our liberties, as did also the form of “petition” first used to obtain a mitigation of burdens, but in course of time becoming an imperative demand for redress of grievances. Favored by the con

great charter forbids the destruction of houses, woods, or men, without the special license of the proprietor, who had full power over the life of Englishmen. It is a great mistake to suppose that the war of the barons against John Lack-tinental wars, which gave an external direction land was waged for the benefit of the subjects, or that the treaty of Runymede secured their liberties. They were never thought of by either party, except as liable to be slaughtered like cattle in the barbarous reprisals which the belligerents made on one another's properties. In the course of the struggle between royalty and feudalism, the king retaliated on the barons, and compelled them to confine themselves to regular taxes-required them to give merchants and others a safe conduct through their territories- encouraged the formation of commercial associations, guilds, &c., and took cities under his protection. In these, a vast number of Saxons took refuge, having escaped from their serfdom. There they learned trades and cultivated the industrial arts. Manufactures were imported from the continent—particularly from Flanders-took root, and flourished. Cities and towns were enlarged, and became influential in proportion to their trade, wealth, and population.

From this growth of population and resources arose a difficulty in applotting the taxes that were required of these communities in order to sustain the common cause of their masters, and to meet the expenses of their foreign wars. In consequence of this difficulty, the cities were compelled to send some of their number to meet the general, his captains, chaplains, and soldiers, assembled in what they called, in their own language, a parliament, that it might be ascertained how much taxation they were able to bear, and that they might answer for its due and peaceable collection. For this purpose they were obliged to sign tax-deeds. In process of time the inferior class of knights and soldiers fell into the same category with the commonalty, and were represented by the same deputies. Such is the origin of the House of Commons. The towns sent deputies with great reluctance. None coveted the honor-we were going to say, of a seat in Parliament — but then they were not allowed to sit. They were required humbly to stand before their masters, to receive orders on financial matters, and to pledge their constituents that the supplies should be forthcoming. The first call of the deputies of boroughs was made by Edward I., in 1295. These were to be provided with "sufficient powers from their community to consent in their name to what he and his council should require of them."

This "consent," however, imperceptibly grew into an important privilege, to which we owe all

to the activity and force of the aristocracy, the power of the Commons steadily advanced. While the feudal nobility was wearing out its energies at a distance, the citizens, working and paying more and more, were more frequently called on to take part in public affairs, it being the interest of their rulers to encourage their rising industry. The naifs or serfs, too, began to obtain some sympathy, and to become instinct with a consciousness of their rights as men and as Christians. Priests and merchants felt for their hard lot. Their cause was forcibly pleaded in numerous pamphlets. Associations were formed in all directions, and 100,000 serfs left the fields and covered the roads towards London, to demand their freedom from the king. Richard II. went out in person to hear their complaints, and graciously granted them charters of enfranchisement. But the barons, alarmed for "the rights of property," under pretence that the young king's life was in danger, collected a body of troops, and falling on the multitude, dispersed them with great slaughter. The proclamation of freedom was revoked-the charters were recalled. "God preserve us"-exclaimed the barons- "from subscribing such charters, though we were all to perish in one day; for we would rather lose our lives than our inheritances!" Things at once returned to the order established at the Conquest. The serfs were again treated according to the spirit of the proclamation which resulted from Richard's second thoughts, which said:

"Villains you were and still are, and in bondage you

shall remain."

