are now being worked at by the profoundest jurists and the most acute students of constitutional history have perished in unknown multitudes. Others which contained invaluable illustrations of local customs--of tyrannous overstraining of feudal authority on the one hand or of crafty evasions of feudal services on the other, of the rapacity of lords and stewards of manors here and of successful appropriations of strips of land or rights of commonage or pasture there--vanished from the face of the earth, none would tell how. The extent to which this destruction of ancient muniments has been carried on cannot yet be even approximately estimated. Nevertheless much remains. The interest which such writers as Mr. Seebohm, Mr. Maitland, Mr. Thorold Rogers, and others have aroused in the many important inquiries which they have severally pursued is increasing day by day, and there can be no doubt that a desire to become better acquainted with the contents of those documents which still survive and may still be rescued and preserved is spreading rapidly and widely. But “where are they to be kept when we have got them?” is the question that presses. It is more than can be expected of the civic authorities that they should charge the rates of the town with providing house room for collections of MSS. which are but remotely concerned with the history of the boroughs themselves. The local museums as a rule are overcrowded and can barely keep their heads above water. The boxes and bundles of rolls and parchments in the lawyers’ offices are provokingly in the way; the country houses are changing hands week by week, and Philistines prefer dressing-rooms to muniment rooms. Will no one suggest a way out of our difficulties? * * * * * I have passed very lightly over the condition of affairs at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, and that for more reasons than one, the chief reason, but by no means the only one, being that I know nothing about the Abbey muniments or of those of the bishopric of London, and nobody seems able to tell me anything. I have not even alluded to the archdeaconries of the diocese of London.