EPITAPH.I think the subjoined inscription, which I copy minutely from a tombstone in Edwinstowe Churchyard, in what is popularly called the "Dukeries," is unique, and worthy to find a place in Notes and Queries:— Attend This awful Monitor to Man's Security Who after baving brav'd At 39 in Vital Plenitude, And the meridian of well earn'd Friendships, By some disastrous unforeseen Event Yielded his Social Life To the Minutia of his element As did the Partner of his fleeting Breath • Of youthful 28, but just immers'd Anxious to meet his lov'd expecting Bride, Fell two lamented Youths Their mortal Parts retain [sic]. Of course, grammatically the concluding lines must mean "Their mortal parts retain this earth;" but probably the Johnsonian author meant that the earth retains their mortal parts. Notes and Queries. HOURS OF LABOR IN GERMANY. - The reports of the German Inspectors of Factories for 1886, which have just been issued, afford interesting information upon a number of industrial questions, and, amongst others, on that of hours of labor. Classifying the returns, it is found that most manufactories work ten or eleven hours daily (there being at least six full days in the week), those working ten hours forming a large majority. Overtime is not reckoned in this time. With overtime, workmen are employed in the Düsseldorf district at times 36 and 48 hours, though they are supposed to be at liberty to leave after 24 hours' work. The reports give the following as the usual hours of work in the districts named: Düsseldorf, 11 to 12 hours: boilermen, 12 to 13, and "not seldom" 24 hours; Madgeburg, a third of the industrial establishments 115 to 12 hours, and another third more than 12 hours; Hanover, 10 hours; Schleswig-Holstein, 11 hours; Hesse-Nassau, 11 hours in the country, and 10 hours in the towns; Arnsberg, 11 hours; Minden-Münster, 11 hours; Cologne-Coblenz, 12 hours; Bavaria, 11 to 12 hours; Planen, 12 hours. Of cotton-spinning works, those in the Potsdam and Frankfort-on-Oder district work 12 hours in winter, and 14 in summer (or 72 and 84 hours respectively in the week), while at Düşseldorf 13 and 14 hours are the usual thing, and at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the cloth branch, II and 12 hours. It is shown that small hours than the large ones. branches of industry have, as a rule, longer Thus corn-mills and bakeries have from 12 to 17 hours a day, and from 74 to 77 hours per week seems the general thing. In Hesse-Nassau, the hours dorf iron and steel ware trade, even apprenof work number 14 and 16. In the Düsseitices are often employed 15 and 16 hours daily. The Fürth glass-polishers "are six days in the week at the works without interruption, and only on Sundays get a proper sleep.' The rule is, to rest a couple of hours in the afternoon, for which purpose 66 a bench or a dirty straw sack in a corner of the workshop is used." The nailmakers and wiredrawers of the Feldberg villages, the potters of the Westerwald, etc., begin work in sumas soon as it is light' - that is, at four or five and in winter at six, and continue till eight at night. Economist. mer 66 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN BUTCHERS.-The scene of the agitation against the Jewish mode of slaughtering cattle has for the moment been removed from Switzerland to Germany. In the Helvetian republic spasmodic efforts have been made in a few cantons to put down the Shechita, but in Germany the opposition has made its way into the Imperial Parliament itself. The Society for the Protection of Animals having memorialized the Reichsrath to declare the Jewish system illegal, the memorial was referred to the Committee of Petitions, which in its turn has forwarded the document to Prince Bismarck with the recommendation that it should be favorably considered by him. The opinions of the committee are shared to a considerable extent by the members of the Reichsrath, but the views of the chancellor upon this subject are not known. It is feared, however, in Jewish quarters that he, too, may be inclined to throw his immense weight on the side of the anti-Shechita party. An ironical comment on this opposition to the Shechita is furnished by an item of news respecting a sanatorium in one of the German healthrestoring spas. The medical head of this establishment has ordered that the patients should be supplied with meat killed according to the Jewish mode. The result of this order is that nearly all the Christian butchers now announce the sale of "kosher meat. This circumstance should not be lost sight of in the present agitation. Jewish Chronicle. For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents. THE LINGERING LOOK