336 THE OX. 



incessant vigilance in the time of war, nothing could guard 

 them from surprise and subjugation. 



The islands are four, Alderney, Jersey, Guernsey, and Sark, 

 with their dependent islets. The most northerly, and nearest 

 to the coast of France, is Alderney, which is well protected 

 by its rocky shores and dangerous currents. The most wes- 

 terly is Guernsey, which is the least fertile in soil ; and the 

 smallest is Sark, which consists of a beautiful table-land, 

 scarcely accessible from the sea, and capable of being de- 

 fended by a handful of men. The largest, richest, and most 

 populous is Jersey, lying about six leagues from the coast of 

 France. Its surface, except where it rises into rocky emi- 

 nences, presents to the eye a rich forest of fruit-trees, gar- 

 dens, and little cultivated fields, among which are to be seen 

 the villas and chateaus of the opulent, with the lowlier, yet 

 not less beautiful, dwellings of the humbler classes, green 

 with vines and myrtles, and embosomed in groves of the 

 cider-apple. When viewed more near, all the surface of the 

 country is seen to be intersected with innumerable banks of 

 earth, covered with trees, and verdant with the leaves of 

 bushes and the creeping ivy. These are the divisions of the 

 numberless little fields and possessions of the inhabitants, 

 into which, as an effect of the old Norman law of succession, 

 enforcing an equal division of land amongst the children of 

 a family, the whole country has been partitioned. The neces- 

 sary effect of this law, operating for more than nine centuries 

 within the narrow limits of a small island, has been to re- 

 duce all the land of the country into small possessions. 

 Scarcely an estate is to be found in the whole island of forty 

 acres, many vary from five to fifteen, and the greater number 

 fall below the extent of the least of these. The tendency 

 and effect of such an institution, continued from age to age, 

 might seem to be to produce an interminably minute division 

 of property in land ; and yet experience proves that there 

 are limits to such a division, even in a tract so narrow and 



