of justice. No other country possesses anything at all like it, and it strikingly exhibits the damage done by pillage and conquest. The date of the survey is 1086, and it may be seen by special permission. It is said that by the Conquest the rental of England diminished in twenty years to one-fourth of what it was under Edward the Confessor. Thierry has shown in his history how complete the spoliation of the kingdom was by the Norman conquerors. “The king’s name was placed at the head of the county, with a list of his domains and revenues; then followed the names of the chief and inferior proprietors, in the order of their military rank and their territorial wealth. The Saxons, who by special favour had been spared the spoliation, were found only in the lowest schedule; for the number of that race who still continued to be free proprietors, or tenants in chief to the king, as the conquerors called it, were such only for small domains. They were inscribed at the end of each chapter under the name of thanes of the king, or by some other designation of domestic service in the royal household. The rest of the names of an Anglo-Saxon form, that are scattered here and there through the roll, belong to farmers holding by a precarious title a few fractions, larger or smaller, of the domains of the Norman earls, barons, knights, sergeants, and bowmen.” There is little of interest in Ripon besides the Cathedral. The houses have generally been [Illustration: RIPON, YORKSHIRE.] modernised, and they do not seem to be more than about a century or a century and a half old. The dedication of Ripon Church was attended by Egfrid, king of Northumbria, who feasted the people for three days; and here it may be in place to allude to these dedications as bearing on some village customs that have died out happily in nearly every part of England--the rush-bearings, the wakes, and church ales. Gregory the Great bade St. Augustine not to destroy the pagan temples, but only the idols that were in them, purifying the site and sprinkling it with holy water, etc.; and because the people were in the habit of assembling on certain days, and having their orgies and feasts to their gods, the crafty pontiff knew it would weaken his hold on them to bring such things to a sudden conclusion, and ordered that these bacchanalia were still to be continued, but kept on the saint’s day the church was dedicated to; and in the then condition of the people that would tend rather to attach them to the new religion. The Unicorn Inn in Ripon has some slight traces of antiquity, but it is more as a foreground to the west front of the Cathedral, than to any particular merits of its own, it owes its architectural value.