NOTICES OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL PUBLICATIONS. 105 tlian in a battlc-fickl, evidence enabling hiin to correct or to confirm the written records. There are touches in his descriptions which descend ahiiost to the minute accuracy of a i)hotoi,'rai)h, without in the least impairing the broad and bold outlines of his general description. Tliis faculty, employed in his carUer volumes, finds more ample and appropriate scope in the ]jresent pages. Under the Saxon sway counties were named, cities founded, parochial divisions laid down, manorial estates created, and various other subdivisions of the soil, indicative of the ])revalencc of law, order, and the sacred rights of acciniiulated in- dustry, were established, and still, almost unchanged, remain. But, while the Normans meddled but little with these distinctions, or rather employed and confirmed them, sitting, as far as possible in the Saxon seats, to their constructive skill and magnificence are due almost all the earliest material structures, whether cathedrals, castles, churches, monasteries, or even domestic buildings, that we po.ssess. These rose for the most part, even the castles, on the old Saxon sites, and it was their association with these that invested them, even when new, with something of the respect which attaches to antiquity. Thus it came about that, after two or three generations, the Norman Baron became regarded as the representative of the Saxon Thane, his predecessor, and indeed, some- times, in more than a legal sense, his ancestor. It is to these footsteps of the Normans that the attention of the technical antiquary has been largely directed, for their masonry and the details of their architecture and decoration afford far more ample mate- rial for his critical acumen than the simpler earthworks, which arc all, or nearly all, that remain to ns of the works of Celt or Saxon ; though these latter, rightly interrogated, can speak, and in skilfid hands be made to throw light upon much that is recorded in contemporary story. Of all this technical knowledge Mr. Freeman is master ; to its study he has himself largely contributed ; and this it is which gives point and pre- cision to much of the knowledge which he has acquired from his familiarity with English and Norman authors, whose discrepancies he is by this means often able to reconcile or to correct. It is this combination of two very different kinds of research, not hitherto exhibited by any one historian, that has enabled Mr. Freeman to throw himself with so much reality into the details of his work. His thorough knowledge of Saxon and Norman England — of the history of every shire-town, every cathedral, every great castle, has made him able — his sympathy with bold and strong races of men has made him willing — to describe their customs, their conflicts, their religious feelings, the cliaracter of their aggi'cssions and defences, the position of those fortresses ])y which they trusted to maintain their conquests, and the particulars of the churches and religious houses by which they hoped to confirm their sway, and at the same time to mitigate or conceal its harsher features. Mr. Freeman is by no means an unjirejudiced author, but his jire- judiccs are all with the English people. He is neither Saxon nor Norman, and certainly never Celtic, but always English. Ilis sympathies arc ever with that remarkable race that arose out of the fusion of many Teutonic and Scandinavian tribes, deriving from one much of its speech, from another its love of law and order, from another its love of the sea, and which reached a great point in its history when it adopted VOL. XXIX, 1'
