their eye. All this, however, was observation, or an account of the observation of others, drawn from the actual life, not a deduction from scattered passages, which reconstructed the whole by means of those fragments, as the comparative anatomist describes and classifies the animal by means of a single bone. The first, we think, to attempt anything of this kind in history were Hume and Voltaire. The mocking spirit of the Frenchman inclined him to the sceptical; prompting him to select such facts as seemed unlikely, and thence to assert, with a profusion of wit, that a great por- tion of remote history was merely a collection of great fables, unworthy of the attention of a people so civilized as the Parisians of the eighteenth century. Hume brought a sounder knowledge and a more philosophical spirit to his survey of the state of the past. Although not devoid of the narrow, cold, and Epicurean character of his age, yet his tests were in the main true; and, looking from the snug and comfortable side, his judgments of the Anglo-Saxon and baronial ages are not less just, than his pictures, from such data as he possessed and with such opinions as he entertained, are yet unrivalled. Even Hume's exposition of the social condition of the Anglo-Saxons, is not, however, that revival which we spoke of in comparing it to the work of the fossil anatomist; for what Hume and his successors did was rather to write essays on the civili- zation of society than to give a description of the society itself. The first historian of this class was Niebuhr: but, in spite of his vital genius, Ida sagacity, and his learning, Niebuhr's composition was encumbered and heavy, and his conclusions contained too much of the ipse dixit. This style of history is necessarily limited, from the limitation of the subjects ; since it can only refer as a whole to remote times. It is equally limited from the watchful research, the extensive labour, and the logical imagination which it requires. The most artistical and attrac- tive specimen of this kind of history, that we have met with, is Mac- aulay's view of England about the time of the Revolution: the most complete work is Mr. Kemble's Saxons in England, now before us.

A reader is sometimes told to remember all he knows on the subject of a work before he sits down to the book ; and Gibbon recommends the process. In the case of a student like Gibbon, whose reading is meffioclized, and his arguments arranged in his mind like weapons in an armoury, ready for instant use, this course is all very well ; but the mass duo have no such power over our knowledge, and only know what we have got when reminded of it by meeting it again. The truer test of the value of a book is, where can you learn what it can teach you ? and if the answer is, nowhere, then we may safely concede both merit and value. Such is the characteristic of the Saxons in England. Turner, Palgrave, Lingard, and Lappenberg, with other writers of smaller genius and heavier learning, have told the story of the Anglo-Saxons, or investigated their condition, laws, and institutions. The predominant character of all these writers is the usual historical method, unless they were antiquarians. They narrate events, and apply more or less of criticism to their autho- rities; warning,the reader of that which is poetical or doubtful, with the reason for their conclusion. They turn aside from tales of battles, kings, nobles, prelates, and saints, to laws, arts, and literature, and thence deduce the social condition and civilization of the people. But they sel- dom travel "out of the record." Lingard, in his "Anglo-Saxon Church," and Lappenberg frequently in the pauses of his narrative, exhibit a larger truth than the mere words of their authorities, and enable the reader to correct the verbal by the actual, so as to get a better idea of the true meaning of the older authors than if they read them for themselves. Still they do not go to the foundations ; at least in comparison with Mr. Kemble. We do not gain from them, as from him, so clear a view of the cunabula of the Saxons in England—of the first institutions or customs of the Germanic races—of the manner in which these of necessity govern- ed their daily life—of the way in which their customs were probably modified by the changes arising from the necessities of a forcible settle- ment on a hostile soil, and expanded by the increase of population, till they grew into the germs of our present social (as distinguished from Statute or Parliamentary) institutions, customary laws, local divisions, and all those daily circumstances which lie at the bottom of national character. He also exhibits, if not with so much originality, the various classes of Germanic and thence of Anglo-Saxon society, with the rights and pri- vileges appertaining to each. With equal clearness he traces the probable growth of the kingly power, till it subdued the Heptarchy, corrupted the old independence of the German freeman, in England subverting it for the time, perhaps on the Continent for ever. Various other subjects, that have more distinctly lain in the way of previous writers, are handled in an original vein, if not with SO much of novelty as those we have indi- cated. In short, the work throughout conveys a clearer idea of the life and character of the Saxons in England than anything we have met with elsewhere.

