CURRENT LITERATURE..
A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH RURAL LITE.
A Short History of English Rural Life. By Montague Foidham. (Allen and Uawin. 3s. Od. net.)--This attempt to reconstruct village life in Anglo-Saxon days, and to trace its changes down to NI& has some delightful antiquarian features, and shows that it is possible, only just possible for Mr. Fordham, to combine the roles of la:ardor lemporis adi and of a progressive Liberal who wants to blues recent efforts to reform rural life and economy by Aets of Parliament. Ho is certainly most at his ease and will afford most pleasure where he writes-as an antiquarian. When he gets to the nineteenth century he becomes more sketchy. Such a momentous event as the Poor Law Amendment Act . does not assume anything like its due importance in the perspective,- but • we are grateful for his paragraphs upon the roads. Mr. Fordhans evidently thinks that the peasant was better off in the picturesque days.
to the Comma of tie Britlab." • Bizahainci= 11.111:g;
Society for Lat. Ltx.
of " status " than under the system of " contract," which was becoming in Tudor times the rule instead of the exception. To be adscriptus. glebae and to pay the taxes of the country without a voice in its govern- ment appear to him lesser evils than to lose a customary claim upon some strip of unfenced, undrained land in a spot that the peasant did not choose for himself. And very likely most of the peasants, having little imagination, would have thought likewise. Those who find happiness in a vote or in liberty to starve or to rise in life are only the few visionaries who make for progress. Mr. Fordham gives an excellent and carefully studied presentment of " the good old days " which were thankfully left behind, even at the cost of the degradation and misery of the labourer, a century ago. He seems ungenerous to the post-Reformation clergy, but otherwise most fair in his judgments. For instance, he hates the whole system of enclosure and the injustice with which it was carried out, but ho writes of it as " improving the conditions under which agriculture was carried on," and practically admits that it was necessary. He has gone to good authorities, such as Arthur Young and Professor Vinogradoff.
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