But freedom's battle had begun, and though baffled often, it was destined to be won at last. The spirit of justice was gaining ground. Christianity, working like a living stream through impurest elements, brought its cleansing influence to bear on society, slowly, but surely. In hours of grief and sickness,—in the anticipated shadows of death, revealing other "worlds of light," which the sun of earthly prosperity obscures, men repented of their property in man. This feeling often found expression during the 14th century, in deeds of manumission, couched in terms like the following:-"Seeing that in the beginning God made all men by nature free, and that afterwards the law of nations placed certain of them under the yoke of servitude, we think it would be pious and meritorious in the sight of God to liberate such persons, to us sub

ject in villanage, and to free them entirely from | Normandy from the English crown.
such services. Know then that we have freed
and liberated from all yoke of servitude

our knaves of the manor of them, and all their children, born and to be born." The current use, perpetuated to our own times, of these words, "knave” and “ villain,” indicates clearly enough in what estimation these poor laborers were held, though many of them were the offspring of wealthy nobles, and all of them descended from a race of conquering freemen, the bravest of the Teutonic stock-the richest outburst from the "store-house of nations." The work of emancipation, however, went steadily forward, hastened by the better appreciation of free labor. It was soon found better to have farmers, paying steady rents, than to have the ground occupied by slaves, doing, like all other slaves, as little work as possible, since they labored without hope or reward, languishing under a degrading and demoralizing yoke. When interest chimes in with freedom, they will soon ring the knell of tyranny and monopoly.

About this time Parliament divided into two houses. In the lower, the feudal tenants of Norman race, and the petty proprietors, were associated with the Saxon citizens-the representatives of commerce. This tended greatly to do away with the distinctions of race, and to generate in the Commons a national feeling, which was strengthened in the Normans by the fondness of the king for the society of foreigners, whom he enriched and ennobled, to the great mortification of the older settlers. The rapid extension of commercial affairs in the 15th century naturally increased the parliamentary importance of the burgesses, who were far more au fuit in financial matters than the sporting knights of the shire in the same House. The revolution thus wrought by the general progress of manufactures and commerce speedily led to another equally memorable, the triumph of the English language over the Norman French, which was banished from the House of Commons.

At the end of the 14th century French was still the official language of England—the language of all the higher classes. It was spoken by the king, the bishops, the judges, by all the aristocracy and gentils hommes. It was the language taught their children as soon as they could speak, while the Saxon tongue occupied the degraded position of the Gaelic of Ireland in more modern times. But this court language was bad French, vitiated by the peculiar dialect of Normandy, and tinctured with an English

But

At the same time the vigorous growth of a native literature favored the English, which was permitted, not ordered, to be used in pleadings before the civil courts, by a statute of Edward III. the lawyers continued to interlard their speech with French phrases for a long time after. From the year 1400, or thereabouts, the public acts were drawn up alternately and indifferently in French and English. The first bill of the Lower House of Parliament that was written in the English language bears the date of 1425. From the year 1450 no more French pieces are to be found in the printed collections of the public documents of England. Thus, four centuries after the conquest of England by the Normans, their language disappeared, together with the inequality of civil condition, which separated the families that had sprung from the two races, or rather two tribes of the same blood. The reign of Henry VII. may be considered as the period when the distribution of ranks ceased to correspond in a general manner with that of races, and as the commencement of the state of society now existing in England. It was COMMERCE that conquered the Conquest, and gave to English nationality the noblest of modern languages. It is true this victory has been slowly acquired, remaining for centuries incomplete, until its last decisive blows have been given in the Reform Bill of 1832, and the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846.

On the domestic manners and morals of the Anglo-Normans, the work before us does not throw as much light as we could wish, though highly valuable to the students of literary history and philology, on account of the great learning and research which it displays, and for which the fact, that it is published under the auspices of the Royal Society of Literature, is a sufficient guarantee. Had it, however, been made to convey livelier pictures of society, and had the Norman French and Mediaeval Latin been translated, the labors of the accomplished author would have been much more acceptable to the general reader. But the volume of Letters illustrating the Anglo-Norman period, promised, in the same series, by Dr. Giles, is likely to supply this deficiency.

