at once the leaders and the product of their age. When
Lord Langdale set himself to his task he was only attempting that which
had been talked of since the reign of Edward II. For five centuries the
unification of our National Records had been recommended and advised by
lawyers, statesmen, and scholars from generation to generation, but no
practical scheme had ever been suggested, and the difficulties in the
way of reform were supposed to be insuperable. It was a Herculean task,
and one that grew ever more arduous the longer it was postponed. During
the first quarter of the present century profound dissatisfaction had
begun to be felt at the condition of our historical literature. The
ordinary text-books were full of fables, more than suspected to be
fables, and which yet it was extremely difficult to disprove
satisfactorily. Theories which had long passed current were being rudely
assailed, and yet--in the face of the obstacles that hindered
research--stubbornly held their ground, or were repeated with peremptory
dogmatism. A deep distrust of the old methods and the old assumptions
had given rise to a widespread desire to drag forth from their
hiding-places any documents, however dry or recondite, which might throw
some clear light upon our national life and manners, and not only upon
mere events of national importance during Medieval times. A desire to
know the truth was _in the air_. The science of history had passed out
of its infancy, and the stirrings of a new craving--the passion of
Research--were making themselves felt in that mysterious restlessness
which indicates that the old smooth-faced docility, the old childish
submission to tutelage, the old unquestioning acceptance of authority,
has gone for ever, and a new life has begun. The year before Lord
Langdale received his appointment as Master of the Rolls, the Surtees
Society had been founded for the printing of unedited MSS. illustrative
of the history of the northern counties; and in the same year that the
old Record Commission expired, the English Historical Society was
started, a society which numbered amongst its promoters such men as the
late Mr. Kemble, Mr. H. O. Coxe, Sir T. Duffus Hardy, and Mr.
Stevenson--the leaders and teachers of that school of younger men who
have so ably followed in the steps of their seniors, and who, mounting
on the shoulders of the giants, have gained a wider view than it was
given to those others to attain. The five years tha