OF LOVE. (On seeing Leonardo da Vinci's great painting, "The Face of the Christ," in Antwerp Cathedral) HADST thou a vision, like the favored one God's perfect splendor in its every line? Mercy her warm home must have ever kept In those sweet eyes that for the world have wept Tears that were hallow'd through a love divine. Like Heaven's own light upon a darkened [The author of these lines-a girl of twenty-five-was drowned in a Welsh river last August. The night before her death she was heard to say: "If I do not die soon, I think I shall make something of poetry."] IF this poor name of mine, now writ in sand On Life's grey shore, which Time forever laves - A hungry ocean of unresting wavesMight but be graven on rock, and so withstand A little while the weather and the tide, Own Fades in their music; yet before the light AFTER HORACE. IN spring the zephyr breathes again, The river bursts his frosty coat, On swelling waves the cygnets float; No more the north wind moans on high, But sheep on meadows softly lie, way. From The Contemporary Review. their lands as tenants of the manor by fixed services-with mud walls, earthen DOMESDAY BOOK implies, if it does not floors, and thatched roofs, each standing expressly record, social and economical in its "toft," with a little narrow acre strip conditions widely different from any which of "croft" behind it, and the still ruder now prevail. But the transformation has huts of the cottiers, and of the serfs who been so gradual that in many counties were sold with the land. The land, to a innumerable survivals of those bygone great extent, was held in common by the conditions may be detected. The present village community, and tilled by co-operais so intimately interwoven with the past, tive labor. The best land lay in great that there are few country parishes in open arable fields, which were divided which the Domesday record fails to throw into narrow strips, acres and half-acres, some flashes of light on the meaning of each strip about a furlong in length, and a common matters of rural observation. perch or two perches in breadth. These The facts recorded with pen and ink on little strips were separated by turf balks, the venerable pages of the Domesday and the holding of each villan was as a Book are for the most part still legible, rule either a bovate or a virgate,* made scored deeply on the surface of the soil up of a score or two of these strips scatby the Domesday plough, and others sur-tered about the open arable fields, and vive in customary tenures, in the names usually amounting to from ten to thirty of fields and farms, the forms and dimen- acres in all. He did not hold the same sions of enclosures, and the directions strips year by year, but every second or followed by hedges, roads, and rights of third year one division of the arable land. was thrown into fallow, over which the cattle of the village had common rights of pasturage. Beyond the village and the arable fields were extensive wastes, rough pastures of coarse grass, overgrown with England is now a land of small en- thin wood or brushwood, forming the closures; the numerous hedges and the summer pasturage of the sheep and cattle hedgerow timber give it much of its rich-upland pastures of wold, or down, for beauty. At the time of the Conquest en- the sheep, and lowland pastures of unclosures were few. Here and there were drained moors, locally called carrs or ings, great forest tracts, thinly peopled, and fed | for the cattle. One or two instances will by swine. Elsewhere there were vast show how vast were these common pastreeless districts, almost wholly unfenced, tures, how widely separated were the resembling the great stretches of tilled hamlets, and how scanty was the populaland now existing in many parts of France tion. and Germany, the dwellings not dotted about by the wayside, but collected in scattered hamlets, consisting of a few houses or cots, often not more than five or six. Close to the little hamlet would be some few acres, a score or so, of enclosed meadow, mowed for hay, but the rest would be open arable, protected only by temporary fences of dead thorns, while beyond the arable were great stretches of rough moorland pasture. To understand these survivals we must picture to ourselves the aspect of an ordinary country parish at the time of the survey. In most of the larger hamlets stood the lord's "ball," built of stone or timber, brick being almost unknown. Round the hall clustered the houses of the villans or boors who were small farmers holding The parish of Pickering now contains thirty-two thousand seven hundred acres, which agrees roughly with the Domesday measurement of the manor. In the