a very , hunger, that sorely oppressed the earth.' 1098 was 'troublesome year, from the manifold impositions, and from the abundant rains, that ceased not all the year.' It cannot be doubted, that from the Conquest to the reign of Henry II. was a period of distress and misery to the body of the people, such as England has known in no other age: such, probably, as to have produced an evident deterioration in their physical condition. There is a passage in one of Peter of Blois's letters, describing the flourishing appearance in his eyes of the country and people in France, which contrasts curiously with the general tone of travellers from one to the other side of the Channel, and seems to us to indicate the then depressed state of the English. At the same time Feudality established itself in the land: and though the subject be a hackneyed one, we will extract our author's description of what Mr. Guizot calls the 'primitive feudal molecule '-the Baronial castle and family. "The feudal castle, then, usually built in an elevated and isolated situation, and rendered as strong as nature and the art of the time could make it, is inhabited by the owner of the serf, his wife and children; in addition to these, perhaps by a few freemen who have not become proprietors, and, being attached to his person, continue to live with him. Without, close under the walls, is grouped a small population of coloni, or cultivators of the soil. Before the German invasion nothing of the kind existed in the Roman empire. The rich either lived in the cities, or in fine houses agreeably situated near the cities, in rich plains, or on the banks of rivers. Throughout the country were scattered the villa, properly a sort of farm buildings, where lived the slaves or coloni who tilled the soil, hence called villani, villeins. One of the first features which strikes us in the condition of this feudal lord is its isolation. Take any other form of society with which we are acquainted, the purely savage, the nomadic, the Greek and Roman-in all you will find men brought into constant co-operation with their equals. Not so here. The feudal lord is like Robinson Crusoe in the desert island, monarch of all he surveys; for the human beings about the former are as much subjected to his will as the brutes around the latter. To this feature is joined another-idleness, want of occupation, almost unexampled in any other human society; for although the feudal baron is compelled, from time to time, to make great, to make desperate exertions to retain his place in that wild, almost anarchical society in which he lives, yet these exertions are called for at such long and irregular intervals, that they provide him with nothing whatever of the nature of regular occupation. He becomes, therefore, a prey to ennui, to ennui so intolerable, that, cost what it may, he must find an escape from it. And what is the refuge he seeks? The documents that have come down to us from those wild times sufficiently show the nature of it. It consisted in that long 'series of hunting-matches, robberies, and wars, which characterize the middle ages. The Crusades may be considered as one valve by which the pent-up energy escaped-by which the ennui was sought to be dispelled. Two consequences of the above-mentioned features are, first, The strange and savage energy with which individual character is developed, as in the case when man lives alone, given up to the caprices of his imagination and the original tendencies of his nature. Secondly. The very slow progress of civilization-slower than under any other similar circumstances, where a previous advance had been made. 'Yet, at the same time, there existed within those rude and gloomy feudal fortresses, a principle of civilization which has exerted a most powerful influence in modern society. It is well known that the domestic life and condition of women have attained a much higher degree of importance in modern Europe than any where else. Of the causes of the importance of women in modern Europe, the life of the feudal lord in his solitary castle must be considered as one of the principal. In the other nations that have made most advances in civilization-the Greek and Roman-as well those that more resembled in their mode of life the feudal society, the men were too much occupied to devote much time and attention to their wives and children. «Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer'd in exchange Here, on the other hand, the sword was the only, and that not a constant occupation - and, indeed, rather an amusement than an occupation. When the feudal baron returned from any of his wild adventures to his castle, he always found his wife and children there to receive him-almost his only equals, his only intimates. When he left his home, too, in search of adventures, his wife remained mistress of the castle, the representative of her husband, charged in 'his absence with the service and the defence of the fief. Hence the example of displays of courage and dignity which we meet with 'in women of this period, to a greater degree than any where else. Out of this state of things arose the order and spirit of Chivalry, the latter of which has long outlived the former, and has certainly performed no mean and unimportant part in the drama of European civilization. But into this our limits do not permits us to enter into long detail. We shall content ourselves with stating Mr. Guizots, opinion on the subject, which is, that chivalry was not the result of any regular design, but sprang up spontaneously in