superstitious nobility, and every knight was supposed at his creation to pledge himself, as occasion should arise, to that cause. Meanwhile, the defence of God's law against infidels was his primary and standing duty. A knight, whenever present at mass, held the point of his sword before him while the Gospel was read, to signify his readiness to support it. Writers of the Middle Ages compare the knightly to the priestly character in an elaborate parallel, and the investiture of the one was supposed analogous to the ordination of the other. The ceremonies upon this occasion were almost wholly religious. The candidate passed nights in prayer, among priests in a church; he received the sacraments; he entered into a bath, and was clad with a white robe, in allusion to the presumed purification of his life; his sword was solemnly blessed; everything, in short, was contrived to identify his new condition with the defence or religion, or at least of the Church.

To this strong tincture of religion which entered into the composition of chivalry from the twelfth century, was added another ingredient equally distinguishing. A great respect for the female sex had always been a remarkable characteristic of the Northern nations. The German women were high-spirited and virtuous; qualities which might be causes or consequences of the veneration with which they were regarded. I am not sure that we could trace very minutely the condition of women for the period between the subversion of the Roman Empire and the first Crusade; but apparently, man did not grossly abuse his superiority; and in point of civil rights, and even as to the inheritance of property, the two sexes were placed perhaps as nearly on a level as the nature of such warlike societies would admit. There seems, however, to have been more roughness in the social intercourse between the sexes than we find in later periods. The spirit of gallantry, which became so animating a principle of chivalry, must be ascribed to the progressive refinement of society during the twelfth and two succeeding

centuries. In a rude state of manners, as among the lower people in all ages, woman has not full scope to display those fascinating graces by which nature has designed to counterbalance the strength and energy of mankind. Even where those jealous customs that degrade alike the two sexes have not prevailed, her lot is domestic seclusion; nor is she fit to share in the boisterous pastimes of drunken merriment, to which the intercourse of an unpolished people is confined. But as a taste for the more elegant enjoyments of wealth arises, a taste which it is always her policy and her delight to nourish, she obtains an ascendancy at first in the lighter hour, and from thence in the serious occupations of life. She chases, or brings into subjection the god of wine, a victory which might seem more ignoble, were it less difficult, and calls in the aid of divinities more propitious to her ambition. The love of becoming ornament is not perhaps to be regarded in the light of vanity; it is rather an instinct which woman has received from nature to give effect to those charms that are her defence; and when commerce began to minister more effectually to the wants of luxury, the rich furs of the North, the gay silks of Asia, the wrought gold of domestic manufacture illumined the halls of chivalry, and cast, as if by the spell of enchantment, that ineffable grace over beauty, which the choice and arrangement of dress is calculated to bestow. Courtesy had always been the proper attribute of knighthood; protection of the weak its legitimate duty; but these were heightened to a pitch of enthusiasm when woman became their object. There was little jealousy shown in the treatment of that sex, at least in France, the fountain of Chivalry; they were present at festivals, at tournaments, and sat promiscuously in the halls of their castles. The romance of Perceforest tells of a feast where eight hundred knights had each of them a lady eating off his plate. For to eat off the same plate was an usual mark of gallantry or friendship. Hallam.

EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES (1096—1270).

If we compare, at the era of the Crusades, the Latins of Europe with the Greeks and Arabians, their respective degrees of knowledge, industry, and art, our rude ancestors must be content with the third rank in the scale of nations. Their successive improvement and present superiority may be ascribed to a peculiar energy of character, to an active and imitative spirit, unknown to their more polished rivals, who at that time were in a stationary or retrograde state. With such a disposition, the Latins should have derived the most early and essential benefits from a series of events which opened to their eyes the prospect of the world, and introduced them to a long and frequent intercourse with the more cultivated regions of the East.

The first and most obvious progress was in trade and manufactures, in the arts which are strongly prompted by the thirst of wealth, the calls of necessity, and the gratification of the sense of vanity. Among the crowd of unthinking fanatics, a captive or a pilgrim might sometimes observe the superior refinements of Cairo and Constantinople; the first importer of windmills was the benefactor of nations; and if such blessings are enjoyed without any grateful remembrance, history has condescended to notice the more apparent luxuries of silk and sugar, which were transported into Italy from Greece and Egypt.

But the intellectual wants of the Athenians were more slowly felt and supplied; the ardor of studious curiosity was awakened in Europe by different causes and more recent events; and, in the age of the Crusades, they viewed with careless indifference the literature of the Greeks and Arabians; some rudiments of mathematical and medicinal knowledge might be imparted in practice and in figures; necessity might produce some interpreters for the grosser business of merchants and soldiers, but the commerce of the

Orientals had not diffused the study and knowledge of their languages in the schools of Europe.

The principle of the Crusades was, to speak the truth, a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the Inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry flowed from the baneful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

In the profession of Christianity, in the cultivation of a fertile land, the northern conquerors of the Roman Empire insensibly mingled with the provincials, and rekindled the embers of the arts of antiquity. Their settlements, about the age of Charlemagne, had acquired some degree of order and stability, when they were overwhelmed by new swarms of invaders, the Normans, Saracens, and Hungarians, who replunged the western countries of Europe into their former state of anarchy and barbarism. About the eleventh century, the second tempest had subsided by the expulsion or conversion of the enemies of Christendom; the tide of civilisation, which had so long ebbed, began to flow with a steady and accelerated course, and a fairer prospect was opened to the hopes and efforts of the rising generation. Great was the increase and rapid the progress during the two hundred years of the Crusades; and some philosophers have applauded the propitious influence of these holy wars, which appear to me to have checked rather than forwarded

the maturity of Europe. The lives and labors of millions which were buried in the East would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country: the accumulated stock of industry and wealth would have overflowed in navigation and trade, and the Latins would have become enriched and enlightened by a pure and friendly correspondence with the climates of the East.

This

In one respect, I can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the Crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe were chained to the soil without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote; they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord, of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy.

Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the Crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil. Gibbon.