WIT AND WISDOM

OF THE

REV. SYDNEY SMITH:

BEING

SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS,

AND PASSAGES OF HIS

LETTERS AND TABLE TALK.

With Notes, and a Biographical Memoir,

By EVERT A. DUYCKINCK.

A Portrait, after G. Stewart Newton,

AND AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER.

In One Volume, 12mo, Cloth, Price $1.25.

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The chief writings of the Rev. Sydney Smith are included in the original English editions in eight octavo volumes. These are his “Two Volumes of Sermons,” 1809; the Collection of his “Works,” (embracing articles from the Edinburgh Review, the Plymley Letters, and other Papers) 4 vols., 1839-40; a posthumous volume, “Sermons preached at St. Paul’s,” &c., 1846; “Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, delivered at the Royal Institution,” published in 1850. To these are to be added, “Letters on American Debts,” 1843; “A Fragment on the Irish Roman Catholic Church,” 1845; Letters on Railway Management and other topics to the Morning Chronicle; Articles in the Edinburgh Review not collected in his “Works”; numerous Sketches and Essays printed in the “Memoirs,” by his daughter, Lady Holland; and the extensive series of “Letters,” edited by Mrs. Austin. These have mainly furnished the material of the present volume. In the preparation of the Table Talk, Memoir, and Notes, many collateral sources have been drawn upon.

The most important of Sydney Smith’s Writings will here be found given entire; while the selection generally presents the most characteristic passages of his “Wit and Wisdom” from the whole. Numerous Miscellanies, of much interest, are included which are not to be met with in any previous collection of the author’s works.

Contents.

Biographical Memoir, by the Editor.

Articles from the Edinburgh Review, (including the Papers on Female Education, Professional Education, Notices of America, &c., &c.)

Sketches of Moral Philosophy, (including the Essays on the Conduct of the Understanding; on Wit and Humor, &c., &c.)

The Peter Plymley Letters.

Passages from Sermons.

Speeches on the Reform-Bill. The Ballot.

Letters on American Debts.

Passages from Letters on the Ecclesiastical Commission.

A Fragment on the Irish Roman Catholic Church.

Letters on Railway Management.

Character of Sir James Mackintosh and of Francis Horner.

Practical Essays, &c.

Passages from Letters.

Table Talk. Personal, &c., &c.

DR. DORAN’S WORKS.

Table Traits, with Something on them. By Dr. Doran, Author of “Habits and Men,” &c., &c. 12mo., cloth. Price $1 25. Half calf, or mor. ex., $2 25.

BILL OF FARE.

The Legend of Amphitryon—A Prologue.
Diet and Digestion.—Water—Breakfast,
Corn, Bread, &c.—Tea—Coffee—Chocolate.
The Old Coffee House.—The French Cafés.
The Ancient Cook and his Art.
The Modern Cook and his Science.
Pen and Ink Sketches of Careme.
Dinner Traits.—The Materials for Dining.
A Light Dinner for Two.—Sauces.
The Parasite.
Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age.
Table Traits of England in the Early Times.
Table Traits of the Last Century.
Wine and Water.
The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it.
The Making and Marring of Wine.
Imperial Drinkers, and Incidents in Germany.—An
Incident of Travel.
A few odd Glasses of Wine. [Egyptian]
The Tables of the Ancient and Modern
The Diet of the Saints of Old.
The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques.
The Support of Modern Saints.
The Cæsars at Table.
Their Majesties at Meat.
English Kings at their Tables.
Strange Banquets—The Castellan Von Coucy.
Authors and their Dietetics.
The Liquor-loving Laureates.
Supper.

Nearly every page contains something amusing, and you may shut the book in the middle, and open it again after a twelvemonth’s interval, without at all compromising its power of affording enjoyment.—The London Times.

Habits and Men, with Remnants of Record touching the Makers of both. By Dr. Doran, author of “Table Traits,” &c., &c. 12mo., cloth, $1. Half calf, or mor. extra, $2 00.

CONTENTS.

Between You and Me.
Man Manners, and a Story with a Moral to it.
Adonis at Home and Abroad—Pt. I.—Pt. II.
Remnants of Stage Dresses.
Three Acts and an Epilogue.
The Tiring-Bowers of Queens “La Mode
in her Birth-place.”
Hats, Wigs and their Wearers.
Beards and their Bearers.—Swords.
Gloves, B—s, and Buttons.—Stockings.
“Masks and Faces.”
Puppets for Grown Gentlemen.
Touching Tailors.
The Tailors Measured by the Poets.
Sir John Hawkwood, the Heroic Tailor.
Why did the Tailors choose St. William for
their Patron?
George Dörfling, the Martial Tailor.
Admiral Hobson, the Naval Tailor.
John Stow, the Antiquarian Tailor.
John Speed, the Antiquarian Tailor.
Samuel Pepys, the Official Tailor.
Richard Ryan, the Theatrical Tailor.
Paul Whitehead, the Poet Tailor.
Mems. of “Merchant Tailors.”
Chapters on Beaux.
The Beaux of the Olden Time.
Beau Fielding—Beau Nash.
The Prince de Ligne—Beau Brummel.
Doctors Ready Dressed—Odd Fashions.

This is one of the most amusing and erudite books of the day, abounding in anecdote and queer stories of the dress of different ages, of kings and queens, poets, statesmen, tailors, &c. The sketches of the “tiring-bowers” of queens, of Paul Whitehead, the poet tailor; of Beau Nash, and Beau Fielding, are rich in lore, and are produced in sparkling style.—Boston Courier.

The Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover. By Dr. Doran. 2 vols., 12mo., cloth, $2. Half calf, or mor. extra, $4 00.

CONTENTS.

Sophia Dorothea, Wife of George I.
Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, Wife of George II.
Charlotte, Wife of George III.
Caroline of Brunswick, Wife of George IV.

Dr. Doran has availed himself of the ample material scattered through personal memoirs, pamphlets, periodicals, and other fugitive literature of the time, with the thoroughness, quick eye for humor, and appreciation of the picturesque, which characterize his other amusing works.

KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS.

KNIGHTS

AND THEIR DAYS

BY DR. DORAN

AUTHOR OF “LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER,”
“TABLE TRAITS,” “HABITS AND MEN,” ETC.

“Oh, ’tis a brave profession, and rewards

All loss we meet, with double weight of glory.”

Shirley (The Gentleman of Venice.)

