themselves, and the foundations of ancient buildings yet to be traced in them, coupled with fragmentary notices in the chroniclers, do sometimes enable us to catch glimpses as it were of this history of the past. The giant march of commercial prosperity has crumbled into dust almost every trace of what our brave and good forefathers looked upon with pardonable pride: but the principles which animated them, still in a great degree regulate the lives of us their descendants; and if we exult in the conviction that our free municipal institutions are the safeguard of some of our most cherished liberties, let us remember those to whom we owe them, and study to transmit unimpaired to our posterity an inheritance which we have derived from so remote an ancestry. ----- Footnote 832: The not unfrequent occurrence of such names as Kinggate, Queengate and Bishopgate Street, imply something of this kind: for we cannot suppose such names to have been assigned capriciously or without sufficient cause. It is likely that the streets so called led to the dwellings and were literally the property of the several parties: that is, that offences committed upon them belonged to the several jurisdictions. ----- CHAPTER VIII. THE BISHOP. Whatever variety of form the heathendom of the Anglosaxons may have assumed in different districts, we are justified in asserting that a sacerdotal class existed, and that there were different grades of rank within it. We hear of priests, and of chief priests; and it is not unnatural to conclude that to the latter some pre-eminence in dignity, if not in power, was conceded over their less-distinguished colleagues. Similarly, the necessities of internal government and regulation, and the analogy of secular administration, had gradually supplied the Christian communities with a well-organized system of hierarchy, which commencing with the lower ministerial functions, passed upward through the presbyterate, the episcopal and metropolitan ordinations, and found its culminating point and completion in the patriarchates of the eastern and western churches. The paganism of the Old World, which admitted the participation of different classes in the public rites of religion, if it did not cause, could at least easily reconcile itself to, this systematic division. Our own heathen state is not well known enough to enable us to affirm as much of our forefathers; but the immediate foundation of an episcopal church in all the newly-converted Teutonic countries, seems to show that no difficulty existed or was apprehended as to its ready reception. In England, as elsewhere, the introduction of Christianity was immediately followed by the establishment of bishops. But it is necessary to draw a distinction between the effects of this establishment in England and in various parts of the continent. As we pursue the inquiries which necessarily meet us in investigating the