There is nothing more beneficial to the philosophy of human thought than the scientific study of human institutions. To know how man's thought has grown to what it now is from the rudest atom of intellect must be a contemplation worthy of the greatest consideration, and that by the greatest minds. It is only of late years that it has been at all possible to penetrate into the reality of primordial society, whatever might have been the extent of its mythical existence; and this has been accomplished by the great inductive sciences. Comparative philology has led the van, and shown the track; it only remains for comparative jurisprudence to hesitate no longer on the threshold of its existence, but to follow up these indications, thereby bringing us nearer to our primeval ancestors, in thought as well as history; and, consequently, nearer to ourselves.

From the commencement of the reign of Queen Elizabeth down to the middle of the last century, several members of the Foxe family, descendants of the great martyrologist, resided in the parish of Waltham Holy Cross. And it is asserted by several local writers that the justly celebrated John Foxe himself resided in this ancient town, where he uninterruptedly pursued his literary labours during the early part of the latter half of the sixteenth century. Tradition even points to the house in “Sun Street,” then called “East Street” in which he compiled the “Book of Martyrs.” Some have supposed that John Foxe visited the house of Mr. Cressey in the Romeland with Stephen Gardner and Henry the Eighth to consult about the king's divorce from Catherine of Arragon, but that is a mistake which the writer has pleasure in correcting. It was Dr. Edward Fox (afterwards Bishop of Hereford) that figured in that scene, and not the martyrologist.

In the series of papers on “Domestic Every-day Life, and Manners and Customs in the Ancient World,” which I have had the pleasure of reading before this Society, I endeavoured to afford an insight into the mode of living among the people of the nations of old, more especially the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Jews, commencing with those of which we have the earliest authentic records, and carrying the account down to the period when Roman civilization arrived at the highest state of perfection which it ever reached. I described to you “the style of dress of the people, their cities and houses, the furniture which they used, their mode of taking their meals, their different kinds of amusements, their method of travelling both by land and water, their professional and commercial pursuits and occupations, their arts and manufactures, their way of carrying on war, their religious rites and ceremonies, and their funeral solemnities.” In affording this account I availed myself of the records of various kinds which the people of these several nations have left behind them, including not only the productions of their historians, but the various national monuments which yet remain, the works of art that have been preserved, the relics of ornaments and articles of domestic use that have been discovered, and the relics of their cities and buildings which have survived the shocks of time.

“Generalizations drawn from particulars are the jewels of knowledge, comprehending great store in a little room,” says the immortal Locke. The more I see of our learned societies, the more I study the curricula of our different schools and educational establishments, the more thoroughly am I convinced that we persistently neglect the study of general history from a higher and a philosophical point of view; in fact, we appear scarcely to have attained the faculty to distinguish between geography, archology, genealogy, biography, ethnology, chronicles, heraldry, statistical reports, numismatics, and extracts from registers. We call everything that has happened history, and consider an old civic record, as devoid of influence on the destinies of humanity as the name, age, occupation, and domestic relations of one of the mummies under a glass case in our British Museum, an historical document of value. We are apt to confuse the task of the antiquary or of a contributor to Notes and Queries with that of the historian.

We commonly speak of America as “the New World,” and deem its grand scenery a negative illustration of the truth that human association is an essential quality in our enjoyment of natural loveliness. And the fact that we discover Longfellow at Bruges, Washington Irving “within bounds ” at the Charterhouse, Motley at Dresden, and Prescott at Madrid, gives colour to this impression of prevailing novelty. But for all that, the threads of history are woven rapidly on that continent as elsewhere, and the tapestry record—the warp and woof of life—is unfolded, with its enigmas and its dramatic characters and situations, forthe student's unravelling or enjoyment. There is in that New World an aristocracy that is not parvenu, and territory that is not lacking in the venerable qualities of a grand history. The discovery of the St. Lawrence river by Jacques Cartier, the counterpart in feature and in energy of our own Sir Francis Drake, his sojourn at theIndian villages of Stadacona and Hochelaga, the modern Quebec and Montreal, and his erection of a huge cross instead of an ensign on the shores of Gaspé, in claiming the future New France for Christ and the king, are as much an old-time story as that of the Spanish Armada and the game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. From the Atlantic to the Ohio, and from Virginia to the great lakes, the land is rich in history and fruitful of romance. The exile from Grandpr£ and Port Royal, and the scattering of the Acadian families over the States of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Virginia, are full. of heart-break to us who read the story even now, whether we gather it from the page of history or from the poetic setting of “Evangeline ”; and the associations of Forefathers Rock and the Puritan graveyard, ” beautiful for situation,” at New Plymouth, together with the quaint laws and customs which prevailed in that new England town, must be of interest to English-speaking people the wide world over.

There is a singular story accompanying the eventful life of Godwine, the father of Harold, which is given by Mr. Freeman as gathered from the “half-mythical” chronicles of Ralph the Black, a writer who flourished early in the thirteenth century. He tells us how Cnut in a jealous fit sent Godwine to Denmark with letters, requesting those officials to whom they were addressed to cut off the bearer's head; but Godwine was too shrewd for his master, and like the “messenger of Pausanias” read the letter by the way—“expalluit novus Urias” which let him into the light of the awful secret. The legend goes on to show how, naturally enough, he recovered himself, and cleverly substituted other letters, which bore a different burden, directing the Danes to show great kindness to him, as he was a regent, and to give him the king's sister in marriage. The scheme appeared to answer, for all was satisfactorily carried out; and Cnut is said to have put the best face upon the matter; he received Godwine as a brother, and gave him the rank of “consul.”t A writer of the eleventh century speaks very contemptuously of Godwine and his family, prompted probably by his great dislike to Harold, i.e., “The numerous progeny of Earl Godwine was daily waxing stronger and stronger upon the earth.”‡