they were to be valued, and what capital each of them represented, according to its importance. All these points, so immediately affecting a thousand pecuniary interests, were subject to litigation; and thus was constituted a distinct class of legal men, whose only occupation it was to elucidate them. Many of these men wrote during the second half of the eighteenth century; some even just upon the threshold of the Revolution. They were not lawyers, properly speaking, but practitioners, whose only task it was to point out to professional men the rules to be followed in this special and little attractive portion of legal science. By an attentive study of these _feudistes_, a tolerably minute and distinct idea of a subject, the size and confusion of which is at first bewildering, may be at last come at. The author gives below the most succinct summary he was able to make of his work. These notes are principally derived from the work of Edmé de Fréminville, who wrote about the year 1750, and from that of Renauldon, written in 1765, and entitled ‘_Traité historique et pratique des Droits Seigneuriaux_.’ The _cens_ (that is to say, the perpetual quit-rent, in kind and in money, which, by the feudal laws, was affixed to the possession of certain lands) still, in the eighteenth century, affected most deeply the position of a great number of landed proprietors. This _cens_ continued to be indivisible, that is to say, the entire _cens_ might be claimed of any one of the possessors of the property, subject to the _cens_ at will. It was always irredeemable. No proprietor of any lands, subject to the _cens_, could sell them without being exposed to the _retrait censuel_, that is to say, without being obliged to let the property be taken back at the price of the sale; but this only took place in certain _coutumes_. The _coutume_ of Paris, which was the most general, did not recognise this right. _Lods et Ventes._--It was a general rule that, in every part of the country where the _coutume_ prevailed, the sale of every estate subject to the _cens_ should produce what were called _lods et ventes_; in other words, the fines paid to the lords of the manor, upon the alienation of this kind of property. These dues were more or less considerable, according to the customs of the manor, but were everywhere considerable enough; they existed just as well in parts where the _droit écrit_ (written law) was established. They generally consisted of one-sixth of the price, and were then named _lods_. But in these parts the lord of the manor had to establish his rights. In what was called _pays écrit_, as well as in _pays coutumier_, the _cens_ gave the lord of the manor a privilege which took precedence of all other debts on the estate.