The History of Institutions scarcely requires to-day, the eloquent defence with which the Bishop of Oxford prefaced his great book, almost thirty years ago. His own work has proved more than sufficient defence for his field of labour, and universal assent would now be given to his claim that "nothing in the past is dead to the man who would learn how the present comes to be what it is." Within the last few years, Professor Maitland has shown us the importance of much in the past that was generally regarded as trivial and incidental. He has illumined, with the torch of history, the dungeons of learning which have been generally supposed to form the abode of the antiquary, and, apart from the brilliant results he has personally attained, the present generation of investigators owes to him a clearer conception of the relation that should exist between more purely antiquarian pursuits and wider historical studies. It is true that the institutions which have provided a theme for Bishop Stubbs and Professor Maitland, have in part survived from the seventh century to the twentieth, and that they still form the basis of the constitutional life of a great people. For a period of a thousand years, historical inquirers have been attempting to discover their origin, and, within the last two centuries, distinguished thinkers and writers have, from time to time, attempted to leave to posterity a worthy record of their history. They have served as models for continents the very existence of which was unknown for centuries after English institutions had assumed a definite shape, and they have proved capable of a development so important that they have become the centre of an empire more than one hundred times the size of the country in which they originated.