the power of sale, which is by the contract denied to their parents. A man gives to his grandchild that which he denies to his son. This cumbrous process works disadvantageously, and it might very properly be altered by restricting the power of settlement or bequest to living persons, and not allowing it to extend to those who are unborn.

It is not a little curious to note how the ideas of mankind return to their original channels, after having been diverted for centuries. The system of landholding in the most ancient races was communal. That word, and its derivative, communism, has latterly had a bad odour. Yet all the most important public works are communal. All joint-stock companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are communes. They hold property in common, and merge individual in general rights. The possession of land by communes or companies is gradually extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be applied more extensively to landholding.

It may not be unwise to review the grounds that we have been going over, and to glance at the salient points. The ABORIGINAL inhabitants of this island enjoyed the same rights as those in other countries, of possessing themselves of land unowned and unoccupied. The ROMANS conquered, and claimed all the rights the natives possessed, and levied a tribute for the use of the lands. Upon the retirement of the Romans, after an occupancy of about six hundred years, the lands reverted to the aborigines, but they, being unable to defend themselves, invited the SAXONS, the JUTES, and the ANGLES, who reduced them to serfdom, and seized upon the land which they considered belonged to the body of the conquerors, but was allotted to individuals by the Folc-gemot or assembly of the people, and a race of Liberi Homines or freemen arose, who paid no rent, but performed service to the State; during their sway of about six hundred years the institutions changed, and the monarch, as representing the people, claimed the right of granting the possession of land seized for treason by boc or charter. The NORMAN invasion found a

large body of the Saxon landholders in armed opposition to William, and when they were defeated, he seized upon their land and gave it to his followers, and then arose the term terra Regis, "the land of the king," instead of the term folc land, "the land of the people;" but a large portion of the realm remained in the hands of the Liberi Homines or freemen. The Norman barons gave possession of part of their lands to their followers, hence arose the vassals who paid rent to their lord by personal service, while the Freemen held by service to the Crown. In the wars of the PLANTAGENETS the freemen seem to have disappeared, and vassalage was substituted, the principal vassals being freeholders. The descendants of the aborigines regained their freedom. The possession of land was only given for life, and it was preceded by homage to the Crown, fealty to the lord, investiture following the ceremony. The TUDOR sovereigns abolished livery and retainers, but did not secure the rights of the men-at-arms or replace them in their position of freemen. The chief lords converted the payment of rent by service into payment in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the establishment of the poor laws. The STUARTS surrendered the remaining charges upon land; but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion of another, the validity of patents from the Crown became doubtful. The PRESENT system of landholding is the outcome of the Tudor ideas. But the Crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of Edward I., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people, and that individuals hold but do not own it; and upon this sound and legal principle the State takes land from one and gives it to another, compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed.

I have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me most important in tracing the history of LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND, and laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles which underlay them; and I shall have failed in conveying the ideas of my own mind if I have not shown you that at least from the Scandinavian or

Anglo-Saxon invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the people, or the Crown as representing the people, that individual proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant, to the principles of the British Constitution, that the largest estate a subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an owning of the soil; and I cannot conceal from you, the conviction which has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination of the state of proprietary occupants on the Continent, that the best interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which can be attained by the extension of principles of legislation now in active operation. All that is necessary is, to extend the provisions of the Land Clauses Act, which apply to railways and such objects, to tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that Act; to treat their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater production of food as a public outlay; and thus to restore to England a class which corresponds with the Peasant Proprietors of the Continent-the Freemen or Liberi Homines of Anglo-Saxon times, whose rights were solemnly guaranteed by the 55th William I., and whose existence would be the glory of the country and the safeguard of its institutions.

P.S.-Since this paper was read, the Land Act of 1875 has passed. It recognises the difference between land granted by the State, and improvements which represent labour; it asserts the separate estate of each, and abrogates the erroneous maxim, that "what is attached to the freehold belongs to the freehold." Under the old law, it was assumed that all improvements, whether of a permanent or temporary character, belonged to the landlord, but the Act entirely reversed the presumption, thus setting aside one of the prerogatives claimed by the tenant-in-fee, and giving the possessor an estate in the improvements he effected, and restricting the landlord's estate to the lands and the improvements thereon, when the tenancy commenced.

ORIENTATION OF ANCIENT TEMPLES AND

PLACES OF WORSHIP.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES WARREN, R.E.,

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

ON some ancient fragments are represented two or more historical sequences, forming together one picture, such as the scene of the temptation of Eve in conjunction with the expulsion from Paradise; and from these we may obtain an idea as to the tendency and power of the untutored mind to take an instantaneous many-sided view of the subject it contemplates, and it may assist us in realising that though our mental view is more extended and clearer than that of early races, yet it may also be much more limited in lateral range. That the educated mind does not assume power over the exercise of certain faculties, there can be no doubt; for this we have only to look into matters of everyday life: to see the unlettered mechanic guess, or, rather, instinctively calculate, the weight of materials; to hear the shopwoman, innocent of figures, total up her gains and losses, or enumerate her stock-in-trade with a rapidity and with a precision which could not be exceeded if all the appliances of science had been employed. And we again see it in the power which the Indian savage or European trapper possesses in tracking his way through the forest by signs and method of reasoning hardly intelligible to those whose minds are more cultivated.

It would help us much in "the proper study of mankind" if we could accord to the ancient mind credit for possessing certain faculties, matured, which in our own mind have been pressed down and dwarfed by the cultivation of others; if we

could perceive "how apt we all are to look at the manners of ancient times through the false medium of our everyday associations; how difficult we find it to strip our thoughts of their modern garb and to escape from the thick atmosphere of prejudice in which custom and habit have enveloped us; and yet, unless we take a comprehensive, an extended view of the objects of archæological speculation-unless we can look upon ancient customs with the eyes of the ancients, unless we can transport ourselves in the spirit to other lands and other times, and sun ourselves in the clear light of bygone days, all our conception of what was done by the men who have long ceased to be must be dim, uncertain, and unsatisfactory, and all our reproductions as soulless and uninstructive as the scattered fragments of a broken statue" (Niebuhr).

May we not, with this thought in view, allow that there was something more in the old heathen religions than the bare worship of sticks and stones, and while fully believing that the different races became most depraved in their religious ceremonies until

"Egypt chose an onion for a god,"

and without condoning their offences, may we not recognise throughout their degradation a double view of the Supreme Deity, a reverence towards Him as one God and a worship of Him as many, even as it is related of the Hebrews at one time,

"They feared the Lord and served their own gods."

Indeed, if we may not do this, and are to judge the heathen by their language alone, we shall ourselves be liable to the same harsh treatment in after-ages, for do not we, with the utmost sincerity, make use of such terms as Light of Light, Sun of Righteousness:

“Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born,

Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam;"

and again our abhorrence of the powers of darkness: all which might be brought against us as evidence of sun