REDFIELD

34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK

1856

TO

PHILIPPE WATIER, ESQ.

IN MEMORY OF MERRY NIGHTS AND DAYS NEAR METZ AND THE
MOSELLE,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

Is inscribed

BY HIS VERY SINCERE FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS.

THE

KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS.

A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE.

“La bravoure est une qualité innée, on ne se la donne pas.”

Napoleon I.

Dr. Lingard, when adverting to the sons of Henry II., and their knightly practices, remarks that although chivalry was considered the school of honor and probity, there was not overmuch of those or of any other virtues to be found among the members of the chivalrous orders. He names the vices that were more common, as he thinks, and probably with some justice. Hallam, on the other hand, looks on the institution of chivalry as the best school of moral discipline in the Middle Ages: and as the great and influential source of human improvement. “It preserved,” he says, “an exquisite sense of honor, which in its results worked as great effects as either of the powerful spirits of liberty and religion, which have given a predominant impulse to the moral sentiments and energies of mankind.”

The custom of receiving arms at the age of manhood is supposed, by the same author, to have been established among the nations that overthrew the Roman Empire; and he cites the familiar passage from Tacitus, descriptive of this custom among the Germans. At first, little but bodily strength seems to have been required on the part of the candidate. The qualifications and the forms of investiture changed or improved with the times.

In a general sense, chivalry, according to Hallam, may be referred to the age of Charlemagne, when the Caballarii, or horsemen, became the distinctive appellation of those feudal tenants and allodial proprietors who were bound to serve on horseback. When these were equipped and formally appointed to their martial duties, they were, in point of fact, knights, with so far more incentives to distinction than modern soldiers, that each man depended on himself, and not on the general body. Except in certain cases, the individual has now but few chances of distinction; and knighthood, in its solitary aspect, may be said to have been blown up by gunpowder.

As examples of the true knightly spirit in ancient times, Mr. Hallam cites Achilles, who had a supreme indifference for the question of what side he fought upon, had a strong affection for a friend, and looked at death calmly. I think Mr. Hallam over-rates the bully Greek considerably. His instance of the Cid Ruy Diaz, as a perfect specimen of what the modern knight ought to have been, is less to be gainsaid.

In old times, as in later days, there were knights who acquired the appellation by favor rather than service; or by a compelled rather than a voluntary service. The old landholders, the Caballarii, or Milites, as they came to be called, were landholders who followed their lord to the field, by feudal obligation: paying their rent, or part of it, by such service. The voluntary knights were those “younger brothers,” perhaps, who sought to amend their indifferent fortunes by joining the banner of some lord. These were not legally knights, but they might win the honor by their prowess; and thus in arms, dress, and title, the younger brother became the equal of the wealthy landholders. He became even their superior, in one sense, for as Mr. Hallam adds:—“The territorial knights became by degrees ashamed of assuming a title which the others had won by merit, till they themselves could challenge it by real desert.”

The connection of knighthood with feudal tenure was much loosened, if it did not altogether disappear, by the Crusades. There the knights were chiefly volunteers who served for pay: all feudal service there was out of the question. Its connection with religion was, on the other hand, much increased, particularly among the Norman knights who had not hitherto, like the Anglo-Saxons, looked upon chivalric investiture as necessarily a religious ceremony. The crusaders made religious professors, at least, of all knights, and never was one of these present at the reading of the gospel, without holding the point of his sword toward the book, in testimony of his desire to uphold what it taught by force of arms. From this time the passage into knighthood was a solemn ceremony; the candidate was belted, white-robed, and absolved after due confession, when his sword was blessed, and Heaven was supposed to be its director. With the love of God was combined love for the ladies. What was implied was that the knight should display courtesy, gallantry, and readiness to defend, wherever those services were required by defenceless women. Where such was bounden duty—but many knights did not so understand it—there was an increase of refinement in society; and probably there is nothing overcharged in the old ballad which tells us of a feast at Perceforest, where eight hundred knights sat at a feast, each of them with a lady at his side, eating off the same plate; the then fashionable sign of a refined friendship, mingled with a spirit of gallantry. That the husbands occasionally looked with uneasiness upon this arrangement, is illustrated in the unreasonably jealous husband in the romance of “Lancelot du Lac;” but, as the lady tells him, he had little right to cavil at all, for it was an age since any knight had eaten with her off the same plate.

Among the Romans the word virtue implied both virtue and valor—as if bravery in a man were the same thing as virtue in a woman. It certainly did not signify among Roman knights that a brave man was necessarily virtuous. In more recent times the word gallantry has been made also to take a double meaning, implying not only courage in man, but his courtesy toward woman. Both in ancient and modern times, however, the words, or their meanings, have been much abused. At a more recent period, perhaps, gallantry was never better illustrated than when in an encounter by hostile squadrons near Cherbourg, the adverse factions stood still, on a knight, wearing the colors of his mistress, advancing from the ranks of one party, and challenging to single combat the cavalier in the opposite ranks who was the most deeply in love with his mistress. There was no lack of adversaries, and the amorous knights fell on one another with a fury little akin to love.

