Domesday and Feudal Statistics 



Now be it observed that a certain grandeur, and magnifi- 

 cence of language (well enough adapted to exploit the dis- 

 coveries of Professors of the Arts of Graphology, Phrenology, 

 Palmistry, etc.), is in itself no proof absolute of their author's 

 lack of more real attainments ; such is apt, in the mind of 

 certain readers, to raise a curiosity as to the fulfilment of 

 expectations suggested by a platform of premises so great. 

 Now it is at once allowed that even from the most preten- 

 tious, and least solid of books, some useful information may 

 issue, but whatever success "circumstances " "safely preserved 

 in the pure bosom of the earth," might or might not have in 

 refuting " the false Saxon chronicles," such are (in Ancient 

 Britain, etc?) neither exposed, nor digested in a manner calcu- 

 lated to afford (at least to the tenuiter edocti) any proof of 

 their existence (as on p. x) ; that is, the author does not 

 favour his readers with that special access to their* repository 

 which himself must be presumed to have. 



The ancestors of the English brought with them "the 

 polytheism of the Mongolian steppes" (p. 53), and the 

 Romans found in Britain, " the Buddhic polytheism of the 

 Goths" (p. 54), whose "bitter hatred of hierarchical govern- 

 ment" was not "an Aryan sentiment, nor a Teutonic, nor a 

 German one," but "purely and distinctly Gothic" (p. 190), 

 so that the hitherto illiterate reader, now rather persuaded of 

 the error of believing his predecessors were of the Indo- 

 European race (as he might have imagined), is amply compen- 

 sated by the possible reward of Chinese originals : as the 

 Gothic sentiment (ut. sup.) is anti-Teutonic, he will naturally 

 be distressed to understand why he, or any other Scandinavian 

 or English descendant of the Goths, should now be speaking 

 a language essentially Germanic here the author might 

 well come to his aid in revealing one of those secrets of the 

 "pure bosom, etc.'' (p. x) to which he alone has so easy an 

 access. 



Formation The A. S. chronicles doubtless took their present form 



of A. S. t. Alfred (ytb cent.), and are in hands of the pth to the I2th 



Chronicles, cent, (the last terminates in 1154, but most of the writing 



would seem to antedate 1066, the French form of letters of 



* Sc. the interred, and now disinterred, "circumstances," a notional 

 meaning, and exact particulars, of which are so difficult to attain. 



