favourite study of scholastic philosophy and theology.

But we must turn from particular classes and ranks of men to the whole
body of the population, exclusively of that great section of it which
unhappily lay outside the observation of any but a very few writers--
whether poets or historians. In the people at large we may, indeed,
easily discern in this period the signs of an advance towards that self-
government which is the true foundation of our national greatness. But on
the other hand it is impossible not to observe how, while the moral ideas
of the people wore still under the control of the Church, the State in its
turn still ubiquitously interfered in the settlement of the conditions of
social existence, fixing prices, controlling personal expenditure,
regulating wages. Not until England had fully attained to the character
of a commercial country, which it was coming gradually to assume, did its
inhabitants begin to understand the value of that which has gradually come
to distinguish ours among the nations of Europe, viz. the right of
individual Englishmen, as well as of the English people, to manage their
own affairs for themselves. This may help to explain what can hardly fail
to strike a reader of Chaucer and of the few contemporary remains of our
literature. About our national life in this period, both in its virtues
and in its vices, there is something--it matters little whether we call
it--childlike or childish; in its "apert" if not in its privy sides it
lacks the seriousness belonging to men and to generations, who have learnt
to control themselves, instead of relying on the control of others.

In illustration of this assertion, appeal might be made to several of the
most salient features in the social life of the period. The extravagant
expenditure in dress, fostered by a love of pageantry of various kinds
encouraged by both chivalry and the Church, has been already referred to;
it was by no means distinctive of any one class of the population. Among