Tart of the greater fulness and originality of the work is due to the materials which of late years have been rendered accessible to the Anglo-Saxon Inquirer; especially Mr. Thorpe's collection of the " An- cient Laws and Institutes of England," and the "Codex Diplomaticus

*The Saxons in England. A History of the English Commonwealth till the Period df the Norman Conquest. By John Mitchel Kemble, MA., F.C.P.S., &c.tbc. In two 'Volumes. Published by LODVISUI anfiDo. .vi Saxonici," containing upwards of fourteen hundred legal documents relating to the public and private business of the Anglo-Saxons, edited by Mr. Kemble himself. Something also may be due to the form, which deals little with events or individual persons except as illustrations, and not at all with proper narrative. The work consists of a series of essays on particular subjects, descriptive of institutions, classes, and those funda- mental laws which directly influence society. It is divided into two books ; the first relating to the pristine character of the Anglo-Saxons in common with the Teutonic race ; the second to their later condition in England. The mere form of a work, however, cannot affect the fulness of its matter, the soundness of its views, the character of its style, or the spirit which animates it. All that form can do is to facilitate the exhibition of the materials possessed by the author • in most cases, perhaps, the ma- terials, when they are mastered and fused, determine the form. The real merits of The Anglo-Saxons in England are owing to extensive re- search with sustained attention, both among original authorities and the German philological and antiquarian writers a comprehensive know- ledge, which perceives the information contained or merely indicated in passing remarks ; and the logical imagination, which not only brings together such scattered knowledge, but animates it when collected, so as to call up before us not so much the long-forgotten as the hardly-recorded past.

There is some redundancy of detail in merely antiquarian matters; but upon mooted or unknown points extreme fuluess of evidence or ar- gument is an error on the safe side. The most striking fault of the work is a tendency to theorize on the origin of peoples, societies, and institu- tions. As long as any data exist for a speculation, if it be only the fragment of a sentence or even a word, the reader has logical inference which he can bring to some test. Accounts of the primordia of nations —their growth from the family, and the combination of priest and king in the paternal relation—are fanciful hypotheses. And this kind of thing is by no means new. From the time that Locke the Whig op- posed the Tory Filmer, (who traced the principle of divine right and non-resistance up to Adam,) the world has been satiated with lucubra- dons on the "social compact." The mental ferment that was going on under the " earthy " ideas of the last century, till it ended in the French Revolution, speculated on the origin of society among other matters. This yearning after something higher than the cold and selfish feelings around them appeared in various forms. Rousseau and his followers took refuge in savage life ; others traced society upwards to the equality of a golden age, where sickness, animal food, superstition, and tyranny were unknown.

. . . "By Nature crown'd, each patriarch sate King, priest, and parent of his growing state; On him, their second Providence, they hung, Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue." But the world needed not the revival of hypotheses that lead to no- thing; and such form the blot of Mr. Kemble's book, although aptly placed and well done. It is another defect, perhaps, that the decadence and corruption of Anglo-Saxon society are hardly traced at sufficient length. They are felt by Mr. Kemble ; they are stated emphatically in sentences ; but we think an additional essay exhibiting the state of Eng- land in the last decline of the Anglo-Saxon power would have been an improvement.

The work opens with a critical review of the Saxon and Welsh traditions ; blowing aside the poetical stories still embodied in history, and endeavouring to give a more probable form to the Anglo-Saxon settlement in England. The destructive part has been done before ; though Mr. Kemble may impart some additional enforcement. The view of the settlement has to us more novelty. He conceives that it was one of long growth ; commencing under the Roman empire, when Saxon veterans were doubtless settled on lands, while during the same period many peaceable Saxons might immigrate into Britain as colonists or merchants. So that the Saxon settlement was really gradual ; the final weakness of the Britons giving rise to the ascendancy or con- quest of the Saxons. And this opinion (far it is little more) Mr. Kemble might have illustrated by analogies. Our Anglo-Indian empire had a like beginning; but distance, the climate, and various other causes, not the least of which was the temporary object of the adventurers in going thither, prevented a numerous and permanent English settlement. The first North American Colonies furnish a closer case : the chief difference, indeed, may be said to lie in the fewness of the American Indians com- pared with the ancient Britons, and the Americans having "red skins." Perhaps the Danish settlements in Ireland were still nearer in the outset. The annexation of Texas is a case in point, with the original improved upon.

