beast, he stretched himself upon the bench again, and closed his eyes once more. After looking at him in silence for some moments, Dennis, who was greatly relieved to find him in this mood, drew the chair towards his rough couch and sat down near him-taking the precaution, however, to keep out of the range of his brawny arm. "Well said, brother; nothing could be better said,» he ventured to observe. We'll eat and drink of the best, and sleep our best, and make the best of it every way. Anything can be got for money. Let's spend it merrily. » 44 Ay, said Hugh, coiling himself into a new position. Why, they took mine from me at the lodge," said Mr. Dennis; but mine's a peculiar case. » Is it? They took mine too.'» Why then, I tell you what, brother, Dennis began. « You must look up your friends My friends! cried Hugh, starting up and resting on his hands. Where are my friends? » " " Your relations then, said Dennis. Ha ha ha!» laughed Hugh, waving one arm above his head. "He talks of friends to me talks of relations to a man whose mother died the death in store for her son, and left him, a hungry brat, without a face he knew in all the world! He talks of this to me! »> Brother, cried the hangman, whose features underwent a sudden change, you don't mean to say I mean to say Hugh interposed, that they hung her up at Tyburn. What was good enough for her, is good enough for me. Let them do the like by me as soon as they please, the sooner the better., Say no more to me. I'm going to sleep. " < But I want to speak to you; I want to hear more about that, said Dennis, changing colour. If you're a wise man," growled Hugh, raising his head to look at him with a savage frown, you'll hold your tongue. I tell you I'm going to sleep. » Dennis venturing to say something more in spite of this caution, the desperate fellow struck at him with all his force; and missing him, lay down again with many muttered oaths and imprecations, and turned his face towards the wall. After two or three ineffectual twitches at his dress, which he was hardy enough to venture upon, nothwithstanding his dangerous humour, Mr. Dennis, who burnt, for reasons of his own, to pursue the conversation, had no alternative but to sit as patiently as he could, waiting his further pleasure. (To be concluded in the next No.) VOL. II. 60 THE PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND: BEING A HISTory of the PEOPLE, AS WELL AS A HISTORY (Concluded from page 390.) The changes in the English social system have been so rapid and so continual, that it would be difficult to point out any space of a generation, since the Conquest, in which some old features had not become obliterated, and new phenomena appeared. Let us pass by more than three centuries and pause for a while at a much later era. The deep wound of the Norman sword has been cicatrized at last; under the adventurous and able Plantagenets-the most king-like of all the royal houses which have flourished in Europe—the nation has been slowly united in one body; foreign wars, with their fellowship of honour and dangers, have drawn the different classes of the people together, and taught each its need of the other; and the unrivalled glories of Cressy and Agincourt have rooted in all hearts the sense of patriotism-a feeling, be it observed in passing, altogether unknown to feudal society. England has greatly increased in wealth, and become a country producing much exportable wealth-rich in wool and cattle: its population, however, has increased very slowly, (') (') That is, according to the estimate of our authors, in which they agree with and its cities are still few and inconsiderable. The towers of the small feudal noblesse, are for the most part dismantled or decaying, and the whole country is reduced under the strong order of the law. The higher lords still construct magnificent castles; but the common baronial fortalice is superseded by the embattled or moated house, the common manorial dwelling of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries-the nursery of many a gallant esquire who fought under the Black Prince or Henry the Fifth. Meanwhile, the two great elements of society, the church and the aristocracy, have advanced in power with ominous rapidity, and stand on the highest elevation which they have ever reached in this country; and each is ripe for destruction. The church has grown in wealth and in rapacity, until-while her outward state is fairer to the eye than at any former period, while she is covering the land with her exquisite architecture, and enrich Turner, Hallam, and others. We subjoin their conjectural statements of the population at different periods. Such guesses cannot of course deserve much reliance; and we might point out some singular inconsistencies For example, the population of Wales in Edward the Third's reign, is guessed at 100,000, (vol. ii. p. 268), yet we are told there were 40,000 Welsh in Edward the First's army at the compaign of Falkirk; and whether we believe this or not. it is certain that Owen Glendower promised to furnish 12,000 Welshmen as his contingent to the confederacy against Henry IV. in 1403; a number altogether impossible out of such a population. We have not room for criticism on this interesting but very conjectural topic; but our own impression is, that the number of the people in the 14th and 15th centuries, is estimated very much too low, and at the Revolution too high. If the sum assumed for the latter period were correct, there would have been no increase at all during the greater part of the 18th century, during which the north of England was covered with new cities. A great deal of unexpected light might be thrown on this subject by the statistical examination of parish registers in towns; as has been done in a very curious paper on those of the parish of Tavistock in Devonshire, in a late number of the Statistical Journal. It exhibits a complete picture of the movement of the population of a country market town, from the reign of Elizabe.h to the present time. ing it by her attention to the arts of life-the enemy has arisen, although still feeble and despicable, who is to lay her splendour in the dust. The nobility are enormously increased in wealth and influence by the extinction of the lesser baronage, and polished by the prevalence of chivalrous manners at once warlike and luxurious beyond example in Europe: but they, also, have attained the limit of their prosperity, and are about to perish by each others' swords, in the very wantonness and plethora of power, in the civil wars of the ' Roses. This is a point of time at which it would be peculiarly interesting to obtain a correct view of the condition of the mass of the people; for they are just about to emerge into the state of the commonalty of the realm. But the materials for this purpose seem peculiarly deficient. Nothing can be less ascertained, in the first place, than the legal relations between the cultivators of the soil and their immediate superiors at this particular juncture. We know, generally, that the reigns of the House of Lancaster were remarkable for a great and continued struggle of the peasantry for emancipation, only beginning with the insurrection of Wat Tyler; and we know that, notwithstanding the bloody suppresion of that revolt, the object was attained. In 1330,' say our authors, the principal demand of the insurgents was the abolition of the 'system of villenage or slavery to any positive political rights, any power of interfering in the making of the laws, or in the regulation of public affairs, they made no claim. In 1450, (the period of Jack Cade's rebellion,) not a word was said on the question of villenage: that question was already settled; villenage was already almost, if not entirely, 'swept away.'-(Vol. II. p. 271.) But in what this change consisted is extremely obscure. Mr Hallam's notion is, that the enfranchised villeins' were altogether an inferior and a different class from the tenants in villenage' whom we have already described as the real kernel of the English rural population from the Saxon time downwards. Our authors view the revolution differently, and their explanation is well worth attention, (vol. i. 886.) But each theory appears to : |