AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY. SOCIETY must have considerably advanced ere it could have produced an historical record; and who could have furnished even the semblance but the most instructed class, in the enjoyment of uninterrupted leisure, among every people? History therefore remained long a consecrated thing in the hands of the priesthood, from the polytheistical era of the Roman Pontiffs who registered their annals, to the days that the history of Christian Europe became chronicled by the monastic orders*. Archbishop Plagmund superintended the Saxon Annals to the year 891. The first Chronicles, those of Kent or Wessex, were regularly continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their directions, as far as 1000, or even 1070.-The Rev. Dr. Ingram's preface to the Saxon Chronicle. These were our earliest Chronicles; the Britons possibly never wrote any. Had it not been for the maks, exclaimed our leamed Mardan, we Bould not have had a history of Englend The monks provided those crocides which have served both for the ecclesiastical and ciri bistries of every European people. In every abbey the most able of its inmates, or the abbot himself, was appointed to record every considerable transaction in the kingdom, and sometimes extended their view to foreign parts. All these were set down in a volume reserved for this purpose; and on the decease of every sovereign these memorials were laid before the general chapter, to draw out a sort of chronological history, occasionally with a random comment, as the humour of the scribe prompted, or the opinions of the whole monastery sanctioned. Besides these meagre annals the monasteries had other books more curious than their record of public affairs. These were their Leiger-books, of which some have escaped among the few reliques of the universal dissolution of the monasteries. In these registers or diaries they entered all matters relating to their own monastery and its dependencies. As time never pressed on the monkish secretary, his notabilia runs on very miscellaneously. Here were descents of families, and tenures of estates; authorities of charters and of cartularies; curious customs of counties, cities, and great |