Having eleared the ground, Mr. Kemble investigates those subjects (such as the settlement and holding of land) that gave rise to the parti- cular forms in which society developed itself in Germany and England : be describes the different classes of men in the Teutonic nations—the freeman, the noble, the king, the unfree, the serf; and then expounds the fundamental laws or customs, some of which have perished with the circumstances which produced them, while others survive and in modified forms influence British society. Similar subjects are pursued ha the second book, but in a more distinct or defined form : as the Rights*of Royalty ; the King's Court and Household ; the Ealdorman or Duke ; the Witena-Gemot ; the Towns • the Bishop ; the Clergy and Monks. An idea of Mr. Kemble's mode an treatment will be beat conveyed by the exhibition of some single subject with a few illustrative extracts.

Cassar,t in a passage descriptive of the ancient Germans, mentions their custom of forming their settlements (eivitates) in the depth of woods, and of priding themselves on being surrounded by extensive solitudes. Read by a modern or perhaps by a Roman, the peculiarity, with scone other pecu- liarities of a similar kind, seems a caprice of superstition, or the stupid pride of barbarism, even when we learn that by this means they were more secure from sudden incursions. Mr. Kemble takes the different De Bello .L1b. VI. erip. 23. words in different languages descriptive of the settlement, and, with the aesistance of learned Germans, considers their meaning per se and in conjunction with the context of the passages where the words occur. He then not only clears up Csesar's meaning, but shows that this peculiarity wasthe very foundation of their policy ; that traces of it remained in Ger- many in full vigour till within these few generations, and are not yet ex- tinct; while in England the peculiarity still retains a powerful though indirect influence. The community settled in the centre of the forest because there was their arable land, so much to each freeman (in Eng- land a hide) for the support of his household. In early times, this arable land might be in common, or, as Csesar records, redistributed every year; though there is no dqubt that in time it became hereditary under regula- tion. This boundary was preserved as extensively as possible, not merely for glory, or even security; but because it was the common land of the community. Thither the cattle were driven to pasture and the hogs to mast. This woodland also gave a ready means of providing for an increased population by ploughing up some portion. In England an aggregation of these settlements or "Marks" grew into the Ga or Scir (shire) ; it is more than probable that they were the origin of our manors, possibly of the boundaries of our parishes. The thing as a boundary (finis) remained long after the Norman Conquest, as well as the title of its head or leader, in the Lords of the Marches (of Wales and Scotland). In Germany the system was more extended, and remained longer unchanged ; even to this day a modification of it is probably existing in the Croatian military colonies on the frontiers of Austria and Turkey. Prepared with this outline, the reader can look further into the nature of the thing. "The word Mark has a legal as well as a territorial meaning: it is not only a apace of land, such as has been described, but a member of a state also; in which last sense it represents those who dwell upon the land, in relation to their privileges and rights, both as respects themselves and others. But the word, as applied even to the territory, has a twofold meaning: it is, properly speaking, employed to denote not only the whole district occupied by one small community; but more especially those forests and wastes by which the arable is enclosed, and which separate the possessions of one tribe from those of another. The Mark or boundary pasture-land, and the cultivated space which it surrounds, and which is portioned out to the several members of the community, are inseparable; how- ever different the nature of the property which can be had in them, they are in fact one whole; taken together, they make up the whole territorial possession of the original cognatio, kin, or tribe. The ploughed lands and meadows are guarded by the Mark; and the cultivator ekes out a subsistence, which could hardly be wrung from the small plot he calls his own, by the flesh and other produce of beasts which his sons his dependents or his serfs mast for him in the outlying forests.

"Let us first take into consideration the Mark in its restricted and proper sense of a boundary. Its most general characteristic is, that it should not be distributed in arable, but remain in heath, forest, fen, and pasture. In it the Markman—called in Germany Markgenossen, and perhaps by the Anglo-Saxons Mearcgeneatas—had commonable rights; but there could be no private estate in it, no hid or blot, no laiipov or hceredium. Even if under peculiar circumstances, any markman obtained a right to assart or clear a portion of the forest, the por- tion so subjected to the immediate law of property ceased to be mark. It was undoubtedly under the protection of the gods; and it is probable that within its woods were those sacred shades especially consecrated to the habitation and ser- vice of the deity."

Besides its legal, the Mark had its political and religious sanctions.

