lz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ment has brought hack the most primitive type of sculpture for monu 

 mental purposes ; as may be seen in Canterbury Cathedral, where, in 

 two new monuments to ecclesiastics, one being Archbishop Sumner, 

 the robed figures recline on their backs, with hands joined, after the 

 manner of the mailed knights on early tombs presenting complete 

 symmetry of attitude, which is a distinctive trait of barbaric art, 

 as every child's drawing of a man and every idol carved by a savage 

 shows us. 



A conscious as well as an unconscious adhesion to the old in usage 

 and doctrine is shown. Not only among Roman Catholics, but among 

 many Protestants, to ascertain what the Fathers said, is to ascertain 

 what should be believed. In the pending controversy respecting the 

 Athanasian Creed, we see how much authority attaches to an antique 

 document. The antagonism between Convocation and the lay mem- 

 bers of the Church the one as a body wishing to retain the cursing 

 clauses and the other to exclude them further shows that official 

 Protestantism adheres to antiquity much more than non-official Prot- 

 estantism : a contrast equally displayed not long since between the 

 opinions of the lay part and the clerical part of the Protestant Irish 

 Church. 



Throughout political organizations the like tendency, though less 

 dominant, is very strong. The gradual establishment of law, by the 

 consolidation of custom, is the formation of something fixed in the 

 midst of things that are changing ; and, regarded under its most gen- 

 eral aspect as the agency which maintains a permanent order, it is in 

 the very nature of a State-organization to be relatively rigid. The 

 way in which primitive principles and practices, no longer fully in 

 force among individuals ruled, survive in the actions of ruling agents, 

 is curiously illustrated by the long retention between nobles of a right 

 of feud after it had been disallowed between citizens. Chief vassals, 

 too, retained this power to secure justice for themselves after smaller 

 vassals lost it : not only was a right of war with one another recog- 

 nized, but also a right of defence against the king. And we see that 

 even now, in the relations between Governments, there persists that 

 use of force to "remedy injuries, which originally existed between all 

 individuals. As bearing in the same direction, it is significant that 

 the right of trial by battle, which was a regulated form of the aborigi- 

 nal system under which men administered justice in their own cases, 

 survived among the ruling classes when no longer legal among inferior 

 classes. Even on behalf of religious communities judicial duels were 

 fought. Ilere the thing it concerns us to note is, that the system of 

 fighting in person and fighting by deputy, when no longer otherwise 

 lawful, remained in force, actually or formally, in various parts of the 

 regulative organization. Up to the reign of George III., trial by 

 battle could be claimed as an alternative of trial by jury. Duels con- 

 tinued till quite recently between members of the ruling classes, and 



