Every effort should be made to identify the old manor-house, or its site (often marked by a grass grown moat), and this should of course be done with each manor, where, as is usually the case, the parish has contained more than one. Oral tradition, in this as in other particulars, will often be found a useful handmaid. Should the exterior of the reputed manor-house be altogether unpromising, that should not check further investigation. Several instances are known to us in which modern brick casing or sash windows are but a screen to some of the oldest domestic architecture extant, which may be found in the back premises or outbuildings, or contain fine old chimney-pieces, carved oak panelling, or ceilings of elaborate pargetting. Nor should attention be only directed to manor-houses. All old domestic work is worth chronicling, so rapidly is it disappearing both in town and country; and the annalist of a parish should not be above transcribing all the initials and dates so frequently seen on lintel stones. As a rule, every house or cottage, not obviously modern, that has stone buttresses, a moulded wall-plate or string-course, or bevelled stone mullions to the windows, is worthy of careful examination. Many interesting details, such as the site of chantry-houses, may be thus brought to light, and the history in stone, and the history on parchment, be found to tally in unexpected ways. Domestic architecture should always be described by the century, and not by the “periods” into which ecclesiastical architecture is usually divided. The only book worth purchasing on the subject, is the somewhat costly but admirable four volume edition of Parker’s “Mediæval Domestic Architecture.” For the general “History of Architecture,” both civil and religious, of all ages and countries, nothing can surpass Fergusson’s last edition in four volumes, published by Murray in 1874. Personal History. The pedigrees and brief particulars of the Nobility can be readily found. The most useful standard works are Dugdale’s “Baronage,” Collins’ “Peerage and Baronetage,” Banks’ “Dormant and Extinct Baronage,” and the “Baronagium Genealogicum,” or pedigrees of English Peers, in five folio volumes, by Joseph Edmondson. Burke’s “Landed Gentry” gives much information with respect to the principal families of commoners, but the earlier genealogical statements that he prints are often purely mythical. Several indexes to the many thousands of printed pedigrees that are scattered up and down in topographical and other works have been published, of a more or less faulty and incomplete description, but a work of this class, now (1879) in the press, entitled “The Genealogist’s Guide,” by Mr. George W. Marshall, promises to be all that can be desired.