732 
Ilistm'y of the English Landed Interest. 
saries of life. Mulhall in his large Dictionary of Statistics, 1892, 
gives the prices of wheat per ton from, about the year 1400 down 
to the present time and in decennial periods, the prices being 
further reduced to English money of the present day. The^e 
tables I have not tested : a.d. 1401-10, the average price of 
wheat was per ton IZ. 8s. ; 1881-9, per ton 91. 5s. The popu- 
lation of England in 1066 was, according to the same autho- 
rity, 2,150,000, or 37 persons to the square mile ; in 1889, 
29,016,000, or 500 to the square mile. 
There is often a certain fascination in notes — notes ujDon 
notes —that last infirmity of the bookish mind. I observe, 
however, Mr. Gamier has cleverly incorporated most things he 
desired to say in his text ; he gives a sufficient glossary, which 
might with advantage be extended, and an excellent but not 
perfect index which goes far towards making his work a profes- 
sional text-book ; because the index enables the reader in 
business hours to grasp at once the golden grain of workaday 
facts, the cortications of pleasant and pictorial illustration may 
serve in intervals of ease to excite profitable and pleasurable 
rumination. 
With considerable success Mr. Gamier has achieved the dif- 
ficult task of clothing the dry bones of technical history with the 
flesh and blood of vivid pictorial descriptions of rural and 
domestic life. Some might prefer an historical text-book, pure 
and simple — the few perhaps who browse, in great libraries ; but 
the numerous class of readers for whom the book is designed no 
doubt like a chatty and pleasant digest somewhat in the nature 
of an essay. Mr. Gamier justly observes, “ The casual reader is 
a numerous class amongst the rural population ” — and certainly 
a very dry record discourages nibbling curiosity. After all, 
whoever desires to gain a hearing must please. It has been well 
said that abstracts, abridgments, and summaries have the same 
use as burning glasses — to collect the diffused rays of wit and 
learning and make them point with warmth and quickness. To 
Mr. Gamier we should not attribute the all-discerning eye of 
genius, but rather the tutored vision of an able and busy man 
of business of great practical experience. In short, we have no 
right to expect to find in Mr. Gamier a combination of Lord 
Bacon, Mr. Ilallam, and Lord Macaulay. 
Probably in varying degree the genius or ability of any 
historian is most manifest in the power of clearly defining those 
epochs in history, those unquestionable turning points, which 
are the cloud-capped peaks in the great chain of the mountain 
ranges of historic time. 
Ilistory in the modern acceptation of the term is a narrative 