the interior of the feudal castles, in consequence, on the one hand, of the ancient German customs on the other, of the relations subsisting' between the suzerain and his vassals. Leaving the lordly fortress, let us pause for a moment amongst the population inhabiting the cluster of huts that are closely huddled together under its walls, or at the foot of tho rock or hill on which it is built. It is a common opinion, that the deplorable condition of the agricultural population in the times of which we are writing, dates from the destruction of the Roman empire; that the progressive development of the feudal system plunged them into the state in which we find them from the sixth to the twelfth century. Von Savigny, and after him Mr. Guizot, have completely demonstrated the erroneousness of this opinion, by numerous passages which they have quoted from the Theodosian Code, from the Code and Novels of Justinian; and from the Constitutions of Justinian, and succeeding emperors, they have shown that, at least during the latter periods of the Roman rule, the condition of the tillers of the soil, of the coloni, was almost precisely the same as it was afterwards under the feudal system; that the husbandman or peasant occupied a sort of intermediate position between that of the freeman and that of the personal slave, corresponding exactly to that of the class in the feudal times, described in The language of the English law as villains regardant-that is, annexed to the manor or land, and intermediate between freemen and the class described in English law-language as villains in gross, who were annexed to the person of the lord, and transferable by deed from one owner to another. "There was, however, this difference between the condition of the Roman colonus and that of the feudal villain. The rent which the Roman colonus paid to the proprietor of the soil was a fixed sum, but the tax which he paid to the state was a variable one. When the northern nations came into the Roman possessions they left the coloni pretty much as they were; but from the union of property and sovereignty, which we have already adverted to as a characteristic feature of the feudal system, the state and the owner of the soil were identical. Consequently, the variable sum, which was before in the power of the state, passed to that of the owner; and hence the peculiar relations long subsisting between the feudal lord and the feudal villain. On the one side wickedness, oppression, violence, rapacity; on the other helpless, hapless toil, degradation, and suffering. The priest, another portion of this little society, was not likely, M. Guizot thinks, to be able to exercise much influence between the lord and his villains, although the church exercised a very great influence upon European civilization, but in a general manner.' This is a spirited sketch of the simple elements of feudal life, such as we regard it in the abstract, and such as it actually was, perhaps in France and Germany, in the first period of its development. But it certainly never was realized in England; that is, not to any general extent. Antiquaries, in their zeal for system, appear to us not always to remember how completely the feudal system in England was an importation intruded on another state of society, which it never superseded; with which it very imperfectly mingled; and which it only for a time appeared to overbear. The aggregation of the village round the castle, for instance, may be historically true in many parts of the Continent; it is certainly not so in England. When the land was first covered with the baronial fortresses, in the reign of Stephen, the villages, and even the the hamlets, as we have seen, existed already. The rural population remained under the same laws and institutions, and nearly the same conditions. Probably many more were reduced into actual bondage-partly through the operation of the rural Norman laws, partly through extremity of distress; but there seems no reason for concluding that the body of churls, now become either villains or tenants in villainage, were ever brought into the state of the foreign serf or leibeigener. Meanwhile, the numerous tribe of the small feudal baronage only covered the land for a time, during the Norman era; the tenants of the rock-fortress, the Vavassors, Hobereaux, Robberknights, and so forth, of the Continent-each of whom deemed himself the equal of the monarch, to whom he was only bound by ties of feudal allegiance-were never a class thoroughly naturalized among us. They became the ancestors of, the numerous noblesse of France and Germany; here, they either never took root firmly in the soil, or flourished only when grafted on the robuster stem of the Saxon franklins, the offspring of the wealthier churls. And hence, we suspect, the Old English Gentleman,' whatever may have been the sterling merits of that character, was scantily imbued with that refined spirit of chivalry which was the grace of mediæval civilization. (To be continued.) LONDON FIRES IN 1841. The great destroyer, Fire, has been busily employed in the metropolis during the year just ended, as will appear from the following tabulated epitome of his doings, which shows that, during the year 1841, there were in London and its suburbs 696 fires, viz.:— Number of March..... 63 1 1 10 2 Of these fires, the number wherein the premises were totally destroyed is. : Alarms occasioned by fires in chimneys. 24 Making the total number of calls. 855 The number of instances in which an insurance had been effected on the Building |