Doniol: Serfs et Vi/aius 355 the fighting Veneti had set up their infant republic ; George Washington had just ceased to be President of the United States, when that Republic was extinguished : between thtsu' two events there stretches more than thirteen hundred years of Venetian history. WlM.IAM ROSLdF. ThAVKR. Se)fs et Vilains an Jlon'/i .Igi-. Par Henki Doniol. (Paris : Al- phonse Picard ct Fils. 1900. Pp. vi, 299.) The End of I'ii/aiiurgc in England. By Thomas Walker Page, Ph.D. (New York : The Macmillan Co. Published for the American Economic Association. 1900. Pp. 99.) Al(5Ng with the many new works that have been produced recently as a result of the deeper interest that has grown up in the condition of the mass of the people in past times, appears this work by M. Doniol enunciating his views on medieval servitude and its disappearance. It is professedly but a restatement of conclusions reached and published more than forty years ago in his Histoire des Classes Runiles en France. Indeed it bears only too clearly the marks of the historical work of that period. Few specific references are given for his statements. Indeed he deprecates exclusive reliance upon authorities, and repeatedly enforces the claims of the "probability of things," "induction based upon prob- ability," and "universal acceptance." His practice follows this theory. For example he says : " If we go back in thought to the tribe we can see (juite evidently how the different modes of subjection established them- selves ;" and then proceeds to draw a picture, quite fanciful so far as any records of the past show, of the origination of two forms of servitude. For better or for worse, methods of historical investigation and exposi- tion have changed greatly during the half-century between M. Doniol's earlier and later work. But even undeveloped methods in the hands of a master may produce results of the greatest importance, and M. Doniol is one of the greatest of French historians. Such a statement of his conclusions as this cannot therefore be without interest and value. His book is practically a study of the distinction between villains and serfs in medieval France, and of the enfranchisement of the latter class. Redraws the clearest line of distinc- tion between the two classes. Villains were free, serfs not free. The villain was a subject to be taxed, the serf an article of possession. Vil- lainage was the result of the possession of political rights by feudal lords, serfdom of their possession of lands to be worked. Villains were the subjects of the lordship, serfs its servants. M. Doniol devotes the greater part of his work to a description of the position of these two classes, respectively. The serfs he treats as a com- paratively homogeneous body. The class of villains is defined much more widely, including persons described by many different names in the documents, and possessing many different characteristics. Even the townsman, the merchant, and the handicraftsman of the early Middle Ages appear in this category.