A knight thus slain for his love was duly honored by his lady and contemporaries. Thus we read in the history of Gyron le Courtois, that the chivalric king so named, with his royal cousin Melyadus, a knight, by way of equerry, and a maiden, went together in search of the body of a chevalier who had fallen pour les beaux yeux of that very lady. They found the body picturesquely disposed in a pool of blood, the unconscious hand still grasping the hilt of the sword that had been drawn in honor of the maiden. “Ah, beauteous friend!” exclaims the lady, “how dearly hast thou paid for my love! The good and the joy we have shared have only brought thee death. Beauteous friend, courteous and wise, valiant, heroic, good knight in every guise, since thou has lost thy youth for me in this manner, in this strait, and in this agony, as it clearly appears, what else remains for me to suffer for thy sake, unless that I should keep you company? Friend, friend, thy beauty has departed for the love of me, thy flesh lies here bloody. Friend, friend, we were both nourished together. I knew not what love was when I gave my heart to love thee,” &c., &c., &c. “Young friend,” continues the lady, “thou wert my joy and my consolation: for to see thee and to speak to thee alone were sufficient to inspire joy, &c., &c., &c. Friend, what I behold slays me, I feel that death is within my heart.” The lady then took up the bloody sword, and requested Melyadus to look after the honorable interment of the knight on that spot, and that he would see her own body deposited by her “friend’s” side, in the same grave. Melyadus expressed great astonishment at the latter part of the request, but as the lady insisted that her hour was at hand, he promised to fulfil all her wishes. Meanwhile the maiden knelt by the side of the dead knight, held his sword to her lips, and gently died upon his breast. Gyron said it was the wofullest sight that eye had ever beheld; but all courteous as Gyron was, and he was so to such a remarkable degree that he derived a surname from his courtesy, I say that in spite of his sympathy and gallantry, he appears to have had a quick eye toward making such profit as authors could make in those days, from ready writing upon subjects of interest. Before another word was said touching the interment of the two lovers, Gyron intimated that he would write a ballad upon them that should have a universal circulation, and be sung in all lands where there were gentle hearts and sweet voices. Gyron performed what he promised, and the ballad of “Absdlon and Cesala,” serves to show what very rough rhymes the courteous poet could employ to illustrate a romantic incident. Let it be added that, however the knights may sometimes have failed in their truth, this was very rarely the case with the ladies. When Jordano Bruno was received in his exile by Sir Philip Sidney, he requited the hospitality by dedicating a poem to the latter. In this dedication, he says: “With one solitary exception, all misfortunes that flesh is heir to have been visited on me. I have tasted every kind of calamity but one, that of finding false a woman’s love.”

It was not every knight that could make such an exception. Certainly not that pearl of knights, King Arthur himself. What a wife had that knight in the person of Guinever? Nay, he is said to have had three wives of that name, and that all of them were as faithless as ladies well could be. Some assert that the described deeds of these three are in fact but the evil-doings of one. However this may be, I may observe summarily here what I have said in reference to Guinever in another place. With regard to this triple-lady, the very small virtue of one third of the whole will not salubriously leaven the entire lump. If romance be true, and there is more about the history of Guinever than any other lady—she was a delicious, audacious, winning, seductive, irresistible, and heartless hussy; and a shameless! and a barefaced! Only read “Sir Lancelot du Lac!” Yes, it can not be doubted but that in the voluminous romances of the old day, there was a sprinkling of historical facts. Now, if a thousandth part of what is recorded of this heart-bewitching Guinever be true, she must have been such a lady as we can not now conceive of. True daughter of her mother Venus, when a son of Mars was not at hand, she could stoop to Mulciber. If the king was not at home, she could listen to a knight. If both were away, esquire or page might speak boldly without fear of being unheeded; and if all were absent, in the chase, or at the fray, there was always a good-looking groom in the saddle-room with whom Guinever could converse, without holding that so to do was anything derogatory. I know no more merry reading than that same ton-weight of romance which goes by the name of “Sir Lancelot du Lac.” But it is not of that sort which Mrs. Chapone would recommend to young ladies, or that Dr. Cumming would read aloud in the Duke of Argyll’s drawing-room. It is a book, however, which a grave man a little tired of his gravity, may look into between serious studies and solemn pursuits—a book for a lone winter evening by a library-fire, with wine and walnuts at hand; or for an old-fashioned summer’s evening, in a bower through whose foliage the sun pours his adieu, as gorgeously red as the Burgundy in your flask. Of a truth, a man must be “in a concatenation accordingly,” ere he may venture to address himself to the chronicle which tells of the “bamboches,” “fredaines,” and “bombances,” of Guinever the Frail, and of Lancelot du Lac.

We confess to having more regard for Arthur than for his triple-wife Guinever. As I have had occasion to say in other pages, “I do not like to give up Arthur!” I love the name, the hero, and his romantic deeds. I deem lightly of his light o’love bearing. Think of his provocation both ways! Whatever the privilege of chivalry may have been, it was the practice of too many knights to be faithless. They vowed fidelity, but they were a promise-breaking, word-despising crew. On this point I am more inclined to agree with Dr. Lingard than with Mr. Hallam. Honor was ever on their lips, but not always in their hearts, and it was little respected by them, when found in the possession of their neighbor’s wives. How does Scott consider them in this respect, when in describing a triad of knights, he says,

“There were two who loved their neighbor’s wives,

And one who loved his own.”

Yet how is it that knights are so invariably mentioned with long-winded laudation by Romish writers—always excepting Lingard—when they desire to illustrate the devoted spirit of olden times? Is it that the knights were truthful, devout, chaste, God-fearing? not a jot! Is it because the cavaliers cared but for one thing, in the sense of having fear but for one thing, and that the devil? To escape from being finally triumphed over by the Father of Evil, they paid largely, reverenced outwardly, confessed unreservedly, and were absolved plenarily. That is the reason why chivalry was patted on the back by Rome. At the same time we must not condemn a system, the principles of which were calculated to work such extensive ameliorations in society as chivalry. Christianity itself might be condemned were we to judge of it by the shortcomings of its followers.

But even Mr. Hallam is compelled at last, reluctantly, to confess that the morals of chivalry were not pure. After all his praise of the system, he looks at its literature, and with his eye resting on the tales and romances written for the delight and instruction of chivalric ladies and gentlemen, he remarks that the “violation of marriage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of the brave and the fair; and an accomplished knight seems to have enjoyed as undoubted prerogatives, by general consent of opinion, as were claimed by the brilliant courtiers of Louis XV.” There was an especial reason for this, the courtiers of Louis XV. might be anything they chose, provided that with gallantry they were loyal, courteous, and munificent. Now loyalty, courtesy, and that prodigality which goes by the name of munificence, were exactly the virtues that were deemed most essential to chivalry. But these were construed by the old knights as they were by the more modern courtiers. The first took advantages in combat that would now be deemed disloyal by any but a Muscovite. The second would cheat at cards in the gaming saloons of Versailles, while they would run the men through who spoke lightly of their descent. So with regard to courtesy, the knight was full of honeyed phrases to his equals and superiors, but was as coarsely arrogant as Menschikoff to an inferior. In the same way, Louis XIV., who would never pass one of his own scullery-maids without raising his plumed beaver, could address terms to the ladies of his court, which, but for the sacred majesty which was supposed to environ his person, might have purchased for him a severe castigation. Then consider the case of that “first gentleman in Europe,” George, Prince of Wales: he really forfeited his right to the throne by marrying a Catholic lady, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and he freed himself unscrupulously from the scrape by uttering a lie. And so again with munificence; the greater part of these knights and courtiers were entirely thoughtless of the value of money. At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, for instance, whole estates were mortgaged or sold, in order that the owners might outshine all competitors in the brilliancy and quality of their dress. This sort of extravagance makes one man look glad and all his relatives rueful. The fact is that when men thus erred, it was for want of observance of a Christian principle; and if men neglect that observance, it is as little in the power of chivalry as of masonry to mend him. There was “a perfect idea” of chivalry, indeed, but if any knight ever realized it in his own person, he was, simply, nearly a perfect Christian, and would have been still nearer to perfection in the latter character if he had studied the few simple rules of the system of religion rather than the stilted and unsteady ones of romance. The study of the latter, at all events, did not prevent, but in many instances caused a dissoluteness of manners, a fondness for war rather than peace, and a wide distinction between classes, making aristocrats of the few, and villains of the many.

