The name is absent

a yet greater obliteration of the Marks having been
produced through increasing population, internal
conquest, or the ravages of foreign invaders, the
great kingdom of England at length arises, having
wood and desolate moorland and mountain as its
mark against Scots, Cumbrians and Britons, and
the eternal sea itself as a bulwark against Frankish
and Frisian pirates ɪ.

But although the Mark is waste, it is yet the
property of the community : it belongs to the free-
men as a whole, not as a partible possession: it
may as little be profaned by the stranger, as the
arable land itself which it defends². It is under the
safeguard of the public law, long after it has ceased

ɪ To a very late period, the most powerful of our nobles were the
Lords Marchers or Lords of the Marches of Wales and Scotland.
IIarald was lord of the Marches against the Welsh. And so the here-
ditary Markgraves or Counts of the Mark, Marchiones, have become
kings in Germany, and Italy. Our only Markgraviats by land could
be against the Welsh on the west, the Picts and Scots on the north.
There were undoubtedly others among the Saxons while their king-
doms remained unsettled : but not when once the whole realm became
united under ÆtSelstân. The consolidation of the English power has
put down all but transmarine invaders ; hence the sea is become our
Mark, and the commanders of our ships, the Margraves. But, as
Blackstone rather beautifully says, “ water is a wandering and uncer-
tain thing,” and our Margraves therefore establish no territorial autho-
rity. The reader is referred to Ddnniges, Deutsches Staatsrecht, p. 297,
seq., for a very good account of the Marches of the German Empire.

² If a stranger come through the wood, he shall blow his horn and
shout : this will be evidence that his intentions are just and peaceful.
But if he attempt to slink through in secret, he may be slain, and shall
lie unavenged. Leg. Ini. § 20, 21. Thorpe, i. 114,116. If the death-
blow under such circumstances be publicly avouched, his kindred or lord
shall not even be allowed to prove that he was not a thief: otherwise,
if the manslaughter be concealed. This raises a presumption in law
against the slayer, and the dead man’s kindred shall be admitted to
their oath that he was guiltless.

to be under the immediate protection of the gods :
it is unsafe, full of danger ; death lurks in its shades
and awaits the incautious or hostile visitant :
punishments of the most frightful character are de-
nounced against him who violates it² ; and though,
in historical times, these can only be looked upon
as Comminatory and symbolical, it is very possible
that they may be the records of savage sacrifices
believed due, and even offered, to the gods of the
violated sanctuary. I can well believe that we too
had once our Diana Taurica. The Marks are called
accursed ; that is accursed to man, accursed to him
that does not respect their sanctity : but they are
sacred, for on their maintenance depend the safety
of the community, and the service of the deities
whom that community honours ³. And even when
the gods have abdicated their ancient power, even
to the very last, the terrors of superstition come in
aid of the enactments of law : the deep forests and

¹ Cod. Vercel. And. 1. 38.

² Grimm has given examples of these, but they are too horrible for
quotation. They may be read in his Deutsche Rechtsalterthiimer,
pp. 618, 519, 520.

³ 1 am inclined to think that the Cwealmstow or place of execution
was properly in the mark ; as it is indeed probable that all capital
punishments among the Germans were originally in the nature of sacri-
fices to the gods. When Juliana is about to be put to death, she is
taken to the border, Iondmearce neah, nigh to the landmark. Cod.
Exon. p. 280. Prometheus hung in the aβρoτos epημ(a : though per-
haps there is another and deeper feeling here,—that the friend of man
should suffer in the desert

“ where no man comes,
Nor hath come, since the making of the world! ”

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