in inquiring into a guest's business; just as in the Odyssey, Nestor interposes some delay before he asks Telemachus his business, and Menelaus is equally delicate and dilatory.

The life described is that of hard-working yeomen or farmers. Gunnar and Hauskuld sow their own corn; Glum runs after his stray sheep; Thorvald loads his boat with meal and fish. The tale hinges on the ordinary events of country life: gossip brought by tramps from house to house, petty thefts by servants, quarrels about a right of cutting wood in common, and rough sports, like the horse-fight in the Njala, and football and hockey in other Sagas. Such a life in so severe a climate must have been not a little tedious, and the reaction from its ennui drove the Icelander to seek as a sea rover, or in the prosecution of feuds and lawsuits, or better still in the discovery of remote lands and the creation of an indigenous literature, that excitement with which the strongest and most self-supporting characters cannot wholly dispense. Yet amid all this violence and chicanery, confidence was not destroyed: men lent out their money freely at interest without security; Gunnar and Njal are both described as being creditors on these terms. When a ship came out in the autumn, the cargo was often sold on credit to be paid for in the spring. Land was let out to tenants; sales, where part of the purchase-money was not paid down, were not infrequent; and it was common to give time to collect the money due on a blood fine. Nothing was more usual than an engagement to postpone a marriage for three years, and such engagements were uniformly kept by the lady with exemplary good faith. See the case of Unna in this Saga, and that of Helga in the Saga of Gunnlang, Ormstunga. Thus Pallas, in the character of Mentor (Odyssey, 366.), tells Nestor that she is going next morning to the Cancones, where a debt is owing her, neither newly contracted nor small.

The money of the Icelanders, on which Mr. Dasent furnishes us with an excellent essay, is eminently curious. It had two standards, the one of measure, the unit of which consisted of an ell of woollen cloth, and its multiples up to a hundred; the other of weight, which consisted of an ounce of silver, the eighth part of a mark or pound; but as time went on these two standards were confounded together, and though ells and hundreds belonged, originally, strictly to the woollen standard or that of measure alone, and ounces and marks to that of weight alone, men began to speak of hundreds of weighed silver and of measured ounces and marks of woollen. We must refer those who wish to be delivered from this apparently inextricable confusion to Mr. Dasent's essay, from which it appears that

the blood fine paid for Njal was about equal to a hundred pounds at the present day, a sum certainly not too great, he thinks, for one of the wisest and most virtuous men that Iceland ever produced.

We cannot conclude this notice of a book, destined, we trust, to originate a new era in the study of Scandinavian literature in England, more appropriately than in the words of Mr. Dasent, to whose estimate of the work which he has introduced into our literature, and illustrated with so much diligence and so much eloquence, we give in our adhesion.

'We are entitled to ask, In what work of any age are the characters so boldly and yet so delicately drawn? Where shall we match the goodness and manliness of Gunnar struggling with the storms of fate and driven on by the wickedness of Hallgerda into quarrel after quarrel which were none of his own seeking, but led no less surely to his own end? Where shall we match Hallgerda herself, that noble frame so fair and tall, and yet with so foul a heart, the abode of all great crimes, and also the lurking place of tale-bearing and thieving? Where shall we find parallels to Skarphedinn's hastiness and readiness, as axe aloft he leapt twelve ells across Markfleet, and glided on to smite Thrain his death-blow on the slippery ice? Where for Bergthora's love and tenderness for her husband, she who was given young to Njal, and could not find it in her heart to part from him when the house blazed over their heads? Where for Kari's dash and gallantry, the man who dealt his blows straightforward even in the Earl's Hall, and never thought twice about them? Where for Njal himself, the man who never dipped his hands in blood; who could unravel all the knotty points of the law; who foresaw all that was coming whether for good or ill, for friend or for foe; who knew what his own end would be, though quite powerless to avert it; and when it came, laid him down to his rest, and never uttered sound or groan though the flames roared loud around him? Nor are the minor characters less carefully drawn: the scolding tongue of Thrain's first wife; the mischief-making Thiostolf, with his poleaxe, which divorced Hallgerda's first husbands; Hrut's swordsmanship; Asyrim's dignity; Gizur's good counsel; Snorri's common sense and shrewdness; Gudmund's grandeur; Thorgeir's thirst for fame; Kettle's kindliness; Ingialld's heartiness; and though last not least, Bjorn's boastfulness, which his gudewife is ever ready to cry down, are all sketched with a few sharp strokes, which leave their mark for once and for ever on the reader's mind. Strange, were it not that human nature is herself in every age, that such forbearance and forgiveness as is shown by Njal and Hauskuld, and Hall, should have shot up out of that social soil so stained and steeped with the bloodshedding of revenge. Revenge was the great duty of Icelandic life, yet Njal is always ready to make up a quarrel though he acknowledges the duty, when he refuses in his last moments to outlive his children, whom he feels himself unable to re

