ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 257 



abbeys, and castles which were the great labour of the Middle 

 Ages, are the wonder of our own time, and are the objects of 

 servile and feeble imitation to modern architects. It is sup- 

 posed by many that these structures were the products of that 

 mysterious craft, freemasonry, and that the secrets of archi- 

 tecture were handed down among the members of the fraternity. 

 I have never studied the history of the craft, but there can 

 be no reason to believe that any very important principles of so 

 mechanical an art as architecture were incommunicable except 

 to those mystics, if indeed the brethren for whom so remote an 

 antiquity and so widespread an association is claimed by their 

 whimsical representatives in modern times had any virtual ex- 

 istence. I am rather disposed to believe that just as when one 

 sense is extinguished in any person the rest are stimulated to 

 preternatural acuteness, so in the ages with which we are 

 concerned, when literature was so scanty and the means of 

 occupation so unvaried, the single art which was developed 

 in any notable degree was studied with such intensity and 

 concentration as to bring about results which we, in our 

 wider means of thought, study, and occupation, find it difficult 

 if not impossible to rival. Of the intellectual activity of the 

 Middle Ages no one can pretend to doubt, however much he 

 may regret its narrowness, and lament that, in the absence of 

 materials and principles from which such great progress might 

 have been made, its vigour was exercised upon trivial and 

 unreal subtilties. 



A question of great interest arises in connexion with the 

 remuneration of day-work in the time before us, What was the 

 comparative effectiveness of labour in the Middle Ages as com- 

 pared with the cost of production, and what the contrast with 

 labour in our own time ? The only materials that could supply 

 an inference on this subject would be the analysis of the charges 

 incurred in building some structure at that time, and which is 

 still existing, and comparing its cost with a modern estimate for 

 the same or a similar amount of work. I have no bill of charges 

 for the period comprised in these volumes which fulfils these 



