ment, and yet following Parliament as an in- once taken away many difficulties which separable shadow. Setting aside this almost had been brought in the world by nothing forgotten difference, the three elements of else than by their technical lore. A man Kina, Lords, and Commons are now, in their of the tenth or eleventh century would nature, in the mode of their appointment, have seen nothing irregular, nothing in the strict extent of their legal powers, strange, in the great national acts of 1399 not very widely different from what they and of 1688. To him nothing would have were then. The essential difference lies seemed more obvious than, if the King in the gradual change of their practical re- reigned ill, to depose him and to elect anlations to one another. The constitution- other. In electing the new King, it would al changes which have been brought in seem to him the natural course to choose gradually and silently, without any change indeed within the royal family, but, within in the written law, and which still re- that family, freely to choose the candidate main matters of tradition and convention, who promised best. To him it would have are far more and far greater than those seemed an utterly needless refinement to which wree brought in by any formal Act of bring in legal fictions about the King deParliament. And the particular Acts of serting or abdicating a crown which, in Parliament which we now prize as special his view, the nation had given and the nabulwarks of our liberties will be commonly tion could take away. Still less would found to be declaratory and confirmatory he have been troubled with any difficulacts, acts which did not profess to confer ties about the lawfulness of an assembly any new right, but to provide better not summoned by the King's writ, or of an means for the exercise of an old one. In assembly which continued to sit after the the days of Edward the First our chief natural or civil death of the King who had officers, national and local, have already summoned it. He would have held that it come into being with functions not widely different from those which they exercise at present. The main principles of law, as understood by modern lawyers, are already established, and from this time the technical lore of their study becomes of the highest importance. From this date the constitutional historian should be, if not a professional lawyer, at least one as familiar with legal maxims and practice as a professional lawyer can be.

was never so necessary for the great assembly of the nation to be in full power and activity as when the throne was vacant, and when they had to choose a successor. The doctrine that the throne never could be vacant, that the next heir became King, without election or consecration, as soon as the breath had gone out of the body of his predecessor, would have been met by the man of the tenth or eleventh century with a look of simple bewilderment. Now all these new and strange doctrines are simply the figments of lawyers. They are not changes in the constitution brought in by any regular act of the legislature, they are simply inferences, inferences for the most part most logical and most ingenious, which lawyers have made from the arbitrary principles which they have themselves laid down. Now during the time when these princi

In the earlier period all is different. It is perhaps too much to say that Mr. Stubbs derives great advantage from not being a professional lawyer; for we may suppose that a mind so thoroughly historical as his would have triumphed over the temptations of one profession as it certainly has triumphed over the temptations of another. But it is certain that no greater havoc has been wrought among the facts of our early history, ples were really acknowledged, when and the interpretation of our early they really influenced government and laws, than that which has been wrought legislation as they have influenced them by professional lawyers. They come to down to our own day, it is of course the study of our early history with minds necessary thoroughly to understand them full of the rules and principles of later and constantly to bear them in mind. times, and they instinctively apply them But, in dealing with the times before they to times in which those rules and princi- were invented, it is equally necessary to ples had not yet come into being. The put them utterly out of sight. And it is confusions arising from this source have just because professional lawyers, and affected almost every detail of our consti- those who have learned their constitutiontutional history. It is curious to see how, al notions from professional lawyers, find at more than one great crisis of later times, the simpler principles of our forefathers, the application of the law as it stood before lawyers were, would have at

it so hard to put them out of sight that the greater part of the misconceptions of our early history have arisen. To a man like Blackstone, for instance, the arbitrary

rules of the later law had become a sort themselves, connected, as I have said, by of nature. He was altogether incapable what really amounts to a Constitutional of understanding the way in which men History of the time which Mr. Stubbs has thought and acted in the days when there undertaken. And this, be it observed, is was already Law, but when there were as precisely the time during which the great yet no lawyers. Against delusions of this work of Hallam does not reach its full sort there can be no better safeguard than value. A number of documents of the a study of the genuine documents of our highest importance, but which have early history, especially when they are ac- hitherto had to be sought for in many difcompanied and explained by such a narra- ferent works, and several of them works tive commentary as is here given by Mr. not easy to be got at, are here brought Stubbs. In the first part of his book, in together in their proper order and relathe space of fifty-one pages, Mr. Stubbs tion. We have, for instance, the great gives us a Sketch of the Constitutional documents of the reign of Henry the SecHistory of the English Nation down to ond-the reign of which Mr. Stubbs is the reign of Edward I." of which it is so preeminently the master-the Constihardly too much to say that there is not tutions of Clarendon, the Assize of Clarin it a word too much or too little. We endon, the Assize of Northampton, the are hardly so much struck with the range Assize of the Forest, and the famous Diaand depth of Mr. Stubbs' learning, and logus de Scaccario. In the like sort we with the soundness of his critical judg- have the great Charter itself in full, and ment, as we are with the marvellous pow- also the great constitutional documents er and clearness with which he has com- of the reign of Henry the Third. Earlier pressed the contents of many volumes in- and later we have extracts from Cæsar to this small space. Mr. Stubbs too has and Tacitus onwards, from the early Laws, begun and ended at the right places. It from the parts of Domesday which bear is comforting when the first of living his- on legal matters; we have specimens of torical scholars begins a Sketch of the the various writs and forms of summons Constitutional History of the English Na- through the whole time which the collection with the Germania of Tacitus, and tion takes in. In fact all the materials for after touching on the alleged intermixture constitutional study are here brought toof foreign elements with the original Eng-gether, and their true bearing is shown in lish stock, says emphatically –

