Land, and in 1190 died of disease at the fa mous siege of Acre. That was a vigorous and varied life, surely; but toward the end of it, this busy man, — ap parently neither trained as an ecclesiastic to use the Latin language, nor trained as a lawyer in the practice of the old law learning, such as it was, but certainly experienced in judicial busi ness and in the application of the writs of Henry IPs time, — found leisure to compose this Latin treatise upon the English law. This is a book of forms. The forms are the earliest writs that prescribed the procedure and measured the power of the national court — the Curia Regis, — as distinguished from various antique local tribunals; and hence they are of great historical value. Interspersed with the writs are comments, almost equally priceless as contemporaneous statements of the reasons underlying the forms and of the actual work ing of the system. It is probable that most of the writs are practically the work of Henry II's own hand; *for although historians do not unanimously accept the tradition that Henry was in fact Stephen's Chief Justiciar, they do agree that he had a genius for law, that he often presided in his own court, and that he was the author of the reforms in procedure. The reforms were embodied in these very writs. Like all forms, these old writs cast strong light upon the substantive law enforced through them. Thus we find here valuable matter as to crimes and property. The most important knowledge gained from the book, however, per tains to the introduction of the jury as the normal mode of trying questions of fact, and the development of the Curia Regis as the ju dicial power permeating the whole kingdom and largely displacing the manorial and other local courts. There could be no national law until there was a central judicial authority with ses sions throughout the kingdom — in short the Curia Regis and justices in eyre; — and the English law, as we know it, could not exist with out the jury. As Glanville's treatise is coeval with the rise of the jury, and with the great de velopment of the Curia Regis, it is clearly a work of which something ought to be known by every lawyer who pretends to be a scholar. Nevertheless, the busy lawyer cannot read the whole of this book. The parts of it that he may
fairly be expected to read and enjoy are these : The Preface (the king, the judges, and the law); Book II, chap. 3 (trial by battle); Book II, chaps. 6, 7, ID, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19 (the jury); Book V, chap. 5 (villeinage); Book VI, chaps. 1-3 (dower); Book VII, chaps. 1-17 (inheri tance and wills); Book IX, chaps, i, 4, 8 (hom age and reliefs); Book XII, chaps. 2, 6, 7, 9, 23 (writs of right); Book XIII, chaps. 1-3, 7, ii (recognitions); Book XIV, chap, i (treason). Yet the reading of even these selected pas sages is likely to prove unsatisfactory, unless one has the guidance of an editor. Here is where Professor Beale's introduction becomes useful, and, indeed, indispensable, with its meth odical accounts of Glanville's life, and of the essential features of the treatise, and of the state of the law in the time of Henry II. When with the aid of Professor Beale's admir able introduction, the reader has mastered a few passages, he will find that early English law has become for him a living thing, and that he can appreciate many a learned allusion hereto fore unintelligible. Indeed, there is no better way of preparing to enjoy the first two chapters of Thayer's " Preliminary Treatise on Evidence," or the first five chapters of Pollock and Mailland's " History of English Law." Even if the reader does not care to look into those larger and later works, he will find it well worth his while to give a few hours to Glanville, and to have at first hand the pleasure of seeing trial by jury in the very act of thrusting into the background the unscientific, superstitious, and brutal trials by ordeal and by battle.
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COMPARATIVE LEGISLATION. Edited for the Society by John MacDonnell, Esq.. C.B., LL.D., and Ed ward Manson. Esq. New Series, No. VI. 1900, No. 3. London : John Murray, 1900. (278 PP-) It is hard to over-estimate the value, to a stu dent of jurisprudence and of sociology, of such a review of legislation as is presented here. The editors and their contributors are to be com mended for the concise, yet full and clear, man ner in which the subject matter has been set forth. As might be expected, the legislation of the more important Australasian colonies is of
