Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/306

 298 SHORT NOTICES April the later Gothic or national Norse and the spreading Renaissance or classical European style of building, they are not merely and not even in the first place interesting to the historical student of architecture or the arts generally. The author purposely turns his attention throughout to the social and economic aspects of the manor-house, which links the royal palace and the ecclesiastical stronghold of the middle ages with the town architecture of modern baroque centuries. His research always starts from the conditions of the building sites and the frequent changes in them caused by the adventures or the slow development of earlier times, especially the various relations between open sites (Byggesteder), farm- yards (Ladegaarder), and castle-mounds (Voldsteder). Next come the ground- work, the building itself, the inner division and decoration, the artistic style, and the relative parts played by the manorial lord and the architect. Even before it is possible to assign certain buildings to architects of name and reputation, unknown artists' personalities are constructed from types of houses after the fashion of the historian of medieval painting and woodcutting. Hr. Lorenzen has successfully united different lines of inquiry which are usually separated according to either periods or subjects, and although the comparative smallness and uniformity of his area facili- tated this undertaking, the history of European society would greatly profit by the imitation of his model study at least for single territories or provinces of the larger European countries. C. B. The acquisition by the university of Chicago of a manuscript of ' Die Bergchronik des Hardanus Hake, Pastors zu Wildemann ' occasioned the selection by the late Miss Helen Boyce of The Mines of the Upper Harz from 1514 to 1589 as the subject for her research (Menasha : Collegiate Press, 1920) ; but the larger purpose of her essay is ' to draw the attention of the English reader to the historical importance of German mining ', and, as far as the sixteenth century is concerned, this purpose is admirably fulfilled in the two main chapters, which give a full and scholarly account of the mining enterprises, policy, and administration of two dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, Henry the Younger (1514-68) and Julius (1568-89). The varying features of Henry's struggle with Goslar and Brunswick during the wars of the Reformation delayed the full develop- ment of his mining policy till 1552-3, when he took over the regalities and pre-emption of the Rammelsberg mines from Goslar and was free to develop those of the Upper Harz in Grund, Wildemann, Zellerfeld, and Lautenthal unopposed by Brunswick and the Schmalkaldic League. The career of Julius as a ducal captain of industry, frugal and hard-working, a scientific metallurgist and a keen man of business who added to his mining and metal-working enterprises the making of salt, the quarrying of marble, the production of vitriol, and the mining of coal which he introduced into hia smelting-houses and salt works, and who, like Boulton and Wedgwood, planned a canal system as an outlet for his, varied pro- ducts is one of the most interesting chapters in the economic history of the sixteenth century. Not the least significant of his achievements was the foundation of a university at Helmstedt with a faculty of jurists to further the study and adoption of Roman law. The conspicuous financial