the narrative by which the documents are himself master of the political, and very connected. If any man wishes to make largely also of the social, progress of our nation during the first eight hundred years of our dwelling in this island, he has here the materials for so doing.

"Were the evidences of intermixture of race much stronger and more general than they are, to the student of constitutional history they are without significance. From the Briton and the Roman of the fifth century we have received nothing. Our whole internal history testifies unmistakably to our inheritance of Teutonic institutions from the first immigrants. The Teutonic element is the paternal element in our sys-phatically in that of Mr. Stubbs, we learn tem, natural and political.”

The words with which the Sketch ends are no less memorable.

"We have thus brought our sketch of Constitutional History to the point of time at which stature. It has not yet learned its strength, the nation may be regarded as reaching its full nor accustomed itself to economize its power. We stop with Edward I. because the machinery is now completed, the people are at full growth. The system is raw and untrained and awkward, but it is complete. The attaining of this point is to be attributed to the defining genius, the political wisdom, and the honesty of Edward I., building on the immemorial foundation of national custom; fitting together all that Henry I. had planned, Henry II. organized, and the heroes of the thirteenth century had inspired with

fresh life and energy."

After the Sketch come the documents

In books like those of Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Haddan, but of course still more em

the real value of historical documents and the real method of their study. We see that Mr. Froude was thoroughly right when he said that the history of England was to be studied in the statute-book, but Ethelberht. In that earliest surviving we see also that the statute-book must be looked on as beginning with the Laws of piece of English legislation we see the King, then as now, summoning his people to his councils, and we see the members of the national Council, then as now, guarded by a special protection during the discharge of their public duties. From this point we can trace straight onwards the constitutional history of our nation, the full growth of onr earliest freedom, its momentary overthrow at the hand of the stranger, its second birth and second growth in a shape better suited to altered

ern nations of the Continent."

times. For this purpose there is nothing | ion to this volume would be a comparative aslike the genuine official records themselves.sortment of corresponding Origines of the But, while we thus learn what our nation- other Constitutions of Europe. This is a branch al records really do prove, we must be- of study without which the student cannot fully ware of trying to make use of them to realize either the peculiar characteristics of his prove what they never can prove. There own national polity, or the deep and wide basis is not indeed, in the times dealt with by which it has in common with those of the modMr. Haddan and Mr. Stubbs, the same temptation to apply records to strange purposes which there is in the sixteenth century. In early times our Kings were a good deal in the habit of praising themselves, but they do not seem to have received so much incense at the hands of the assembled nation as became usual in the more refined days of the Tudors. Yet, on the same principles on which we are called on to believe in the patriotic self-sacrifice of Henry the Eighth, it would not be hard to make out a very good case for King John. And indeed I remember that an ingenious gentleman of Yorkshire did once write a volume in praise of King John, and there is moreover a parish in Landesgemeinden of the free Switzer, to Somerset where the glorious, pious, and immortal memory of that much calumniated sovereign is said to be still celebrated by a yearly feast.

How deep Mr. Stubbs goes for the basis of our own polity we have already seen; for the common basis of all that European nations have in common he must go deeper still. No one is so well fitted as himself to give us a study of comparative polity, worthy to be set beside the studies which other inquirers have given us, of comparative philology, comparative mythology, and comparative culture. But so to do, the inquiry must not be purely Teutonic; it must be Aryan, perhaps more than Aryan. We must go beyond the Witenagemót of England, the Marzfeld of the old Franks, the still abiding

the first glimpse of the Comitia of Rome, to the Ekklesia of democratic Athens, to the Agorê of the old Achaian, and of the Mycel Gemót of Olympos itself, where we see Zeus sitting among his chosen Witan, and calling together the whole assembly — ealle qa landlcode of the divine nation "A more consistent supplement or compan-to share in the counsels of their King.

I have only to hope that a hint thrown out in Mr. Stubbs' Preface may some day become more than a hint.

and climatic conditions of the Karian Sea and the other seas in its vicinity. 6. The boundary of permanent ice on the north-east. 7. The navigation of the mouths of the Siberian rivers. 8. The lighthouses. 9. The fisheries.

Pall Mall.

THE Russian Geographical Society is organ- | coast of Nova Zembla. 5. The geographical izing a scientific expedition to the Polar Sea. The object of the expedition is not only to reach the North Pole, but also to select such a route as will give the best opportunities for studying the geography, climate, and industrial conditions of the Siberian coasts. The icy sea will be thoroughly explored, especially from a scientific and industrial point of view. The course of the Gulf stream will be carefully followed, and observations made for the purpose of discovering the best route from the mouth of the river Obi for exporting the products of Siberia, and of obtaining a complete knowledge of the fauna and flora of those regions. Special attention will also be paid to the fisheries. A preliminary expedition is to be sent out as soon as possible to reconnoitre the seas in the vicinity of Nova Zembla. It is to obtain information on the following subjects: 1. The cold and warm streams between the Murman coast and Nova Zembla. 2. The boundary of the ice in summer, and the depth of the sea at various points. 3. The extent of the Gulf stream, and its destination on meeting wtth the polar ice. 4. The portion of the Gulf stream which skirts thei

GREAT geological changes are reported from the districts adjoining the Caspian Sea and the river Ural. During the last ten years the surface of the water in the river has sunk more than a foot, and many bogs on the North Eastern coast of the Caspian have entirely disappeared. The delta of the Ural has diminished from nineteen to five branches, and whereas it formerly occupied one hundred versts, it now occupies only seven. Many islands have become joined to the mainland, and large sandbanks have been formed at the mouth of the river. The town of Guryer, formerly on the sea coast, is now six versts inland.

Nature.

From The Cornhill Magazine.
FLEUR DE LYS:

A STORY OF THE LATE WAR.

I.

ing the inhabitants to be calm, and not to insult their victors; but his fears on this ground proved unfounded. The crowds stared, but did not seem particularly shocked by what they saw. Perhaps during the first five minutes, whilst the vanguard of Uhlans were filing past, and a band that came behind them played the martial strains of the Wacht am Rhein, a murmur or two might have been heard, and a few French countenances might have been seen to turn pale; but soon this wore off. As regiment after regiment went by, and the crowd grew familiar with the faces of their foes, sensitiveness became blunted. By the end of an hour's time it had almost vanished; and, curiosity being then cloyed, the crowd lapsed into

ONE morning last October the town of O, one of the oldest and most illustrious in France, underwent the humiliation of seeing a foreign army march in triumph through its streets. The event had been foreseen as inevitable more than a month beforehand; but the town was so proud and patriotic, its 'scutcheon was so bright, the roll of its achievements so teemed with great deeds, that honest burghers, who ignored strategy, had been pleased to doubt to the end, half-thinking that some miracle would interpose to save them from such crushing degradation. that state when it needs but a ludicrous But (— was not defensible, as all mili- incident to break the ice and revive that tary men well. knew. The fortifications, natural propensity to be jocular which behind which, four centuries ago, it had lurks within all great concourses of men; stood one of the most memorable sieges and it so chanced that the needed incident in history, had long been demolished; and occurred. At a spot where four roads as no others had been built in their place, met was a plug-hole, which, having been nothing could have come of resistance but somehow widened, formed an insidious bombardment and total ruin. To spare and dangerous foot-trap. Most of the the population these needless sufferings, soldiers, with Teutonic prudence, avoided the French garrison had retreated not, it; but one less wary set his foot in it, indeed, without fighting, for appearance' without looking, and before he could exsake and against double odds, a battle tricate himself was bumped by the man which was hopeless from the first.

behind him, and this second man by a third; so that they all three tripped up and fell with a crash, letting go their rifles, and plunging their entire company into confusion; upon which a delighted titter broke out along the whole line of spectators. Somebody made a joke (rather feeble) about conquerors biting the dust, and the rest laughed at it. This encouraged a second wag, and then another; and from that moment all these Frenchmen stood consoled for the capture of their town, for the requisitions, and for everything else that might happen to them that day, by the thought that three of their vanquishers had made themselves ridiculous. Happy the nation whom such episodes can cheer! The remainder of the marching-past went off gaily enough. The on-lookers criticized with much satisfaction, though in whispers, the cut of their enemies' coats, the poker-like rectitude of their backbones, the absence of pipe-clay on their belts, and, of course, their military tactics, which were generally voted absurd.

