(yet 
[ Aug. I, 
MONTHLY REVIEW OF LIT ERATURE, DOMESTIC 
; AND FOREIGN. 
Authors or Publishers, desirous.of seeing an early Notice of their Works, are 
requested to transmit Copies, if possible, before the 16th of the Month. 
Suen, «Scene 
HISTORY of the Conquest of England 
by the Normans : with its Causes, from. 
the earliest Period, and its Consequences to 
the. present Time. Translated from the 
French of A. Turerry. 3 vols. 8v0.—We 
shall be happy to see the day, and we be- 
lieve it is not distant, when English gen- 
tlemen will begin to study English history 
at the right end; and, when they are so 
disposed, here is something like a proper 
guide. to assist them in commencing their 
researches. Materials, indeed, for such 
initiatory study have been, of late, fast ac- 
cumulating ; and the literary class have, evi-. 
dently for some time been gradually awaken- 
ing to,the importance of the earlier periods 
of our annals. Not that even our pioneers 
into the antique lore, much less our histori- 
cal students in general, are yet prepared for 
the hyperbole of the German critic, Schil- 
ler, that English history is not worth read- 
ing after the close of the Saxon epoch; 
but the time is, we. think, approaching, 
when we may venture so far to qualify the 
paradox, as to lay it down as an educa- 
tional axiom, that the more recent portions 
of our history are not worth opening #ll 
we have studied well the Saxon periods. 
Hitherto, we are aware, the maxim has 
been exactly the reverse. Even the most 
educated of our senators, in both houses, 
have not been ashamed to betray their total 
ignorance of the history of that ancient 
portion of the English race, from whom 
every thing valuable in our institutions, 
in spirit and essence, originally sprung ; and 
to remain accordingly unacquainted with 
the sources and principles of that constitu- 
tion which, nevertheless, they profess to 
guard, and presume to modify—ameliorate 
they, perhaps, would say: and, perhaps, with 
more accuracy of phraseology than they 
are themselves aware of. Every thing, by 
them, is referred to the Norman period. 
Now and then, perhaps, they may mention 
the name of Alfred; but it is the Alfred of 
romance, not the Alfred whom genuine 
historical research would place before them ; 
and whose legislative institutions, in gene- 
ral, are as little understood, as are the 
limits of his dominion, and the facts, espe- 
cially, of his early story. With the Nor- 
man Oppressor, and his legion of feudal 
robbers, their History of England begins: 
as if the nation had had no existence, or 
had. existed without laws, government, 
principles, or institutions, till the bandits 
of the continent arrived—the captains of 
holds and fastnesses—“‘ gentlemen of com- 
panies,” with their lawless band of depre- 
dators at their heels. and their captain of 
captains at their head; and, first, with 
temporizing violence, and, afterwards, by- 
the treacheries and cruelties of successive 
usurpations, seized upon the property of 
the land, reduced such of the original pro- 
prietors, as they did not mutilate, or mur- 
der, to a state of the most degraded sla- 
very, and gave us the institutions of feu- 
dalism, and the law of the sword. 
Such is the origin of our Norman con- 
stitution. If we would look for any thing 
better, we must turn (as the descen- 
dants of those very Normans, a few gene- 
rations after, were, from time to time, even 
in their own defence, compelled to turn) to 
the Saxon epoch. For such direction of 
our studies, we have had, however, as al- 
ready. suggested, till lately, but very 
scanty means of easy or popular access. 
The second chapter of the second book 
of Campbell’s “ Political Survey,” [See 
vo. iis p. 316, &c. 4to. 1774, “ OF 
the State of this Country under the. Sax- 
ons, and of their Constitution’’| and the first 
book of Lord Littleton’s History of Henry 
II., with the inyaluable notes appended, 
were — till the appearance of Mr. Tur- 
ner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons (a book, 
after all, of not very profound research) — 
almost the whole public stock of initiatory 
information upon the subject. They who 
~ wished for more extended information (if 
they had no access to hidden documents. 
and antiquarian records), had to wade, for 
scattered and ambiguous scraps, through 
obscure and uninviting folios, frequently 
almost as fallacious in their references, as 
the book-making historians, by whom they 
have so frequently been mistranscribed, or, 
without consultation, misquoted from other 
loose quotations. What wonder, then, if 
the reader, in general, rested satisfied with 
the brief and flimsy, but eloquent romance 
of Hume; and continued to believe the Saxon 
peried of our story to be as little worthy 
of attention, as the indolence and the preju- 
dices of Hume seem to have induced him 
‘to regard it? Anglo-Saxon literature and 
antiquities have, however, at length be- 
come objects of study among the scholars 
of our Anglo-Saxon race, The “ antiqui- 
ties,” &c. of Strutt, though, from their ex- 
travagant price, rather books of luxury than 
of general use, had stimulated a curiosity, 
not eventually confined in its operation, to 
mere antiquaries :—for the knowledge, at 
first sequestered in the libraries and pri- 
vacies of the learned few, finds its way, 
eventually, into the intellectual atmo- 
sphere of the age,.and becomes participated 
by the many. The essence of the expen- 
sive 
