* * * * * RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS. NOTES OF A BOOKWORM. (_For the Mirror_.) Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were so uncommon in the reign of Alfred, that it is said, he hung up golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared to touch them. Earl Godwin, in order to appease Hardicanute, (whose brother he had been instrumental in murdering,) made him a magnificent present of a galley with a gilt stern, rowed by fourscore men, who wore each of them a golden bracelet on his arm, weighing sixteen ounces, and were clothed and armed in the most sumptuous manner. Hardicanute pleased with the splendour of the spectacle, quickly forgot his brother's murder, and on Godwin's swearing that he was innocent of the crime, allowed him to be acquitted. The cities of England appear by _Domesday Book_, to have been at the conquest little better than villages; York itself, though it was always the second, at least the third city in England, contained only 1,418 families; Norwich contained 738 houses; Exeter, 315; Ipswich, 538; Northampton, 60; Hertford, 146; Bath, 64; Canterbury, 262; Southampton, 84; and Warwick, 225. As the extreme ignorance of the age made deeds or writings very rare, the county or hundred courts were the places where the most remarkable civil transactions were finished. Here testaments were promulgated, slaves manumitted, bargains of sale concluded; and sometimes for greater security, the most remarkable of these deeds were inserted in the blank leaves of the parish Bible, which thus became a register too sacred to be falsified. It was not unusual to add to the deed an imprecation on all such as should be guilty of that crime. The laws of Alfred enjoin, that if any one know that his enemy or agressor, after doing him an injury, resolves to keep within his own house and his own lands, he shall not fight him till he require compensation for the injury. If he be strong enough, he may besiege him in his house for seven days without attacking him, and if the agressor be willing, during that time to surrender himself and his arms, his adversary may detain him thirty days; but is compelled afterwards to restore him safe to his friends, and _be content with the compensation_. The price of the King's head or his weregild, as it was then called, was by law, 30,000 thrismas, near £1,300. of our present money. The price of the prince's head was 15,000 thrismas; a bishop's or _alderman's_ HEAD (quere, ought not the STOMACH to have been the part thus valued?) was valued at 8,000; a sheriff's, 4,000; a thane's, or clergy-man's, 2,000; a ceorles, or husband-man's, 266. It must be understood that when a person was unwilling, or unable to pay the fine, he was outlawed, and the kindred of the deceased might punish him as they thought proper. Gervase, of Tilbury, says, that in Henry the First's time, bread sufficient for 100 men, for a day, was rated at THREE SHILLINGS, or a shilling of that age.