Let me add here, as I have been speaking of the romance of “Lancelot du Lac,” that I quite agree with Montluc, who after completing his chronicle of the History of France, observed that it would be found more profitable reading than either Lancelot or Amadis. La Noue especially condemns the latter as corrupting the manners of the age. Southey, again, observes that these chivalric romances acquired their poison in France or in Italy. The Spanish and Portuguese romances he describes as free from all taint. In the Amadis the very well-being of the world is made to rest upon chivalry. “What would become of the world,” it is asked in the twenty-second book of the Amadis, “if God did not provide for the defence of the weak and helpless against unjust usurpers? And how could provision be made, if good knights were satisfied to do nothing else but sit in chamber with the ladies? What would then the world become, but a vast community of brigands?”

Lamotte Levayer was of a different opinion. “Les armes,” he says, when commenting upon chivalry and arms generally; “Les armes detruisent tous les arts excepté ceux qui favorisent la gloire.” In Germany, too, where chivalry was often turned to the oppression of the weak rather than employed for their protection, the popular contempt and dread of “knightly principles” were early illustrated in the proverb, “Er will Ritter an mir werden,” He wants to play the knight over me. In which proverb, knight stands for oppressor or insulter. In our own country the order came to be little cared for, but on different grounds.

Dr. Nares in his “Heraldic Anomalies,” deplores the fact that mere knighthood has fallen into contempt. He dates this from the period when James I. placed baronets above knights. The hereditary title became a thing to be coveted, but knights who were always held to be knights bachelors, could not of course bequeath a title to child or children who were not supposed in heraldry to exist. The Doctor quotes Sir John Ferne, to show that Olibion, the son of Asteriel, of the line of Japhet, was the first knight ever created. The personage in question was sent forth to battle, after his sire had smitten him lightly nine times with Japhet’s falchion, forged before the flood. There is little doubt but that originally a knight was simply Knecht, servant of the king. Dr. Nares says that the Thanes were so in the north, and that these, although of gentle blood, exercised the offices even of cooks and barbers to the royal person. But may not these offices have been performed by the “unter Thans,” or deputies? I shall have occasion to observe, subsequently, on the law which deprived a knight’s descendants of his arms, if they turned merchants; but in Saxon times it is worthy of observation, that if a merchant made three voyages in one of his own ships, he was thenceforward the Thane’s right-worthy, or equal.

Among the Romans a blow on the ear gave the slave freedom. Did the blow on the shoulder given to a knight make a free-servant of him? Something of the sort seems to have been intended. The title was doubtless mainly but not exclusively military. To dub, from the Saxon word dubban, was either to gird or put on, “don,” or was to strike, and perhaps both may be meant, for the knight was girt with spurs, as well as stricken, or geschlagen as the German term has it.

There was striking, too, at the unmaking of a knight. His heels were then degraded of their spurs, the latter being beaten or chopped away. “His heels deserved it,” says Bertram of the cowardly Parolles, “his heels deserved it for usurping of his spurs so long.” The sword, too, on such occasions, was broken.

Fuller justly says that “the plainer the coat is, the more ancient and honorable.” He adds, that “two colors are necessary and most highly honorable: three are very highly honorable; four commendable; five excusable; more disgraceful.” He must have been a gastronomic King-at-Arms, who so loaded a “coat” with fish, flesh, and fowl, that an observer remarked, “it was well victualled enough to stand a siege.” Or is the richest coloring, but, as Fuller again says, “Herbs vert, being natural, are better than Or.” He describes a “Bend as the best ordinary, being a belt athwart,” but a coat bruised with a bar sinister is hardly a distinction to be proud of. If the heralds of George the Second’s time looked upon that monarch as the son of Count Königsmark, as Jacobite-minded heralds may have been malignant enough to do, they no doubt mentally drew the degrading bar across the royal arms, and tacitly denied the knighthood conferred by what they, in such foolish case, would have deemed an illegitimate hand.

Alluding to reasons for some bearings, Fuller tells us that, “whereas the Earls of Oxford anciently gave their ‘coats’ plain, quarterly gules and or, they took afterward in the first a mullet or star-argent, because the chief of the house had a falling-star, as it was said, alighting on his shield as he was fighting in the Holy Land.”

It is to be observed that when treating of precedency, Fuller places knights, or “soldiers” with seamen, civilians, and physicians, and after saints, confessors, prelates, statesmen, and judges. Knights and physicians he seems to have considered as equally terrible to life; but in his order of placing he was led by no particular principle, for among the lowest he places “learned writers,” and “benefactors to the public.” He has, indeed, one principle, as may be seen, wherein he says, “I place first princes, good manners obliging all other persons to follow them, as religion obliges me to follow God’s example by a royal recognition of that original precedency, which he has granted to his vicegerents.”

The Romans are said to have established the earliest known order of knighthood; and the members at one time wore rings, as a mark of distinction, as in later times knights wore spurs. The knights of the Holy Roman Empire were members of a modern order, whose sovereigns are not, what they would have themselves considered, descendants of the Cæsars. If we only knew what our own Round Table was, and where it stood, we should be enabled to speak more decisively upon the question of the chevaliers who sat around it. But it is undecided whether the table was not really a house. At it, or in it, the knights met during the season of Pentecost, but whether the assembly was collected at Winchester or Windsor no one seems able to determine; and he would impart no particularly valuable knowledge even if he could.

