conceded by the Government and sanctioned by the nation. It is absurd to collect and preserve our national muniments, at a great cost, and then suffer them to fall a prey to neglect and vermin. It is absurder still, if possible, to build a National Record Office at a vast cost 5 for storing these muniments, and yet exclude the public from consulting and using them. But absurdest of all is it to concede this right, to incur all these expenses, and then neutralise them all by withholding the only means that are required for rendering the privilege real and effectual. The preparation of indexes and catalogues may be the last step in the process; it is the first in the convenience of the reader, and it is more indispensable to him than any other. It is of less consequence to him how papers are arranged or where they are placed, provided only he can obtain a correct knowledge of their contents. Without this knowledge, the most exquisite order, the most perfect arrangement, are no better than a sealed fountain. It might have been right for the Committee of the House of Commons to direct, as a first and principal requirement, that the public muniments should be methodised and arranged. As a preliminary step to their due preservation, as a foundation for future operations, no advice could be sounder. But to arrange and methodise with no intention to ulterior proceedings, to arrange and methodise with no view to use, is both wasteful and preposterous. To erect a vast and cumbrous machine, of many parts, at a heavy cost, and then withhold the only thing requisite to make it work, is neither wise nor economical. Two courses were open to the Government: either to have left the records in their original state, abandoning all idea of a General Record Office, or by a wise and judicious liberality to justify the expenditure incurred in its erection by

The first block of the New Record Office cost 88,4907., and there are four more blocks to come, according to the designs of the architect.

making these records available for the studies of historians and biographers; of all, in short, who are interested in the use of them. The Government has adopted the latter alternative: we think not only wisely, but with the full sanction of the nation. It has incurred no inconsiderable expense in building a general Record Repository. It has appointed officers to superintend and carry on the necessary operations. To give effect to these measures, to justify what has been done, indexes and catalogues are indispensable.

But here is the difficulty. If previous keepers had framed catalogues of these papers and parchments in the first instance; if their successors, as their stores accumulated, had done what is now doing under the Master of the Rolls, the task would have been comparatively easy. On the other hand, the neglect of centuries has now to be repaired. Documents of the greatest value and interest have increased from year to year, until the new building, spacious as it is, has grown already too narrow for its accumulating hoards. Hundreds of busy heads and hands at the Home, the Foreign and Colonial Offices, at the Treasury, the War Office and the Admiralty, in the Chancery, the King's Bench, and the various Law Courts, are daily and hourly engaged with Cyclopean activity in copying or ingrossing innumerable sheets of paper and parchment, doomed eventually to find their last resting-place in the new Record Office. How to grapple with the enormous mass, how to select from such multifarious collections, what catalogues to make and how to make them, are grave and puzzling questions. Equally puzzling is it to know how to satisfy the wants and requirements of all, or of the greatest number of readers. One man is exclusively interested in the problems of history, another is wholly indifferent to such speculations. This man is investigating the genealogy or ramifications of some great family; another is inquiring into the variations of prices;

a third wishes to discover the relations of land and capital, the improvement or deterioration of labour, the social development or decline of this class of the population or of that. The materials required by one set of readers are of no interest to another. Who shall decide upon such conflicting claims? Each has something to urge in his own behalf, and all may light upon discoveries of great moment to the present or future welfare of this country.

Then with what class of record shall the work of indexing commence, supposing that competent hands can be found to undertake the task of making Catalogues or Calendars? For, commonplace as such labour may appear to be, it demands qualifications of a peculiar kind not readily met with; extreme accuracy, unwearied diligence, a thorough knowledge of the subject, tact and judgment to discriminate what is important and essential from what is not. If the funds for such a work were unlimited, it might be easy to satisfy all demands. But that is not to be expected. All that can be done is to apply the annual grant voted by Parliament in the most economical and judicious manner. Whether this

has been done or not we now propose to inquire.

Of the vast multitude of papers deposited at the Rolls, some are exclusively legal and technical; others historical and diplomatic, like the State Papers' proper; others miscellaneous relating to the Exchequer an ample category embracing in its comprehensive range all that relates to the treasures, revenues, finances of the Crown and the country; issues and receipts; subsidies, mint, wardrobe and household accounts; works and public buildings; blood-money, secret service, forest accounts, and the like. To these must be added the papers of the Admiralty, the War Office, the old court of the Star Chamber, and others of minor importance.

Even for an uninitiated reader, it would scarcely be difficult to judge of the relative value and attractiveness of these

various classes of documents, numerous and perplexing as they seem; and if he had any doubts, they might be removed by turning over the pages of any popular living historian. The correspondence of kings, of statesmen, of ambassadors, takes precedence of all others; for without them the great drama of history, the intrigues of Cabinets, the moving incidents of flood and field, are nothing better than an unmeaning panorama and dumb show. Historians have sometimes been laughed at for their almost exclusive affection for heroes, kings, and demi-gods. It has become a fashion of late to insist upon social and economical questions, the rate of wages, the prices of food, the distribution of wealth, the laws that determine the development of humanity, as more suited to the functions of philosophic history, as if kings were of less importance to us than their tax-gatherers.' But so long as the world will persist in thinking that, in the history of the Tudor times, it cannot dispense with Henry VIII., his wives and his ministers, or in that of Mary and Elizabeth, with the fires of Smithfield and the Spanish Armada, or in that of the Stuarts, with Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell-so long as history will gather round the actions and lives of individual men events of the greatest interest to all, and send its readers to sleep when it assumes the garb of philosophy, so long will the historian stick to the concrete elements of flesh and blood, and value mainly, if not exclusively, those materials which are in this way best suited to his purpose.

Perhaps it was out of deference to some such feeling as this that the Master of the Rolls was guided in selecting the papers and correspondence of the State Paper Office for commencing his operations. On the 7th of December, 1855, Sir John Romilly addressed a letter to the Lords of the Treasury, stating That although the Records, State Papers, and documents in his charge constituted the most complete and perfect series of their kind in the civilised world, and were

of the greatest value in a historical and constitutional point of view, they were comparatively useless to the public from the want of proper Calendars and Indexes.' He added that, in order to effect this object, it would be necessary for him to employ a few persons fully qualified to perform the work which he contemplated. The Treasury assented to the proposal, and from that period is to be dated the commencement of that class of the Rolls publications known by the somewhat vague and unattractive appellation of 'Calendars of State Papers.' Of the editors employed by the Master ofthe Rolls four were already in the service of the Government, Mr. Lemon, Mr. Thorpe, Mr. Hamilton, and Mr. Sainsbury. To Mr. Lemon were entrusted the Domestic papers of the reign of Elizabeth, to Mr. Thorpe the Scottish papers from 1509 to 1603, to Mr. Hamilton the Irish, and to Mr. Sainsbury the Colonial Series. Of the editors taken from out of doors, the Domestic papers of the reign of James I. were committed to Mrs. Green, those of Charles I. to the late Mr. Bruce, the Foreign papers of the reign of Elizabeth to Mr. Stevenson, who has since resigned, and the entire correspondence of the reign of Henry VIII. (which could not be divided, like the others, into separate series) to Mr. Brewer. On the death of Mr. Lemon the papers of Elizabeth were transferred to Mrs. Green, who had already completed her 'Calendar of the State Papers of James I.'

Of these Calendars forty-five volumes have already appeared; eight of them edited by official and thirty-seven by unofficial editors. This disparity is not to be attributed to any deficiency of zeal and ability on the part of the former, but to the fact of their being employed on official duties from which the non-official editors are exempt. It must, however, be considered as a complete justification of the Master of the Rolls in asking, and of the Lords of the See Calendars of State Papers, p. 1.

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