young mind, endowed with any portion of the diviner principle. It does, indeed, indicate an elementary state, where the passions are in conflict both with each other, and with the actual world without, and yet a state full of hope; for it evinces that the soul's powers are in a healthful ferment and stir, and that its several elements, through collision among themselves, and conflict with the exterior world, are gradually expurging whatever is factitious and false, and tending toward a state of fit subordination and concurrent action. The history of chivalry, then, is not merely the history of a particular institution of a particular age. The philosopher also sees in it a type of the tumultuous yet interesting youth of the individual mind, in every age. Leaving it to our readers to verify this suggestion, we proceed at once to the task in hand.

Chivalry was the growth of the Middle or Dark Ages, that vast abyss, which was alike the grave of ancient, and the cradle of modern civilization. This tract of time, stretching from the beginning of the sixth to the close of the sixteenth century, may be well named the fabulous age of the modern world. Athwart its gloom, men are seen to move as trees walking,' and its incidents come like' certain strange things to our ears.' It was a period characterized by strong individuality; by gigantic virtues and gigantic crimes; by picturesque institutions and fantastic customs; by frequent revolution and incessant change. The steady march of government, the supremacy and equal administration of law, the undisturbed procession of peaceful business and pleasures, which mark our time, were then unknown.

In these respects, indeed, the Middle Ages resemble the early age of every people, the times heralding every civilized state of society. A moment's digression, for which the light thereby cast on our subject will win our pardon, will show that the chivalry of the eleventh century of our era was not without some parallel at a vastly more early date. The magnificent day of Grecian civilization emerged from the dun twilight of the age of Orpheus and Hercules, of Minos and Rhadamanthus, and of the heroes of the Trojan war. Tradition, dim and uncertain, yet shows plainly enough that this was an age of convulsion and anarchy, which, intolerant of the wholesome restraints of law, suffered avarice and cruelty, ambition and lust, to stalk abroad, and ravage at their will.

But as in the order of Providence, the world's desperate necessity is ever the sure precursor of a Redeemer, so now the elder chivalry was born to help and to save. In the half-fabulous Hercules, Orpheus, and Minos, we find its three elementary principles impersonated. Physical force put forth for the chastisement of cruelty and oppression; the influence of art and religion, bent to softening and refining the rugged temper of the time; and a wise and equitable legislation, seeking to gather up into harmonious wholeness the severed and discordant principles of society. And in Agamemnon and Achilles, Ulysses and Ajax, Hector and Sarpedon, we behold the feudal chiefs of a primitive day, the Pagan prototypes of Christian knighthood, exhibiting the same daring and individual prowess, distinguished by the same sensitiveness of honor, and burning with the same thirst for adventure, and enthusiasm for military glory. If their spirit fell below that of Christian chivalry, it was because they lacked that pure womanly influence, and that inspiration from a better

religion, which went far toward dignifying even the wildest vagaries of the later knight-errantry. The differing character of Pagan and Christian chivalry is strikingly illustrated by the diverse character of the two most conspicuous aims, toward which their several energies were bent. The ten years' crusade of the Grecian knighthood was directed to the rescue of a frail woman from the arms of her elected paramour. The crusades of the Christian knighthood sought to wrest from the infidel's contaminating grasp a city which had witnessed the most marvellous and beneficent demonstrations of God's power and providence; the humiliation, the sorrows, and the exaltation of the Prince of peace; the occultation and the glorious reappearing of the 'bright and morning star.'

But to return. Chivalry, as we said, was the growth of the dark ages, and first makes its appearance, as a distinct institution, in the eleventh century of our era. It resulted not from one but many causes; and in the form it assumed, and the spirit that impelled it, may be detected the working of all the main elements of that multifarious and chaotic time. To apprehend, then, its origin and its composition, will require some consideration of the then state of Europe, and of the causes which produced that state.

The splendid conflagration of Grecian genius had settled down into its ashes, only sending up a few transient corruscations, when stirred by some casual breeze of circumstance. That mysterious spirit, which burned through an entire people, and reared for itself imperishable trophies in every field of science, arts, and arms, was waxing faint and low. The Pindaric lyre, struck by no lineal hand, was mute. The reed of Herodotus was shivered. The stage was no longer trod by the Sophoclean buskin.' The grove of the academy might be standing yet, but it was no more resonant with the murmur of the 'Athenian Bee.' Demosthenes had lived, Demosthenes had died; and of such there is but one. That concentrated and enthusiastic devotion to country, which was adequate to creating an Aristides and Leonidas, a Phocion and Epaminondas, and which, kindling through the popular mass, enabled a scanty troop to withstand and scatter the power of a vast empire, was now all but extinct in the Grecian bosom. And so, when the formidable Macedonian appeared, Greece shrank before his spear, and bowed beneath his sceptre.