Knighthood was a sort of nobility worth having, for it testified to the merit of the wearer. An inherited title should, indeed, compel him who succeeds to it, to do nothing to disgrace it: but preserving the lustre is not half so meritorious as creating it. Knights bachelors were so called because the distinction was conferred for some act of personal courage, to reward for which the offspring of the knight could make no claim. He was, in this respect, to them as though he had been never married. The knight bachelor was a truly proud man. The word knecht simply implied a servant, sworn to continue good service in honor of the sovereign, and of God and St. George. “I remain your sworn servant” is a form of epistolary valediction which crept into the letters of other orders in later times. The manner of making was more theatrical than at the present time; and we should now smile if we were to see, on a lofty scaffold in St. Paul’s, a city gentleman seated in a chair of silver adorned with green silk, undergoing exhortation from the bishop, and carried up between two lords, to be dubbed under the sovereign’s hand, a good knight, by the help of Heaven and his patron saint.

In old days belted earls could create knights. In modern times, the only subject who is legally entitled to confer the honor of chivalry is the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and some of his “subjects” consider it the most terrible of his privileges. The attempt to dispute the right arose, perhaps, from those who dreaded the exercise of it on themselves. However this may be, it is certain that the vexata questio was finally set at rest in 1823, when the judges declared that the power in question undoubtedly resided in the Lords Lieutenant, since the Union, as it did in the viceroys who reigned vicariously previous to that period. According to the etiquette of heraldry, the distinctive appellation “Sir” should never be omitted even when the knight is a noble of the first hereditary rank. “The Right Honorable Sir Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland,” would have been the proper heraldic defining of his grace when he became Knight of the Garter, for it is a rule that “the greater dignity doth never drown the lesser, but both stand together in one person.”

A knight never surrendered his sword but to a knight. “Are you knight and gentleman?” asked Suffolk, when, four hundred years ago, he yielded to Regnault: “I am a gentleman,” said Regnault, “but I am not yet a knight.” Whereupon Suffolk bade him kneel, dubbed him knight, received the accustomed oaths, and then gave up his old sword to the new chevalier.

Clark considered that the order was degraded from its exclusively military character, when membership was conferred upon gownsmen, physician, burghers, and artists. He considered that civil merit, so distinguished, was a loss of reputation to military knights. The logic by which he arrives at such a conclusion is rather of the loosest. It may be admitted, however, that the matter has been specially abused in Germany. Monsieur About, that clever gentleman, who wrote “Tolla” out of somebody else’s book, very pertinently remarks in his review of the fine-art department of the Paris Exhibition, that the difference between English and German artists is, that the former are well-paid, but that very few of them are knights, while the latter are ill-paid and consequently ill-clothed; but, for lack of clothes, have abundance of ribands.

Dr. Nares himself is of something of the opinion of Clark, and he ridicules the idea of a chivalric and martial title being given to brewers, silversmiths, attorneys, apothecaries, upholsterers, hosiers, tailors. &c. He asserts that knighthood should belong only to military members: but of these no inconsiderable number would have to be unknighted, or would have to wait an indefinite time for the honor were the old rule strictly observed, whereby no man was entitled to the rank and degree of knighthood, who had not actually been in battle and captured a prisoner with his own hands. With respect to the obligation on knights to defend and maintain all ladies, gentlewomen, widows, and orphans; the one class of men may be said to be just as likely to fulfil this obligation, as the other class.

France, Italy, and Germany, long had their forensic knights, certain titles at the bar giving equal privileges; and the obligations above alluded to were supposed to be observed by these knights—who found esquires in their clerks, in the forensic war which they were for ever waging in defence of right. Unhappily these forensic chevaliers so often fought in defence of wrong and called it right, that the actual duty was indiscriminately performed or neglected.

It has often been said of “orders” that they are indelible. However this may be with the clergy, it is especially the case with knights. To whatever title a knight might attain, duke, earl, or baron, he never ceased to be a knight. In proof too that the latter title was considered one of augmentation, is cited the case of Louis XI., who, at his coronation, was knighted by Philip, Duke of Burgundy. “If Louis,” says an eminent writer (thus cited by Dr. Nares), “had been made duke, marquis, or earl, it would have detracted from him, all those titles being in himself.”

The crown, when it stood in need of the chivalrous arms of its knights, called for the required feudal service, not from its earls as such, but from its barons. To every earldom was annexed a barony, whereby their feudal service with its several dependent duties was alone ascertained. “That is,” says Berington, in his Henry II., “the tenure of barony and not of earldom constituted the legal vassal of the crown. Each earl was at the same time a baron, as were the bishops and some abbots and priors of orders.”

Some of these barons were the founders of parish churches, but the terms on which priest and patron occasionally lived may be seen in the law, whereby patrons or feudatarii killing the rector, vicar, or clerk of their church, or mutilating him, were condemned to lose their rights; and their posterity, to the fourth generation, was made incapable of benefice or prelacy in religious houses. The knightly patron was bound to be of the same religious opinions, of course, as his priest, or his soul had little chance of being prayed for. In later times we have had instances of patrons determining the opinions of the minister. Thus as a parallel, or rather in contrast with measures as they stood between Sir Knight and Sir Priest, may be taken a passage inserted in the old deeds of the Baptist chapel at Oulney. In this deed the managers or trustees injoined that “no person shall ever be chosen pastor of this church, who shall differ in his religious sentiments from the Rev. John Gibbs of Newcastle.” It is rather a leap to pass thus from the baronial knights to the Baptist chapels, but the matter has to do with my subject at both extremities. Before leaving it I will notice the intimation proudly made on the tombstone in Bunhill Fields Cemetery, of Dame Mary Page, relict of Sir George Page. The lady died more than a century and a quarter ago, and although the stone bears no record of any virtue save that she was patient and fearless under suffering, it takes care to inform all passers-by, that this knight’s lady, “in sixty-seven months was tapped sixty-six times, and had taken away two hundred and forty gallons of water, without ever repining at her case, or ever fearing its operation.” I prefer the mementoes of knight’s ladies in olden times which recorded their deeds rather than their diseases, and which told of them, as White said of Queen Mary, that their “knees were hard with kneeling.”

I will add one more incident, before changing the topic, having reference as it has to knights, maladies, and baptism. In 1660, Sir John Floyer was the most celebrated knight-physician of his day. He chiefly tilted against the disuse of baptismal immersion. He did not treat the subject theologically, but in a sanitary point of view. He prophesied that England would return to the practice as soon as people were convinced that cold baths were safe and useful. He denounced the first innovators who departed from immersion, as the destroyers of the health of their children and of posterity. Degeneracy of race, he said, had followed, hereditary diseases increased, and men were mere carpet-knights unable to perform such lusty deeds as their duly-immersed forefathers.

