One of the greatest difficulties in the way of a student is to place himself in the mental attitude of a man of the Middle Ages towards nature; yet only by so doing can he appreciate the solutions that the philosophers of the time offered of the problems of nature. Our author affords perhaps the simplest way of learning what Chaucer and perhaps Shakespeare knew and believed of their surroundings--earth, air, and sea. The plan on which his work was constructed led Bartholomew in order over the universe from God and the angels--through fire, water, air, to earth and all that therein is. We thus obtain a succinct account of the popular mediaeval theories in Astronomy, Physiology, Physics, Chemistry, Geography, and Natural History, all but unattainable otherwise. The aim of our chapter on Science has been to give sufficient extracts to mark the theories on which mediaeval Science was based, the methods of its reasoning, and the results at which it arrived. The chapter on Medicine gives some account of the popular cures and notions of the day, and that on Geography resumes the traditions current on foreign lands, at a time when Ireland was at a greater distance than Rome, and less known than Syria. In the chapter on Mediaeval Society we have not perhaps the daily life of the Middle Ages, but at least the ideal set before them by their pastors and masters--an ideal in direct relationship with the everyday facts of their life. The lord, the servant, the husband, the wife, and the child, here find their picture. Some information, too, can be obtained about the daily life of the time from the chapter on the Natural History of Plants, which gives incidentally their food-stuffs.