But meanwhile, a new power had arisen in the world, and was absorbing, successively, all other powers into itself. Three hundred years anterior to the subversion of Greek independence by Alexander, a small troop of outlaws had built a castle on a hill beside the Tiber. Here, opening an asylum for adventurers and fugitives from justice, they grew numerous, built a city, procured wives by violence, and so laid the foundations of the Roman State. An intense and boundless ambition; a bravery and perseverance, which shrank from no peril, and halted at no obstacle; an uncompromising, single-eyed devotion to the cause of country; these, the distinctive principles of Rome, communicated to this infant people a perpetually onward movement, which nothing could either stay or turn aside. Country after country passed beneath the wings of the Roman eagle, till, a century and a half before Christ, its shadow rested on Greece also.

But not even thus was the land of Pericles wholly shorn of its in

fluence. The spirit of Grecian thought passed into and interpenetrated the Roman mind. Grace and refinement were taught to dwell in company with the rugged virtues of a military people, and the queen of arms soon learned to contend for other prizes than those of battle, and to covet the olive not less than the laurel crown. Glorious alike in arts and arms, Rome stood at last on the loftiest pinnacle of national greatness, the unchallenged Mistress of the World. But the hour that comes to all, was drawing on to her also. The race of the Cincinnatuses and Catos, of the Scipios and Marcelluses, that temperate, self-denying, sternly-virtuous, patriotic race, whose energies were the spring of the Roman greatness, had passed away. The luxury flowing in with the tribute of a conquered world, had loosed the rigid joints, and relaxed the iron nerves. The people, who for long succeeding generations had sworn a deadly oath against kingly rule, now cringed at an imperial footstool, and a Nero and Caligula, a Commodus and Caracalla, had perpetrated enormities such as heaven suffers not to go by unnoted. Through the corruption universally pervading society, it would seem humanity must have died out, but for the special intervention of Providence. Such special intervention was at hand.

Amid the tangled swamps and dim forests of Germany; over the vast wilds of Scythia and Sarmatia; along the mountain sides and the wide plateaux of Central Asia; in the chill and snowy regions of Scandinavia, covering, like its own Hecla, a heart of fire with an exterior of ice, were gathering the materials of the successive tempests destined to submerge a power, which, battening on the acquisitions of ancestral prowess, and lolling among the memorials of ancient renown, forgot its own perilous position, and shut its eyes on the open book of the future. Franks, Goths, and Vandals, Huns, Normans, and Lombards, such are the names of the principal barbarian tribes, whose office it was, under Providence, at once to chastise the vices of a degenerate people, and to replenish the veins of a decrepid civilization with the healthful life-current of a vigorous though savage youth. Their aggressions, commencing as early as the middle of the third century, continued, with little cessation, till the closing part of the eighth, when the chief part of Europe fell beneath the sway of Charlemagne, the Frank.

And so the magnificent structure, reared by the labor of a thousand years, was now lying in ruins. That form of human nature and of human society, which bore the name of Roman, was no more. Out of the ingredients of its composition, scattered and reabsorbed into the general mass of things, it remained for successive generations to construct the edifice of modern civilization.

The tendency of these scattered elements of society, in passing through the process of re-combination, was toward that system of civil relations, which, matured, was called the Feudal System. This, from its so close connexion with chivalry, demands a brief consideration. The roots of the feudal system must, questionless, be sought in the customs of the barbarous tribes that overran the Roman empire. Each of these acknowledged one principal chief. One-third part of the countries conquered was left to the original owners, while the remaining two-thirds were appropriated by the conquerors to

their own use. These two-thirds were distributed by the chief, in different proportions, among his followers, to be held by them during life, under the name of benefices or fiefs, on condition that they rendered military services, when called on, of a duration proportioned to the value of the fief. The holders of these fiefs were called Leodes, or Freemen. The original inhabitants, occupying the remaining third of the soil, bore generally the name of serfs, or bondmen. They carried on almost the whole agriculture of the country, and sustained, too, the entire burden of taxation. The freeman, exempt from labor and tribute, hunted and fished, or engaged in military expeditions, either at his superior's call, or of his own inclination. Such was the state of things, previous to the reign of Charlemagne, which covered the latter part of the eighth and the fore part of the ninth centuries.