"If the nature of an early Teutonic settlement, which has nothing in common with a city, be duly considered, there will appear an obvious necessity for the existence of a mark, and for its being maintained inviolate. Every community not sheltered by walls, or the still firmer defences of public law, must have one, temperate it from neighbours and protect it from rivals; it is like the outer pulp that surrounds and defends the kernel. No matter how small or how large the community,—it may be only a village, even a single household, or a whole state,-- it will still have a Mark, a space or boundary by which its own rights of juris- diction are limited, and the encroachments of others are kept off. The more ex- tensive the community which is interested in the Mark, the more solemn and sacred the formalities by which it is consecrated and defended; but even the boundary of the private man's estate is under the protection of the gods and of the law. Accursed,' in all ages and all legislations, 'is he that removeth his neighbour's landmark.' Even the owner of a private estate is not allowed to build or cultivate to the extremity of his own possession, but must leave a space for eaves. Nor is the general rule abrogated by changes in the original compass of the communities: as smaller districts coalesce and become as it were com- pressed into one body, the smaller and original Marks may become obliterated and converted merely into commons, but the public mark will have been increased upon the new and extended frontier. Villages tenanted by Ifeardingas or IlOdiegas may cease to be separated, but the larger divisions which have grown up by their union, Meanwaras Iliegsetan or Hwiceas will still have a boundary of their own; these again may be lost in the extending circuit of Wessex or Mercia; till, si yet greater obliteration of the Marks having been produced through in- Greasing population, internal conquest, or the ravages of foreign invaders, the great kingdom of England at length arises, having wood and desolate moorland and mountain as its mark against Scots, Cumbrians, and Britons, and the eternal lea itself as a bulwark against Frankish and Frisian pirates. " But although the Mark is waste, it is yet the property of the community: it belongs to the freemen as a whole, riot as a partible possession: it may as little be profaned by the stranger, as the arable land itself which it defends.$ It is under the oafeguard of the public law, long after it has ceased to be under the immediate protection of the gods; it is unsafe, full of danger; death lurks in its eludes and awaits the incautious or hostile visitant: eat sews wt meardond all the markland was

snortre bewunden, with death surrounded, reetiees ffiene the snares of the foes

punishments of- the most frightful character are denounced against him who violates it; and though in historical times these can be only looked upon as corn- minatory and symbolical, it is very possible that they may be the records of sa- vage sacrifices believed due and even offered to the gods of the -violated sanctuary. I can well believe that we too had once our Diana Taurica. The Marks are called accursed,—that is, accursed to man, accursed to him that does not respect their sancity; but they are sacred, for on their maintenance depend the safety of the community, and the service of the deities whom that community honours. And even when the gods have abdicated their ancient power, even to the very last the terrors of superstition come in aid of the enactments of law: the deep forests 't if a stranger come through the wood,be shall blow his horn and shout : this will Its evidence that his intentions are just and peaceful. Butif he attempt to slink through seeret,le may be slain, and shall lie unavenged. Ini. 120.21. Thorpe. i. 114, 116. If the death-blow under such circumstances be publicly avoucbed, his kindred or lord shall not even be allowed to prove that be was not a thief: otherwise, if the man- slaughter be concealed. This raises a presumption in law against the "yea, and the eed man's kindred shall be admitted to their oath that he was guiltless.' and marshes are the abodes of -musters and dragons; wood-spirits bewilder and decoy the wanderer to destruction; the Nicom house by the side of lakes and marshes; Grendel, the man-eater, is a mighty stepper over the mark'; the chosen home of the firedmke is a fen."

This subject might easily be pursued to greater length, and many of the other topics exhibited in a similar way. The essay or chapter on serfdom is particularly tempting, not only for its picture of slavery among our ancestors, but for the suggestions it prompts as to our own rashness in dealing with our colonies. But this question would lead us into another discussion, and occupy too great a length. We must con- fine ourselves to a couple of extracts indicative of Mr. Kemble's descrip- tive manner.

ANGLO-SAXON FAMILY TRADE.

