40 



THE BRITISH ISLES. 



thousand years ago a brutisli churl, whose deeds of violence have been placed on 

 record in ancient chronicles. The wonderful transformation is the result of the 

 patient and unremitting labour of years. No great political revolution has occurred 

 in the country since the seventeenth century, and it is by a process of slow evolu- 

 tion that the English have thus modified their character. None of the vestiges of 

 the past have wholly disappeared. In no other country can the progress of 

 architecture since the days of Saxons and Normans be studied with greater advan- 

 tage. Cromwell, the great leveller, razed many castles and burnt numerous 

 abbeys ; but from Arundel to Carnavon, from Salisbury to York, hundreds of 

 these mediœval structures, both feudal and monastic, survive to the present day, 

 and all the world is engaged in their restoration. Ancient customs, meaningless 



Yig;. 19.— AiaNDEL Castle: IxTEitiou Qvadkangle. 



to the general public, are still religiously observed. Terms in Norman French, 

 no longer intelligible on the other side of the Channel, are still employed in 

 legal documents and on certain occasions of state. Mediœval costumes are worn 

 by the custodians of certain royal buildings, and the children in some of the 

 foundation schools are still dressed in the style in vogue at the time of the 

 original founders. Leases are granted for ninety -nine and even for nine hundred 

 and ninety-nine years, as if the lessor could insure the existence of his family for 

 all time to come. Testamentary dispositions made in the Middle Ages remain in 

 force to the present day. Even in London there are streets which are occasionally 

 closed on one day in the year, by having barriers placed across them, in order to 

 show that the owner of the land, although he allows the public to use them, does 

 not relinquish his claim to property in the soil. "Beating the bounds" is 



