respects, exercise the rights of a freeman, while still subject to the disabilities of a serf. The days of compulsory labor enjoined upon him were prescribed by law. His testimony was admissible in the trial of causes; he could not be illegally deprived of the results of his industry when his duties to his lord had been faithfully discharged; and, under certain circumstances, he was permitted to enter the clerical profession, whose opportunities might open to an aspiring zealot a career of the highest distinction. The barbarian prejudices of the Norman conqueror survived in many institutions inherited from ages of gross superstition and ignorance. Among these were the absurd and iniquitous trials by fire, water, and judicial combat, prevalent in societies dominated partly by priestcraft and partly by the sword. But more correct ideas of the true character of evidence and its application, acquired from association with a people familiar with the codes of Justinian and Mohammed, eventually mitigated the evils produced by such irrational procedure; and, while not entirely abandoned, its most offensive features were gradually suffered to become obsolete. In other respects, the administration of justice--for the excellence of its system, for the rapidity with which trials were conducted, for the opportunity afforded the litigant for appeal and reversal of judgment--was remarkable. Invested with a sacred character, the judge, in the honor of his official position, was inferior to the king alone. His person was inviolable. No one might question his motives or dispute his authority under penalty of sacrilege. The head of the supreme court of the kingdom, by which all questions taken on appeal from the inferior tribunals were finally adjudicated, was called the Grand Justiciary. His powers and dignity claimed and received the highest consideration. None but men conspicuously eminent for learning and integrity were raised to this exalted office. The Grand Justiciary, although frequently of plebeian extraction, took precedence of the proud nobility, whose titles, centuries old and gained in Egypt and Palestine, had already become historic. A silken banner, the emblem of his office, was carried before him. In public assemblies and royal audiences he sat at the left hand of the sovereign. Only the constable, of all the officials of the crown, approached him in rank. These unusual honors paid to a dignitary whose title to respect was due, not to personal prowess or to hereditary distinction, but to the reverence attaching to his employment, indicate a great advance in the character of a people which, but a few years before, acknowledged no law but that of physical superiority, no tribunal but that of arms. In the other departments of government--in finance, in legislation, in the regulations of commerce, in the protection and encouragement of agriculture, in the maintenance of order--the Norman domination in Sicily presented an example of