Serfs by force or power are not those comprised in the first class of these divi- sions, or serfs by the fortune of war: these of course have lost their freedom through superior force. But the class under consideration are such as have been reduced to servitude by the legal act of those who had a right to dispose of them; as, for instance, a son or daughter by the act of the father. It is painful to re- cord a fact so abhorrent to our Christian feelings; but there cannot be the least doubt that this right was both admitted and acted upon. The father, upon whose will it literally depended whether his child should live or not, bad a right at a subsequent period to decide whether the lot of that child should be freedom or bondage. Illegitimate children, the offspring of illicit intercourse with his wyln or Iseewen, may have formed the majority of those thus disposed of by a father; but in times of scarcity it is to be feared that even the issue of legitimate marriage was not always spared. The Frisians, when oppiessed by the amount of Boman tribute, sold their wives and children: "Ac primo boves iesos, mox agros, postremo corpora coniugum aut liberorum servitio tradebant." This is, however, an exceptional case; and the sale of wives and children appears only to have been resorted to as a last resource. But the very restriction to the exercise of this right within particular limits of time—which we may believe the merciful intervention of the Church to have brought about—speaks only too plainly for its existenee in England. Even as late as the end of the seventh century, and after Christianity had been established for nearly one hundred years in this country, we find the following very distinct and clear recognitions of the right in books of discipline compiled by two several archbishops for the guidance of their respective clergy. In the Peenitential of Theodor, Archbishop of Canterbury, occurs this passage—" Pater Minns suum septem annorum, necessitate compulsus, potestas tern Imbet traders in servitium; delude, sine voluntate fllii, licentiam tradendi non habet." In the somewhat later Confessionale of Ecgberht, Archbishop of York, we find—" Pater potest filium suum, magna necessitate compulsus, in eervitutem traders, usque ad septimum annum; delude, sine voluntate fill, earn traders non test." It is, however, very remarkable, that in the Pcenitential of the same gbehrt the sale of a child or near relative is put down as an offence punishable by excommunication. These are the serei alterius datione of Henry the First.

CONDITION OF SLAVES IN ENGLAND.

Whatever the origin of serfage may have been, it can hardly be questioned that the lot of the serf was a hard one; and this perhaps not so much from theamountof labour required of him, as from the total irresponsibility of the master, in the eye of the law, as to all dealings between himself and his !mow. The Christian clergy, indeed, did all they could to mitigate its hardships; but when has even Chris- tianity itself been triumphant over the selfishness and the passions of the mass of men? The early pagan Germans, though in general they treated their serfs well, yet sometimes slew them under the influence of unbridled passion: " Ver- berare servum ac vinculis et opere coercere rarum. Occidere solent, non discipline et severitate, sad impetu et ira, ut inimicum, nisi quod impune est." (Taciins.) The Church affixed a special penance to the manslaughter of a woman by her mistress, impetu at ira; an event which probably was not unusual, considering the power of a lord over his isaiwen or female slave, and generally a penance for the slaughter of a serf by his lord without judicial authority. In contemplation of law, in fact, the slave is the absolute property of his lord; a chattel to be disposed of at the lord's pleasure, and having a value only for the benefit of the lord, or of some public authority in his place. The serf cannot re- present himself or others: his interests must be guarded by others, for he himself has no standing in any public court. He is not in any fritborh or association for mutual guarantee; for he has nothing of his own to defend, and no power to de- fend what another has. If he be slain by a stranger, his lord claims the damages and not his children: if the lord himself slay him, it is bat the loss of so much value; a horse, an ox gone, more or less. Out of his death no feud can arise; for the relatives who allowed him to fall into or remain in slavery have renounced the family bond, and forfeited both the wergyld and the mund. If he be guilty of wrong, he cannot make compensation in money or in chattels; for he can have no property of his own save his skin: thus his skin must pay for him, and the lash be his bitter portion. He cannot defend himself by his own oath or the oaths of friends and compurgators, but if accused must submit to the severe, un- certain, and perilous test of the ordeal: and if, when thus hunted down, he be found guilty, severe and ignominious punishment—amounting in a case of theft to death by flogging for men, by burning for women—is reserved for him. Nas turally and originally there can be no limitation in the amount or the character of labour imposed upon him, and no stipulation for reciprocal advantage in the form of protection, food, or shelter. Among the Saxons the witepeow at least appears to have been bound to the soil, adscriptus glebm, conveyed with it under the comprehensive phrase "mid mete and mid maunum"; though in some few cases we can trace a power, vested perhaps only in certain public authorities, of transferring the slave from one estate to another. Last, but most fearful of all, the taint of blood descended to his offspring; and the innocent progeny to the re- motest generations were born to the same miserable fate as bowed dowu the guilty or unfortunate parent.

This account of The Saxons in England will indicate its historical and arclusological value; but these are not its only uses. The lawyer will find in its pages the germs of our common law, especially relating to land; and the ethnologist or political philosopher will meet with much assistance in his inquiries into the early social condition of mankind.