REVIEWS. 365 an artistically balanced picture of English mediaeval law will come ; it has not come yet." As regards this limitation to the period of Edward I., we may accept the reasons for ending the present book at that point without excusing our authors from carrying on the work thus admirably begun. They must not stop here forever. The body of the History is in two Books, the first of which, in six chapters and about two hundred pages, gives "a sketch of early English history, " including brief accounts of Anglo-Saxon and Norman law, of England under the Norman Kings, of Roman and Canon law, of the age of Glanvill and the age of Bracton. And then, at the end of this Book, the authors intimate what is to come by saying that " now having brought down our general sketch of the growth of English law to the accession of Edward I., ' the English Justinian,' we may turn to an examination of its rules and doctrines as we find them in the age of Glanvill and the age of Bracton." The second Book, which begins at page 207 of the first volume, then comes back and takes up the body of English law for more particular scrutiny. The scheme of this part of the work, under the general tide of "The Doctrines of English Law in the Early Middle Ages," will be best stated in the authors' words : " As regards the law of the feudal time we can hardly do wrong in turning to the law of land tenure as being its most elementary part. -We shall begin therefore by speaking of land tenure, but in the first instance we shall have regard to what we may call its public side ; its private side we may for a while post- pone, though we must not forget that this distinction between the two sides of property law is one that we make for our own convenience, not one that is imposed upon us by our authorities. From land tenure we shall pass to consider the law of personal condition. The transition will be an easy one, for the broadest distinction between classes of men that will come before us, the distinction between free men and men who are not free, is intricately connected with land tenure, in so much that the same word villeiiagium is currently used to denote both a personal status and a mode of tenure. Then we shall turn to the law of jurisdiction, for this again we shall find to be intertwined with the land law ; and along with the law of jurisdiction we must examine the * communities of the land.' Having dealt with these topics, we shall, it is hoped, have said enough of political structure and public affairs, for those matters which are adequately discussed by historians of our constitution we shall avoid. Turning then to the more private branches of our law, we shall take as our chief rubrics 'Ownership and Possession,* * Contract,* 'Inheritance,* and ' Family Law,' while our last two chapters will be devoted, the one to * Crime and Tort,' the other to ' Procedure.' We are well aware that this arrangement may look grotesque to modern eyes ; since, for example, it thrusts the law of persons into the middle of the law of property. Our defence must be, that after many experiments we have planned this idn- erary as that which will demand of us the least amount of repetition and anticipation, and therefore enable us to say most in the fewest words. We shall speak for the more part of the law as it stood in the period that lies between 1154 and 1272. This will not prevent us from making occa- sional excursions into earlier or later times when to do so seems advisa- ble, nor from looking now and again at foreign countries ; but with the age of Glanvill and the age of Bracton we shall be primarily concerned.