This great man stands preeminent and alone in the European annals of his time. Rising out of the midst of darkness, he filled the whole neighboring world with light, and with the extinction of his life, the light of Europe seemed also to go out. We do not, indeed, think with Mr. James, that the condition of mankind, after his death, was as though he had never been. For it is our faith, be it wisdom or folly, that no truly great mind ever beams on earth in vain, or expends its energies for nought. The fruits of its labors may, indeed, apparently be destroyed. So may you see the mighty Mississippi dissever and sweep away whole acres of its banks, with all their goodly garniture. The stately trees, the growth of innumerable years, with the clambering plants that were their decoration, are swallowed up and disappear in the turbid current. But the end is not yet. Following the stream downward, you will at last find these trees and shrubs lodged against some projecting headland, or shallow part of the river's bed. On this solid basis, the soil gradually accumulates and rises above the brim of the waters. By-and-by a soft green steals over the surface, and shrubs put out, and young trees lift their heads, till at last a complete and fruitful landscape greets our sight. And could we track as well the course of moral, as of physical phenomena, we might, beyond all doubt, assign to the splendid genius of Charlemagne a specific and important agency in the development of modern civilization.

But however this may be, certain it is, that the times immediately following his death, were peculiarly times of confusion and anarchy. The heirs of his throne were a feeble race; and presuming on their weakness, the great crown-vassals, dukes, marquises, and counts, put forward and made good the then novel claim, that the vassal owned an hereditary interest in the fief derived from the crown, and possessed, therefore, the right of transmitting it to the eldest son, subject only to the performance of the original conditions. Hence they proceeded to apportion their lands to smaller proprietors, on the same conditions as they had received them, viz., the rendering of military service to themselves. Thus every great vassal established for himself the prerogatives of a sovereigu prince, such as administering justice, making laws, coining money, and the like. These petty princes were often at war with one another, and yet at all times agreed in encroaching on the less powerful chiefs, who were unable effectually to resist them. Hence it resulted, that many of the smaller, as

also some of the larger barons, resorted to a half-robber life, building strong-holds among inaccessible rocks, and then sallying forth to ravage and spoil, plundering the defenceless traveller, and carrying off captives, and holding them to ransom. In this universal predominance of might over right, it was inevitable that the smaller allodial proprietors, who held immediately of the kings, and the serfs descended from the original conquered inhabitants, should occupy a most precarious position; since, attached to none of the great barons, they were exposed to be harassed and pillaged by all.

At such a crisis it was, and out of the bosom of such turmoil and distress, that Chivalry arose. Some poor barons, compassionating the misery about them, and probably, too, suffering under the oppression of more powerful lords, banded together for the express purpose of redressing wrongs, and protecting the helpless innocent. This their object, distinctly avowed and put prominently forward, appealed directly and forcibly to those generous feelings, which no condition of society can utterly extinguish in man. The Church, which, however faulty, has, to do it justice, been generally found the friend of the friendless, and the protector of the weak, gave its benediction to an undertaking so noble; and thus chivalry, at its outset, was clothed with somewhat of the sanctity of religion. The populace hailed with reverent enthusiasm those who thus stood forth as their champions; nor, indeed, could any class withhold respect from men, who, from no motive of possible self-interest, but from the impulse of simple philanthropy, thus struck for innocence and right. The chivalrous spirit spread, and applications became frequent for admission into this heroic band. Each knight originally had the prerogative of creating others without limit, so that, from being a simple engagement among a few brave, generous men, chivalry soon expanded into a mighty institution. In consequence, however, of this so rapid growth, it soon became manifestly needful to frame such rules as might bar the intrusion of unworthy members. We have no documents specifying the precise period when the chivalric order was first distinguished from others by fixed regulations. All concur, however, in fixing this period somewhere in the eleventh century. The laws and ceremonies which marked the institution, were probably introduced slowly, and at irregular intervals, as occasion might dictate; and being at last collected and arranged, constituted the body of its ceremonial law. The members of the order are, in our tongue, called knights; a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'knecht,' signifying servant, and used to distinguish the select attendants of a prince. The French, chevalier, horseman, and the German, ritter, rider, better define the thing meant; for the knight was, by distinction, a mounted warrior. Among the Celtic tribes originally occupying Gaul, the cavalry service took precedence of all others. And among the Romans, the equites, or horsemen, constituted one order of nobility in the state. So that the honor thus habitually associated with the equestrian service, together with the necessities of the roving life of the knighthood, account for the fact of the knights being horse-back warriors. The character of chivalry, in its palmy state, may perhaps best be gathered from a glance at the leading features of the discipline to which its aspirants were subjected. The ranks of the order were recruited, with few