time of Edward the Confessor the enclosures were less than four hundred acres, and about seven thousand acres were tilled in open fields, leaving some twenty-six thousand acres as moorland pasture. At the time of the Domesday survey about twelve hundred acres were in tillage, and * A bovate or oxgang represented the tillage perA virgate, held by the owner of a formed by one ox. yoke of oxen, was two bovates. Eight bovates made a carucate or ploughland, which was the tillage of an eight-ox plough. there were twenty villans, with six ploughs | day is based on the number of ploughs between them, the lord having one plough. rather than on the number of acres. The population of this vast tract, twenty miles by six, cannot have been much more than one hundred. It is now one of the most sparsely peopled parts of Yorkshire, yet the population is over five thousand. The parish of Holme on Spalding Moor containes eleven thousand five hundred and fourteen acres. In the time of King Edward there were less than fifteen hundred acres under plough, leaving ten thousand acres in moor and carr. At the time of the survey about six hundred acres only were tilled; there were eight villans and twelve cottagers (bordarii), with three ploughs, and the lord had half a plough. The population was about one hundred, and there were a church and a priest. The present population is over two thousand. These are extreme instances, where the soil was poor, and the wastes unusually extensive. As average cases we may take Heslerton, with seven thousand one hundred and twenty acres, of which about half was tilled in the time of King Edward, and about a fourth at the time of the survey. In the adjacent township of Knapton there are two thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine acres. In King Edward's time twenty acres were enclosed, and one thousand and eighty acres were tilled. In King William's time all was desolate; apparently there was not a single inhabitant. The arable was divided between the lord and the tenants of the manor, who held in villanage. The land was tilled by huge ploughs, normally drawn by eight oxen, yoked four abreast. When the soil was light the teams were somewhat smaller, consisting of as few as four oxen, yoked two and two. This was called a half-plough. But where the land was heavy, as many as ten or even twelve oxen were yoked to each plough. A villan usually possessed one yoke of oxen, each plough being drawn by the associated teams of four villans. Land was plentiful, and it was rather the possession of oxen for tillage than of land itself which constituted wealth. Hence we understand why the system of taxation recorded in Domes We must dismiss the notion of the modern English system of letting farms at fixed annual rents. There were no farms or farmers in our sense of the word, a farmer being originally a tenant who was bound to supply feorm -food and entertainment—to the lord when he visited the manor. The occupation of a messuage, which descended from father to son on payment of a fine or heriot, carried with it a customary right to pasturage for a certain number of oxen, sheep, and swine, and to the produce of a certain number of "acres in the arable fields. Rents were paid mainly in kind and by services. Manors were granted by the king in fee to his tenants in capite, chiefly the greater barons, who rendered military service in return. These barons sub-let their lands to their knights, who kept a portion in their own hands in demesneas it is called and let out the rest to the villans the men of the vill, or township in fee; that is, on certain fixed conditions of tenure, usually that the lord should have a fixed share of the produce so many chalders of oats, so much malt and meal, the milk of so many cows, so much honey, so many hens and eggs, and so much cornage, a commutation for beeves and sheep; but the rents were chiefly paid in services; the tenants had to work so many days a week, generally two or three, with their oxen and ploughs, in tilling the lord's land, ploughing, harrowing, reaping, mowing, or leading stores, without payment. The villans could not be dispossessed so long as they rendered the customary dues, the rent could not be raised; their rights and obligations passed, when it changed hands, with the land, of which they were, in fact, joint owners with the lord. As time went on, these services were more and more commuted into fixed money payments, but we still see survivals of these tenures-not only in copyholds, which mainly grew out of holdings in villanage, but in the existing tenures of The glebe strips are interesting as fixing the size and position of some of the Domesday carucates. |