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increased', may suffice to prove the high esteem in which Beda has been held wherever he has been known. His preface shews that his thirst for original evidence was far more keen than that of many professed critics; chronologers will know how to prize the advance made in their science by him, who introduced into history the one fixed date A D.

The attention of scholars has of late been recalled by Rönsch, Paucker, Schuchardt and others, to the mass of valuable material, lexicographical and other, buried in the early Christian writings. For palaeographical purposes few manuscripts of the classics are to be compared with the earliest biblical and patristic mss, which latter are often nearly or quite contemporary with the authors. The renewed study of history also, to be fruitful, must lead away from arid or florid compendiums to the living sources. The 'monumenta Germaniae' have long been issued to schools in cheap editions, and England has in Beda's history, abbats of Wearmouth and letter to Ecgberct, documents of far greater worth, both as regards form and matter, than the origines of Germany or any other European nation. The fear that boys or girls may 'spoil their Latin style' by reading late Latin seems chimerical. If unclassical forms are pointed out as they occur, the classical forms are imprinted only the deeper in the memory: we do not find that Homer, Pindar, Herodotus, Theocritus, corrupt our Greek prose.

1 In F Liverani spicilegium liberianum Flor 1863 fol pp 35-108 a number of homilies ascribed to Beda are printed for the first time.

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For cursory reading' few Latin writers are better adapted than Beda, whose perspicuity stands out in strong relief from the bombast affected by Aldhelm before him, and by most of our chroniclers for centuries after him.

It will be well for England if her church cleaves stedfastly to the rule of 'learning and working' (see pp 226 227) professed and practised by Beda and his worthies, and in these latter days revived among us in the teaching and life of F D Maurice.

The examples given in the glossary are intended to be supplementary to those stored in the lexicons. We have to thank the authorities of Trinity, Sidney Sussex, Emmanuel and St John's colleges, for the free use of manuscripts.

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