descent. You spend time and labour, eyesight and midnight oil in
trying to discover missing links, and very often it is all in vain;
the chain remains broken, and you cannot piece it together. Some of us
whose fate it is to have to try and solve some of these genealogical
problems, and spend hours over a manorial descent, are inclined to
envy other writers who fill their pages _currente calamo_ and are
ignorant of the joys and disappointments of research work.

In the making of the history of England patient research and the
examination of documents are, of course, all-important. In the parish
chest, in the municipal charters and records, in court rolls, in the
muniment-rooms of guilds and city companies, of squire and noble, in
the Record Office, Pipe Rolls, Close Rolls, royal letters and papers,
etc., the real history of the country is contained. Masses of Rolls
and documents of all kinds have in these late years been arranged,
printed, and indexed, enabling the historical student to avail himself
of vast stores of information which were denied to the historian of an
earlier age, or could only be acquired by the expenditure of immense
toil.

Nevertheless, we have to deplore the disappearance of large numbers of
priceless manuscripts, the value of which was not recognized by their
custodians. Owing to the ignorance and carelessness of these keepers
of historic documents vast stores have been hopelessly lost or
destroyed, and have vanished with much else of the England that is
vanishing. We know of a Corporation--that of Abingdon, in Berkshire,
the oldest town in the royal county and anciently its most
important--which possessed an immense store of municipal archives.
These manuscript books would throw light upon the history of the
borough; but in their wisdom the members of the Corporation decided