There are few volumes which so admirably illustrate what knights should be, and what they sometimes were not, as De Joinville’s Chronicle of the Crusades of St. Louis—that St. Louis, who was himself the patron-saint of an order, the cross of which was at first conferred on princes, and at last on perruquiers. The faithful chronicler rather profanely, indeed, compares the royal knight with God himself. “As God died for his people, so did St. Louis often peril his life, and incurred the greatest dangers, for the people of his kingdom.” After all, this simile is as lame as it is profane. The truth, nevertheless, as it concerns St. Louis, is creditable to the illustrious king, saint, and chevalier. “In his conversation he was remarkably chaste, for I never heard him, at any time, utter an indecent word, nor make use of the devil’s name; which, however, now is very commonly uttered by every one, but which I firmly believe, is so far from being agreeable to God, that it is highly displeasing to him.” The King St. Louis, mixed water with his wine, and tried to force his knights to follow his example, adding, that “it was a beastly thing for an honorable man to make himself drunk.” This was a wise maxim, and one naturally held by a son, whose mother had often declared to him, that “she would rather he was in his grave, than that he should commit a mortal sin.” And yet wise as his mother, and wise as her son was, the one could not give wise religious instructors to the latter, nor the latter perceive where their instruction was illogical. That it was so, may be discerned in the praise given by De Joinville, to the fact, that the knightly king in his dying moments “called upon God and his saints, and especially upon St. James, and St. Genevieve, as his intercessors.”

It is interesting to learn from such good authority as De Joinville, the manner in which the knights who followed St. Louis prepared themselves for their crusading mission. “When I was ready to set out, I sent for the Abbot of Cheminon, who was at that time considered as the most discreet man of all the White Monks, to reconcile myself with him. He gave me my scarf, and bound it on me, and likewise put the pilgrim’s staff in my hand. Instantly after I quitted the castle of Joinville, without even re-entering it until my return from beyond sea. I made pilgrimages to all the holy places in the neighborhood, such as Bliecourt, St. Urban, and others near to Joinville. I dared never turn my eyes that way, for fear of feeling too great regret, and lest my courage should fail on leaving my two fine children, and my fair castle of Joinville, which I loved in my heart.” “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” and here we have the touch the poet speaks of. Down the Saône and subsequently down the Rhone, the crusaders flock in ample vessels, but not large enough to contain their steeds, which were led by grooms along the banks. When all had re-embarked at Marseilles and were fairly out at sea, “the captain made the priests and clerks mount to the castle of the ship, and chant psalms in praise of God, that he might be pleased to grant us a prosperous voyage.” While they were singing the Veni Creator in full chorus, the mariners set the sails “in the name of God,” and forthwith a favorable breeze sprang up in answer to the appeal, and knights and holy men were speedily careering over the billows of the open sea very hopeful and exceedingly sick. “I must say here,” says De Joinville, who was frequently so disturbed by the motion of the vessel, so little of a knight, and so timid on the water as to require a couple of men to hold him as he leant over the side in the helpless and unchivalrous attitude of a cockney landsman on board a Boulogne steamer—“I must say,” he exclaims—sick at the very reminiscence, “that he is a great fool who shall put himself in such dangers, having wronged any one, or having any mortal sins on his conscience; for when he goes to sleep in the evening, he knows not if in the morning he may not find himself under the sea.”

This was a pious reflection, and it was such as many a knight, doubtless, made on board a vessel, on the castle of which priests and clerks sang Veni Creator and the mariners bent the sail “in the name of God.” But whether the holy men did not act up to their profession, or the secular knights cared not to profit by their example, certain it is that in spite of the saintly services and formalities on board ship, the chevaliers were no sooner on shore, than they fell into the very worst of practices. De Joinville, speaking of them at Damietta, remarks that the barons, knights, and others, who ought to have practised self-denial and economy, were wasteful of their means, prodigal of their supplies, and addicted to banquetings, and to the vices which attend on over-luxuriant living. There was a general waste of everything, health included. The example set by the knights was adopted by the men-at-arms, and the debauchery which ensued was terrific. The men were reduced to the level of beasts, and wo to the women or girls who fell into their power when out marauding. It is singular to find De Joinville remarking that the holy king was obliged “to wink at the greatest liberties of his officers and men.” The picture of a royal saint winking at lust, rapine, and murder, is not an agreeable one. “The good king was told,” says the faithful chronicler, “that at a stone’s throw round his own pavilion, were several tents whose owners made profit by letting them out for infamous purposes.” These tents and tabernacles of iniquity were kept by the king’s own personal attendants, and yet the royal saint winked at them! The licentiousness was astounding, the more so as it was practised by Christian knights, who were abroad on a holy purpose, but who went with bloody hands, unclean thoughts, and spiritual songs to rescue the Sepulchre of Christ from the unworthy keeping of the infidel. Is it wonderful that the enterprise was ultimately a failure?

De Joinville himself, albeit purer of life than many of his comrades, was not above taking unmanly advantage of a foe. The rule of chivalry, which directed that all should be fair in fight, was never regarded by those chivalrous gentlemen when victory was to be obtained by violating the law. Thus, of an affair on the plains before Babylon, we find the literary swordsman complacently recording that he “perceived a sturdy Saracen mounting his horse, which was held by one of his esquires by the bridle, and while he was putting his hand on his saddle to mount, I gave him,” says De Joinville, “such a thrust with my spear, which I pushed as far as I was able, that he fell down dead.” This was a base and cowardly action. There was more of the chivalrous in what followed: “The esquire, seeing his lord dead, abandoned master and horse; but, watching my motions, on my return struck me with his lance such a blow between my shoulders as drove me on my horse’s neck, and held me there so tightly that I could not draw my sword, which was girthed round me. I was forced to draw another sword which was at the pommel of my saddle, and it was high time; but when he saw I had my sword in my hand, he withdrew his lance, which I had seized, and ran from me.”