In such a state of society, it was to be expected that the manners of those ages would be very corrupt. Something must be allowed for the exaggerations and poetical license of satirists. But when we find their works maintaining a great and long-continued popularity, we must admit the general verisimilitude of their pictures of life. Those pictures are not flattering. The Anglo-Normans were great lovers of pleasure, in the pursuit of which they allowed themselves

unbounded license. They were fond of the esteemed that it was made the subject of learned chase, and of all sorts of manly sports. In their commentaries.-(Biographia, i., 250.)

convivial meetings they keenly discussed the merits of the viands, which they consumed with admirable goût. "The wines were the subject of no less anxious discussion than the meats, and were the cause of still greater excesses, in which the natives of our island are more especially accused of indulging. The schools were filled with pride and vanity. The rich squandered their money on base jonglours and minstrels, instead of applying it to the encouragement of true learning and merit. The ambition and cupidity of barons and prelates filled the land with strife and confusion." Such is the representation given by John de Hautville, whose poem had a great circulation in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and was so highly

Grievous faults there are in our present social system; but no one who has read history, and possesses a grain of sober reason or candor, can deny that it is incomparably purer and better than it was in the Middle Ages. None but the most diseased enthusiast can wish the institutions of those ages to return. The spirit of those institutions has been inveterately inimical to the best interests of man. Against that spirit the progress of the nation in freedom, intelligence, and wealth, has been a deadly contest: and to the laws and habits established by the AngloNorman conquest may be distinctly traced every thing in our civil polity which militates against the peace and prosperity of British society at the present time.-North British Review.

LITERATURE OF FRANCE AND GERMANY.

of slashing or sneering criticism,—is the impracticable vis inertia of a public who have ceased to be amused, and will not buy.

The literature of France begins to exhibit the conclusions of criticism. Monsieur Eugene cheering symptoms of returning health. The Sue has tried with even worse success than M. quotidian fever of the Roman feuilleton is evi- Dumas, the fortune of legal warfare. It has been dently on the decline; and there is good reason established in evidence that his "Martin" does to hope, that, ere long, it will become extinct, or not pay. Unhappy Monsieur Sue! Why did at least cease to be epidemic, and figure only he venture into court? What infatuation promptamong the sporadic items in the literary bills of ed him to let that damning fact be recorded and mortality. The disclosures made on the recent blazoned to the world? Fatal, irrevocable doom trials, in which Messrs. Dumas and Sue were of the Roman feuilleton! Worse than the lassiparties, have damaged not only their personal tude of the brain-sucked author writing despereputation, but in no less a degree the commer-rately to order,—worse than the utmost malignity cial character of their manufactures. In spite of his numerous and well-organized staff of journeymen, in spite of the exceeding cleverness, fertility, and energy, of the great master-manufacturer himself, who has accomplished, in the way of his trade, as he tells the world with becoming pride, "what no man ever did before, and no man will ever do again," in spite of all the unparalleled resources of the Dumas atelier, not to mention the relays of three horses always saddled and bridled, and three jockeys, always booted and spurred, ready to glut the presses of the capital with copy; notwithstanding all this, the great contractor has broken down under the weight of his engagements. He has been forced to confess that literary fiction cannot be turned out of hand, in as rapid abundance as cotton cloth, and that not even to him, unique among men, is granted the gift of unlimited production and unfailing success. Now, the system of the Roman feuilleton pre-supposes these two impossible conditions. Criticism had demonstrated that truth, and now experience has fully ratified

Among the re-publications now in progress in Paris, two are deserving of special notice. These are the collected works of Chateaubriand, and an illustrated edition of Béranger, with entirely new designs by Charlet, Johannot, and others, and eight new chansons by the inimitable author. Two or three of the latter have appeared, and have acquired instantaneous and sterling popularity, particularly that one entitled "Notre Coq." We can only make room for three of the fourteen stanzas of which it consists; but these will afford no inadequate idea (ex pede Herculem) of the saucy military humor and admirable art of the whole composition. We cannot applaud either the religious notions of "Our Cock," who we fear has learned his theology in a bad school, or the moral of his song, which is a plain incentive to war; but we must make allowance for the force of habit in an old campaigner. The chanson begins thus: