If we ascend a hill, the Domesday map of the country lies spread before the eye. We see the divisions of the oxgangs tilled by the villans; here was the Domesday pratum, there was the pastura; this was the Infield, yonder was the Outfield. We look down upon the village, and see the mill, and the hall, and the church, and the messuages of the villagers, each with a long narrow strip of croft behind it, and the cots of the bordarii, with their acre or half-acre tofts, the buildings retaining the same sites and the crofts preserving the same boundaries as they had eight hundred years agoa truly marvellous illustration of the immobile conservatism of English village life.

On my own glebe I have garths and closes representing the very oxgangs which before the Conquest must have been held by my predecessors. The rigs are about two rods broad and a furlong in length, being thus half-acres. A neighbouring rector retains as his glebe the half carucate of four oxgangs with which his Church was originally endowed, and he also holds the four oxgates of pasture which maintained the four oxen who tilled his four oxgangs in the common arable fields. He also possesses an acre allotted to him in lieu of the right of tethering two horses on the balks and "marstalls" of the common field, one horse, as an Elizabethan document recites, to each two oxgangs. In the next parish the enclosure took place by mutual consent of the freeholders and copyholders more than three hundred years ago, and the names of the common fields, East Field, Middle Field, and West Field, preserved in ancient documents, are now forgotten, but a right of way, called the East Balk, still remains. It was the East Balk of the West Field, a long ridge of turf, representing the headlands dividing the West Field from the Middle Field, as is shown by the fact that the rigs on one side run north and south, and on the other side east and west.

In my own parish there are several field names of historic interest. A paddock called Mill Garth preserves the memory of one of the two Domesday Mills, and a garden which goes by the name of the Chapel Garth, shows the site of a pre-Reformation chantry. A meadow which bears the name of Kirk Hill marks the position of the church mentioned in Domesday, and though this church was pulled down more than seven centuries ago, the name still holds in its tenacious grasp the memory of the ancient site. The cruciform trench which marks the position of the nave and transepts shows it was only a tiny edifice, though amply sufficient for the needs of the lord, the two millers, the nine sokemen, the twelve villans, and the nine cottiers, whom it served.

Another field, called Gallows Hill, formerly a part of the open wold, marks the conspicuous spot, visible to all the country round, where malefactors met their doom, and I still pay year by year the

sum of 58. 8d. to the legal representatives of the Provost of St. John of Beverley for his services in correcting the villans of the parish. Close to Kirk Hill, where stood the Domesday church, is a farmhouse called Belmanoir, which marks the spot where the Norman lord had his hall, removed, not long after the Conquest, together with the church, to a more sheltered site. Belmanoir Farm is part of a tract of several hundred acres, now divided into numerous enclosures, which goes by the name of the "Hall Field." It represents the demesne land of the lord, tilled by his four ploughs and the oxen of his villans. It may be noted that one mill belonged to the lord, and the other collectively to the sokemen, who were thus free from paying multure to the lord.

The township consisted of two Domesday manors, Buckton and Settrington. The name of the first is only preserved by a meadow called Buckton Holms, near the site of the old church and hall. Before the Conquest, both manors were held by Thorbrand, a man of Scandinavian race, as his name, "The Sword of Thor," plainly indicates. Doubtless he fell fighting for his home at Stamford Bridgead pontem Belli-and his twelve broad manors had passed, when Domesday was compiled, to another full-blooded Northman, Berengar de Todeni (Thosney on the Seine), a descendant of Rolf Gangr, and a nephew of Ralph de Todeni, the hereditary Standard Bearer of Normandy, who presumably bore the two leopards at Senlac. Berengar's lands afterwards passed away to a younger branch of the Bygods, Earls of Norfolk, whose descendant, five centuries later, a zealot for the faith of his forefathers, planned the Pilgrimage of Grace, and perished on the scaffold.

