of pretending that Parliamentary institutions were peculiar to Britain, whether the Battle of Hastings were really fought in 1066 or no. When he has discovered, as any boy of education, travel, and common sense will discover, that the Normans were not Scandinavians, but Frenchmen, he will be led to reason that perhaps William the Conqueror never existed at all. This mood of universal scepticism is even more dangerous than that of bovine assurance, more dangerous to character, that is, and more dissolving of national strength. As with the assertions so with the theories. There was a theory, for instance, that a tenure of land existed in ancient England by which this land was the common property of all, and was called the land of the “folk.” Then this theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the “folk land” meant the land held by customary right as distinguished from land held by charter. Again, there was a theory that an original Saxon tendency to breed large landowners had gradually prevailed over feudal tenure. This theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the large units of land grew up by an accidental interpretation of Roman law. In the book I propose all these theories could be very simply dealt with. The student should be warned that they are theories, and theories only, that their whole point and value is that they are not susceptible to positive proof; that what makes them amusing and interesting is the certitude that one can go on having a good quarrel about them, and the inner faith that when one is tired of them one can drop them without regret. Older men know this, but young men often do not, and they will take a theory in the Academies and make a friend of it, and at last, as it were, another self, and clasp it close to their souls and intertwine themselves with it, only to find towards thirty that they have been hugging a shade.