I have said that this knight who took such unfair advantage of a foe, was more of a Christian nevertheless than many of his fellows. This is illustrated by another trait highly illustrative of the principles which influenced those brave and pious warriors. De Joinville remarks that on the eve of Shrove-tide, 1249, he saw a thing which he “must relate.” On the vigil of that day, he tells us, there died a very valiant and prudent knight, Sir Hugh de Landricourt, a follower of De Joinville’s own banner. The burial service was celebrated; but half-a-dozen of De Joinville’s knights, who were present as mourners, talked so irreverently loud that the priest was disturbed as he was saying mass. Our good chronicler went over to them, reproved them, and informed them that “it was unbecoming gentlemen thus to talk while the mass was celebrating.” The ungodly half-dozen, thereupon, burst into a roar of laughter, and informed De Joinville, in their turn, that they were discussing as to which of the six should marry the widow of the defunct Sir Hugh, then lying before them on his bier! De Joinville, with decency and common sense “rebuked them sharply, and said such conversation was indecent and improper, for that they had too soon forgotten their companion.” From this circumstance De Joinville tries to draw a logical inference, if not conclusion. He makes a sad confusion of causes and effects, rewards and punishments, practice and principle, human accidents and especial interferences on the part of Heaven. For instance, after narrating the mirth of the knights at the funeral of Sir Hugh, and their disputing as to which of them should woo the widow, he adds: “Now it happened on the morrow, when the first grand battle took place, although we may laugh at their follies, that of all the six not one escaped death, and they remained unburied. The wives of the whole six re-married! This makes it credible that God leaves no such conduct unpunished. With regard to myself I fared little better, for I was grievously wounded in the battle of Shrove Tuesday. I had besides the disorder in my legs and mouth before spoken of, and such a rheum in my head it ran through my mouth and nostrils. In addition I had a double fever called a quartan, from which God defend us! And with these illnesses was I confined to my bed for half of Lent.” And thus, if the married knights were retributively slain for talking about the wooing of a comrade’s widow, so De Joinville himself was somewhat heavily afflicted for having undertaken to reprove them! I must add one more incident, however, to show how in the battle-field the human and Christian principle was not altogether lost.

The poor priest, whom the wicked and wedded knights had interrupted in the service of the mass by follies, at which De Joinville himself seems to think that men may, perhaps, be inclined to laugh, became as grievously ill as De Joinville himself. “And one day,” says the latter, “when he was singing mass before me as I lay in my bed, at the moment of the elevation of the host I saw him so exceedingly weak that he was near fainting; but when I perceived he was on the point of falling to the ground, I flung myself out of bed, sick as I was, and taking my coat, embraced him, and bade him be at his ease, and take courage from Him whom he held in his hand. He recovered some little; but I never quitted him till he had finished the mass, which he completed, and this was the last, for he never celebrated another, but died; God receive his soul!” This is a pleasanter picture of Christian chivalry than any other that is given by this picturesque chronicler.

Chivalry, generally, has been more satirized and sneered at by the philosophers than by any other class of men. The sages stigmatize the knights as mere boasters of bravery, and in some such terms as those used by Dussaute, they assert that the boasters of their valor are as little to be trusted as those who boast of their probity. “Defiez vous de quiconque parle toujours de sa probité comme de quiconque parle toujours de bravoure.”

It will not, however, do for the philosophers to sneer at their martial brethren. Now that Professor Jacobi has turned from grave studies for the benefit of mankind, to the making of infernal machines for the destruction of brave and helpless men, at a distance, that very unsuccessful but would-be homicide has, as far as he himself is concerned, reduced science to a lower level than that occupied by men whose trade is arms. But this is not the first time that philosophers have mingled in martial matters. The very war which has been begun by the bad ambition of Russia, may be traced to the evil officiousness of no less a philosopher than Leibnitz. It was this celebrated man who first instigated a European monarch to seize upon a certain portion of the Turkish dominion, whereby to secure an all but universal supremacy.

The monarch was Louis XIV., to whom Leibnitz addressed himself, in a memorial, as to the wisest of sovereigns, most worthy to have imparted to him a project at once the most holy, the most just, and the most easy of accomplishment. Success, adds the philosopher, would secure to France the empire of the seas and of commerce, and make the French king the supreme arbiter of Christendom. Leibnitz at once names Egypt as the place to be seized upon; and after hinting what was necessary, by calling his majesty a “miracle of secresy,” he alludes to further achievements by stating of the one in question, that it would cover his name with an immortal glory, for having cleared, whether for himself or his descendants, “the route for exploits similar to those of Alexander.”

There is no country in the memorialist’s opinion the conquest of which deserves so much to be attempted. As to any provocation on the part of the Turkish sovereign of Egypt, he does not pause to advise the king even to feign having received cause of offence. The philosopher goes through a resumé of the history of Egypt, and the successive conquests that had been made of, as well as attempts against it, to prove that its possession was accounted of importance in all times; and he adds that its Turkish master was just then in such debility that France could not desire a more propitious opportunity for invasion. This argument shows that when the Czar Nicholas touched upon this nefarious subject, he not only was ready to rob this same “sick man,” the Turk, but he stole his arguments whereby to illustrate his opinions, and to prove that his sentiments were well-founded.

“By a single fortunate blow,” says Leibnitz, “empires may be in an instant overthrown and founded. In such wars are found the elements of high power and of an exalted glory.” It is unnecessary to repeat all the seductive terms which Leibnitz employs to induce Louis XIV. to set his chivalry in motion against the Turkish power. Egypt he calls “the eye of countries, the mother of grain, the seat of commerce.” He hints that Muscovy was even then ready to take advantage of any circumstance that might facilitate her way to the conquest of Turkey. The conquest of Egypt then was of double importance to France. Possessing that, France would be mistress of the Mediterranean, of a great part of Africa and Asia, and “the king of France could then, by incontestable right, and with the consent of the Pope, assume the title of Emperor of the East.” A further bait held out is, that in such a position he could “hold the pontiffs much more in his power than if they resided at Avignon.” He sums up by saying that there would be on the part of the human race, “an everlasting reverence for the memory of the great king to whom so many miracles were due!” “With the exception of the philosopher’s stone,” finally remarks the philosopher, “I know nothing that can be imagined of more importance than the conquest of Egypt.”

Leibnitz enters largely into the means to be employed, in order to insure success; among them is a good share of mendacity; and it must be acknowledged that the spirit of the memorial and its objects, touching not Egypt alone, but the Turkish empire generally, had been well pondered over by the Czar before he made that felonious attempt in which he failed to find a confederate.