venge. The last words of Hauskuld, when he was foully assassinated through the tale-bearing of Mord, were, "God help me and forgive "you;" nor did the beauty of a Christian spirit ever shine out more brightly than in Hall, who when his son Ljot, the flower of his flock, fell full of youth and strength, and promise, in chance medley at the battle on the Thing field, at once, for the sake of peace, gave up the father's and the freeman's dearest rights, those of compensation and revenge, and allowed his son to fall unatoned, in order that peace might be made. This struggle between the principle of an old system now turned to evil, and that of a new state of things which was still fresh and good, between heathendom as it sinks into superstition, and Christianity before it has had time to become superstitious, stands strongly forth in the latter part of the Saga; but as yet the new faith can only assert its forbearance and forgiveness in principle. It has not had time, except in some rare instances, to bring them into play in daily life. Even in heathen times, such a deed as that by which Njal met his death, to hem a man in within his house, and then to burn it and him together; to choke a freeman, as Skarphedinn says, like a fox in his earth,—was quite against the free and open nature of the race; and though instances of such foul deeds occur, besides those two great cases of Blundkettle and Njal, still they were always looked upon as atrocious crimes, and punished accordingly. No wonder, therefore, then that Flosi, after the change. of faith, when he makes up his mind to fire Njal's house, declares the deed to be one for which they would have to answer heavily before God, "seeing that we are Christian men ourselves."

VOL. CXIV. NO. CCXXXII.

HH

ART. VII.1. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Being the first part of a series of Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Law. By the late JOHN AUSTIN, Esq., M.A., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-atLaw. 2nd Edition. London: 1861.

2. Ancient Law. Its Connection with the early History of Society, and its Relation to Modern Ideas. By HENRY SUMNER MAINE, Reader of the Civil Law in the Middle Temple, and formerly Regius Professor of the Civil Law in the University of Cambridge. London: 1861.

ΤΗ

HERE is no pursuit on which more ability and learning has been lavished than on the law of England, and there is no subject to which English literature has contributed so little as general jurisprudence. With the addition of Bentham's works, the two books mentioned at the head of this article would almost complete the list of works upon that subject worth reading, written by Englishmen. The reasons of this state of things are not the less interesting because they are obvious to every one whose acquaintance with the subject is practical. It is often ascribed to the supposed inaptitude or dislike of Englishmen for general speculation, or to the immersion of all our ablest men in pursuits tending directly to their personal advancement; but this view of the matter is neither just nor true. Abundant evidence might be given of the aptitude of Englishmen for general speculations, and there have never been wanting amongst us a sufficient supply of persons inclined to a life of thought and study to investigate the subjects which circumstances from time to time have invested with interest.

The real reason why general jurisprudence has been neglected in this country is to be found in the absence of the causes which in other countries induce men to study it. The popularity of general speculations, either upon law or any other subject, depends principally upon the degree of practical importance and dignity attached to them. For example, when the minds of men are occupied, as in France in the last century, with the presentiment that great social changes are impending, there is a strong inducement to theorise upon the constitution of society, and the nature and limits of political obligations, in order to furnish arms to the combatants in the struggle which is felt to be approaching. The birth and growth of the study of political economy, in the course of the last century and a quarter, is another example of the same influence. The general feeling,

that the accumulation and distribution of property was little understood, and that its principles, if firmly apprehended and clearly stated, would produce great practical results, was no doubt the chief cause of the attention which the subject received. In the same way the degree in which men perceive the necessity for general principles and broad views on legal subjects depends upon the degree in which they feel the want of them; and though it may appear paradoxical, it is strictly true, that under many circumstances, and in many states of society, the study of jurisprudence is injured by a good administration of justice and a good system of legislation, and favoured by a bad one. The law of England in the present day may be not altogether unfairly described as a mass of details which no memory can embrace, and which hardly any understanding can reduce under the heads to which they properly belong; but this state of things, which a knowledge of jurisprudence more widely diffused amongst lawyers would undoubtedly have gone far to remedy, can be distinctly traced to the fact that the administration of the law was for centuries more pure, systematic, and authoritative, and that legislation was more judicious and definite, in this than in any other country in Europe.

The general object of jurisprudence is to lay down principles as to the nature of law, and to devise for legal purposes classifications of the various actions and relations of mankind; but the practical value of such theories is little felt where a system of law is established, which is so administered as to fulfil satisfactorily the primary objects of the protection of person and property; and their direct influence on judicial decisions is diminished in exact proportion to the degree of authority which practically attaches to the enactments of a well-ascertained sovereign legislature. We have fallen so much into the habit of making a supposed incapacity for systematic thought or systematic institutions on the part of Englishmen a subject either of foolish lamentation or of still more foolish boasts, that we have almost entirely forgotten the fact, that throughout the greater part of the history of modern Europe this was the only country which possessed either a real legislature, or a uniform administration of justice. The French, of whose inherent aptitude for everything systematic, or, to adopt one of the slang phrases of the day, logical,' we hear so much, allowed their law to remain for many centuries in a state of confusion, of which we in this country have had no example since the Heptarchy. Not only was there an endless conflict of jurisdictions, but there was also such a confusion of laws that in any given jurisdiction it was impossible to say what was law and what was not. In