And so the Prussians were tramping, with bayonets fixed and helmets glistening, through the narrow streets of the venerable city. The morning was grey and a little misty; a cold, drizzling rain had been falling during the night; and this, taken in connection with the sombre uniforms and travel-stained appearance of the invading troops, the silent throngs of spectators that bordered either side of the roadway, and the mournful notes of the cathedral bell (which happened to be tolling that morning for a funeral service), gave the solemnity much more the character of a burial procession than of a triumphal entry of conquerors. And yet there they were, conquerors notwithstanding, and with all the pride of conquest stamped on their brows. There was no mistaking the dogged but exulting looks, the heavy, resolute tread, and that peculiar grasp of the rifle-stock which speaks of being on the watch and ready to fight again at a moment's notice; nor did the spectators mistake it. Singularly enongh, however, the predominant feeling amongst There was at least one person, however, them was evidently rather one of curiosity among the throng whose sentiments did than of anger. The day before, the Mayor not undergo the same variations of cloud had, in great trouble of mind, covered the and sunshine as those which have just walls of the town with placards, beseech-been noticed, and this was a young and

"Then I will have all those articles sent up to the castle, Monsieur le Duc," said the shopman of the ambulance depôt obsequiously, as he escorted the noble customer and his daughter back to their carriage, after they had remained more than an hour making purchases.

fair-haired girl of twenty. In the morning him. It is superfluous to mention that --some two hours before the Prussian although in the month of October last, entry there had driven into O-- a France was already in the enjoyment of well-appointed carriage, drawn by two Republican institutions, nobody would horses, and bearing an old gentleman and have ventured to address the Duke otherhis daughter. This carriage stopped at a wise than by his title. Thrones might chemist's shop, then at a surgical-bandage fall and constitutions vanish, kings or maker's, and lastly at one of those depôts emperors might be deposed and Frenchwhere all the appurtenances of a private men citizenize one another to their heart's ambulance might be bought -lint, linen, content; but throughout all changes and camp-beds, &c.; and at all these places the chances this nobleman was Duc de Bresold man and the young girl were received sac, and meant to remain so. with marks of almost exaggerated respect. It is true that the carriage displayed a coronet on its panels, which may account, in some way, for this deference; but it is also certain that the young girl was divinely beautiful, and that had she been anybody else but a duke's daughter, it would have made little difference in the amount or in the quality of the homage which men would have strewed upon her path. There are faces towards which all men feel drawn, and whose claims to absolute worship nobody calls in question. Hers was one of them. It was a face that would have made a craven feel chivalrous, and would have spurred a naturally honourable man to deeds of valour or sacrifice such as those of which legends tell. On the other hand, heaven help the man who should fall in love with such a face and not have his love requited! His life would become a torment, for he could never forget those features, with their sweet, grave expression - never!

The Dake a slight, thin-visaged man of about sixty, who walked with a stiff kee and leaned for support on a stickwas essentially a French nobleman of that school who have sent the present age to Coventry. A Legitimist he was; not cynical or morose, but one of those who can feel no sort of sympathy for modern ideas; are intimately persuaded that they will all break down; and, pending this consummation, hold aloof, washing their hands of politics and of everything else which may bring them into active contact with a world which they neither understand nor esteem. One could read his character, his prejudices, his proclivities on his face as in an open book. He was dignified but cold; his manners were marked by the most perfect courtesy, but except when he was talking to persons of his own rank-there was in them just the slightest tincture of sarcasm, as if he were constantly expecting that his interlocutor was going to commit himself to some outrageous proposition, and as if his not doing so were a matter of surprise to

"If you please, M. Galuche," said the Duke, hoisting himself into the carriage by the aid of his stick and his footman's arın.

"And you will try to let us have them as early as possible, M. Galuche," added Mademoiselle de Bressac, in a pleading voice.

"They shall be at the castle as soon as ever the roads are clear, Mademoiselle," answered florid M. Galuche, bowing low; and so saying he drew out his watch.

It is now close upon twelve, Mademoiselle - as the troops are to enter in another half-hour, it would scarcely be safe to send now; the roads must be already blocked."

"But I thought the entry was not to commence till two," exclaimed the Duke in surprise. "I had timed our coming so that we might get all our shopping done, and be back before they came in."

"There was a countermand last night, M. le Duc," replied the shop-keeper, renewing his bows. "The troops were not to have come in till the afternoon. Yesterday we were enjoined to be in readiness to receive them at twelve o'clock."

M. Galuche had no very cogent reasons for detesting the war, for it had developed his particular branch of commerce in a way that was most satisfactory, and commerce was what M. Galuche naturally regarded as the ne plus ultra of man's aims and thoughts here below. Nevertheless, finding himself in the presence of M. de Bressac, whose views were probably not commercial, he felt it binding upon him to show that the ancient patriotism of the citizens of O- had not degenerated in his person, so he pursued with sudden lugubriousness: "Yes, twelve o'clock terrible event this, for our good town of

a