I have tried to draw a picture of old English life, more especially with reference to the Domesday survivals, in a single Yorkshire parish and its neighbourhood. I hope I may induce others to attempt the same task for their own parishes. The work of tracing out the details of the Domesday record on the spot will be found to add a world of interest to every country walk, while independent investigations by persons possessed of local knowledge can hardly fail to throw fresh light on a Book which forms one of our most precious national possessions, a unique treasure, the like of which no other land can show.

ISAAC TAYLOR.

CONTEMPORARY RECORDS.

I.-FICTION.

THE historian of literature in the last half of the nineteenth century will be driven to take note, in many different directions, of the influence of growing democracy. The many rule in everything; their tastes have become the canons of art, their opinions the standards of truth, their needs the rule of action. Their influence is deeply felt in the domain of fiction. The many, sad as the fact may be felt, read nothing but novels, and, now that they are all-important, those who have anything to say naturally write novels. A great painter of our day was once heard to express his regret that his fellow-workers, confusing the aim of literature and painting, more and more made it their aim to give their pictures the interest of narrative. The many never greatly care for a picture which does not tell a story; but this, he thought, was just what no picture should undertake to do; and some writers as much forsake their own ground in making the attempt, as do all painters. The essayist should not address the audience which thirsts for fiction. We make the criticism with some reluctance, because we confess that it is the novel which appears at the essay end of the spectrum which seems to us the most interesting; but we cannot deny that a work of fiction should keep well within the range of colour, and that when it encroaches on the chemical rays (by which we may fitly symbolize the philosophy of life), the novel is lost. We fear this will be the popular verdict on Mr. Mallock's work, the greater part of which we have read with interest; but it has never been our lot to meet the essayist in a more transparent disguise. Those who did not bargain for a few hours in his company will feel themselves, we fear, sadly cheated; while those who, like ourselves, are delighted to meet him, will resent the invasion of irrelevant interest necessary to carry on the masquerade. There is something deadening to interest in wondering, as we turn the page, whether we are coming to anything of the nature of a plot, and doubting whether some remark is meant to set forth a truth or illustrate a character. We fancy the story has suffered from appearing in a serial form-a view of that criminal method of publication which we lose no opportunity of enforcing. The Socialist discussion strikes us as really interesting, and Mr. Mallock has not fallen into the common error of stating the case he disapproves at its weakest. But, indeed, we have no right to say that Mr. Mallock disapproves of Socialism. The sermon of his Catholic priest has many passages of a noble form of Christian Socialism, and throughout the novel there glimmers an ideal of that mystic union of each with all to

* "The Old Order Changes," by W. H. Mallock. Richard Bentley & Son.

which the belief in a Divine Son of Man gives the most adequate expression, and which only needs an expression more fused in the narrative to give every picture of human life its deepest interest.

was a

The same want of distinctness will be felt in the novel to which readers have been looking forward most eagerly, and which they will be apt to lay down with the same kind of dissatisfaction.* Mr. Shorthouse has taught us to form about any work from his pen expectations which it is not easy to satisfy. "John Inglesant novel that stood alone. It was the first, since George Eliot's novels became a ground of conventional admiration, which showed perfect independence of the spell she has cast over so many writers; while it was also the only historical novel we can call to mind which did not make the reader sigh for the magic of Scott; it combined something of the charm of a picture of the past with something of the interest of the problems of the present; it stirred deep thoughts and showed bright pictures. And its successor, though so slight, showed in addition some power, as it seemed to us, of a different kind. We looked eagerly for a third work from the same hand, and there is no denying that it is a little disappointing. The author has made two mistakes, under which his powers work at a disadvantage; he has chosen to speak as a woman, and to paint the present. The first mistake is obvious. An imaginary autobiography should always be true to the actual sex of the writer. Female authors often offend in this respect; but Defoe's "Moll Flanders," if we remember aright, is the only novel in which a man has attempted to speak as a woman. We beg Mr. Shorthouse's pardon for mentioning his heroine in such company, and hasten to assure him that, except in her over-readiness to take the public into her confidence, we find no lack of feminine qualities in her; indeed his treble seems to us a little overdone, and sometimes the falsetto becomes tiresome. This is the natural result of such a mistake; each sex, in such circumstances, exaggerates the characteristics of the other. However, autobiography would in any case have been an unsuitable form for the history of Constance Lisle. Miss Bronté rightly chooses that way of expressing herself; her narrations are all confidences; the sense of a vivid, intense personality is forced upon us as in real life we only feel it in close intimacy; and at that focus unreserve becomes natural. But whoever desires to paint a picture of which the main impression is meant to be womanly softness should never let his heroine tell us anything about herself of which such a woman could not inform an acquaintance. The heroine of Miss Austen's "Persuasion," to whom, we are told, there was a striking likeness in the heroine of Sir Perceval, could never have written down the story of her love, especially if, as in the case before us, it was love unrequited. Unreserve is a characteristic of our day, and Mr. Shorthouse, in this case as in that of sex, seems to us to have exaggerated the side of life with which he is unfamiliar. He is not really at home in this Victorian era. The chief part of Sir Perceval is in tone historical. There is a certain dignity of phrase and elaborateness of description which, appropriate to a record of the past, seem stilted and pompous where all the accessories are familiar. The reader feels throughout, in regard to the manner of the narra

* "Sir Percival." By J. H. Shorthouse. Macmillan & Co.

tive, something of the sense of anachronism at its height in one passage, where a guest, at some festivity of about 1830, wears tights and ruffles to his shirt sleeves. In a picture of the past, it would be of very little importance to dress the sons in the costume of the fathers, but in a period within living memory the little slip becomes conspicuous. Or to turn to weightier matters, Mr. Shorthouse must surely know that people of quality do not, in real life, speak of themselves as "nobles," but he loses sight of the oddity of this dialect in the fact that it corresponds to a state of feeling which once actually existed; he is returning in thought to a time when the division of noble and roturier was a salient fact, present to the mind of every one without any association of vulgarity; and he forgets that this is no longer true. But we must not let our notice of a work inspired by a noble ideal, consist entirely of fault-finding. The book has a charm which it is not very easy to describe, an atmosphere of luminous purity seems to pervade it; and then again it has a high moral purpose, and breathes a spirit of broad Catholic faith. If it be objected that this is not enough to set up a novel, we would urge that a book which gives us this has some great merit, however we label it. Like everything else in the tale this moral aim is a little indistinct. An interesting letter in the Spectator for November 13, suggests an interpretation with which the associations of the title are fully in harmony; the two heroines, according to this view, are meant to symbolize the faith of the past which the hero deserts for "far the more attractive" belief in "Socialism, idealism, and artistic allurements," but to which he strives to return, and which dawns upon him in the hour of death. We do not agree with the editorial criticism on that letter, that allegory is bad art; all the most impressive art appears to us to bear some relation to what may be called allegory, but if Mr. Shorthouse had this meaning he would surely have made his Socialist heroine less noble a character, and not have contrasted her heroic death with the life of a lady who seems to do nothing more difficult or arduous than go regularly to church. To us the moral intention would rather appear to represent the meaning of the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me." Christianity so we imagine Mr. Shorthouse to translate his narrative into dogma-is present wherever man dies for man, and the atheistic girl who throws away her bright young life rather than let an old woman die untended in a cottage, confesses Christ in deed far more emphatically than she can deny him in word; while the fact that her lover makes a similar sacrifice seems to set a seal on their union, and justify the instinct by which the Christian heroine refuses to come between them, even though Sir Percival fancies his love for her the more real. But it is possible that these interpretations are not really so incompatible as they appear.

If these considerations take too stern an aspect to be appropriate in a review of fiction, the reader will find it a welcome change to turn to the last work of Mr. Henry James.* He at least cannot be accused of trying to make a single reader wiser or better by his writings. He copies more or less the world as it is, and recognizes the existence of philanthropic endeavour as a taste of the day; but he is far too dainty an artist to allow himself to be "earnest" about that or anything else. There "The Princess Casamassima," by Henry James. Macmillan & Co.