The original of the memorial, which is supposed to have been presented to Louis XIV. just previous to his invasion of Holland—and, as some say, more with the intention of diverting the king from his attack on that country, than with any more definite object—was preserved in the archives of Versailles till the period of the great revolution. A copy in the handwriting of Leibnitz was, however, preserved in the Library at Hanover. Its contents were without doubt known to Napoleon when he was meditating that Egyptian conquest which Leibnitz pronounced to be so easy of accomplishment; a copy, made at the instance of Marshal Mortier for the Royal Library in Paris, is now in that collection.

The suggestion of Leibnitz, that the seat, if not of universal monarchy, at least of the mastership of Christendom, was in the Turkish dominions, has never been forgotten by Russia; and it is very possible that some of its seductive argument may have influenced the Czar before he impelled his troops into that war, which showed that Russia, with all its boasted power, could neither take Silistria nor keep Sebastopol.

But in this fragmentary prologue, which began with Lingard and ends with Leibnitz, we have rambled over wide ground. Let us become more orderly, and look at those who were to be made knights.

THE TRAINING OF PAGES.

“What callest thou Page? What is its humor?

Sir; he is Nobilis ephebus, and

Puer regius, student of Knighthood,

Breaking hearts and hoping to break lances.”— Old Play.

I have in another chapter noticed the circumstance of knighthood conferred on an Irish prince, at so early an age as seven years. This was the age at which, in less precocious England, noble youths entered wealthy knights’ families as pages, to learn obedience, to be instructed in the use of weapons, and to acquire a graceful habit of tending on ladies. The poor nobility, especially, found their account in this system, which gave a gratuitous education to their sons, in return for services which were not considered humiliating or dishonorable. These boys served seven years as pages, or varlets—sometimes very impudent varlets—and at fourteen might be regular esquires, and tend their masters where hard blows were dealt and taken—for which encounters they “riveted with a sigh the armor they were forbidden to wear.”

Neither pages, varlets, nor household, could be said to have been always as roystering as modern romancers have depicted them. There was at least exceptions to the rule—if there was a rule of roystering. Occasionally, the lads were not indifferently taught before they left their own homes. That is, not indifferently taught for the peculiar life they were about to lead. Even the Borgias, infamous as the name has become through inexorable historians and popular operas, were at one time eminently respectable and exemplarily religious. Thus in the household of the Duke of Gandia, young Francis Borgia, his son, passed his time “among the domestics in wonderful innocence and piety.” It was the only season of his life, however, so passed. Marchangy asserts that the pages of the middle ages were often little saints; but this could hardly have been the case since “espiègle comme un page,” “hardi comme un page,” and other illustrative sayings have survived even the era of pagedom. Indeed, if we may believe the minstrels, and they were often as truth-telling as the annalist, the pages were now and then even more knowing and audacious than their masters. When the Count Ory was in love with the young Abbess of Farmoutier, he had recourse to his page for counsel.

“Hola! mon page, venez me conseiller,

L’amour me berce, je ne puis sommeiller;

Comment me prendre pour dans ce couvent entrer?”

How ready was the ecstatic young scamp with his reply:—

“Sire il faut prendre quatorze chevaliers,

Et tous en nonnes il vous les faut habiller,

Puis, à nuit close, à la porte il faut heurter.”

What came of this advice, the song tells in very joyous terms, for which the reader may be referred to that grand collection the “Chants et Chansons de la France.”

On the other hand, Mr. Kenelm Digby, who is, be it said in passing, a painter of pages, looking at his object through pink-colored glasses, thus writes of these young gentlemen, in his “Mores Catholici.”

“Truly beautiful does the fidelity of chivalrous youth appear in the page of history or romance. Every master of a family in the middle ages had some young man in his service who would have rejoiced to shed the last drop of his blood to save him, and who, like Jonathan’s armor-bearer, would have replied to his summons: ‘Fac omnia quæ placent animo tuo; perge quo cupis; et ero tecum ubicumque volueris.’ When Gyron le Courtois resolved to proceed on the adventure of the Passage perilleux, we read that the valet, on hearing the frankness and courtesy with which his lord spoke to him, began to weep abundantly, and said, all in tears, ‘Sire, know that my heart tells me that sooth, if you proceed further, you will never return; that you will either perish there, or you will remain in prison; but, nevertheless, nothing shall prevent me going with you. Better die with you, if it be God’s will, than leave you in such guise to save my own life;’ and so saying, he stepped forward and said, ‘Sire, since you will not return according to my advice, I will not leave you this time, come to me what may.’ Authority in the houses of the middle ages,” adds Mr. Digby, “was always venerable. The very term seneschal is supposed to have implied ‘old knight,’ so that, as with the Greeks, the word signifying ‘to honor,’ and to ‘pay respect,’ was derived immediately from that which denoted old age, πρεσβευω being thus used in the first line of the Eumenides. Even to those who were merely attached by the bonds of friendship or hospitality, the same lessons and admonitions were considered due. John Francis Picus of Mirandola mentions his uncle’s custom of frequently admonishing his friends, and exhorting them to a holy life. ‘I knew a man,’ he says, ‘who once spoke with him on the subject of manners, and who was so much moved by only two words from him, which alluded to the death of Christ, as the motive for avoiding sin, that from that hour, he renounced the ways of vice, and reformed his whole life and manner.’”

We smile to find Mr. Digby mentioning the carving of angels in stone over the castle-gates, as at Vincennes, as a proof that the pages who loitered about there were little saints. But we read with more interest, that “the Sieur de Ligny led Bayard home with him, and in the evening preached to him as if he had been his own son, recommending him to have heaven always before his eyes.” This is good, and that it had its effect on Bayard, we all know; nevertheless that chevalier himself was far from perfect.

With regard to the derivation of Seneschal as noticed above, we may observe that it implies “old man of skill.” Another word connected with arms is “Marshal,” which is derived from Mar, “a horse,” and Schalk, “skilful,” one knowing in horses; hence “Maréchal ferrant,” as assumed by French farriers. Schalk, however, I have seen interpreted as meaning “servant.” Earl Marshal was, originally, the knight who looked after the royal horses and stables, and all thereto belonging.

But to return to the subject of education. If all the sons of noblemen, in former days, were as well off for gentle teachers as old historians and authors describe them to have been, they undoubtedly had a great advantage over some of their descendants of the present day. In illustration of this fact it is only necessary to point to the sermons recently delivered by a reverend pedagogue to the boys who have the affliction of possessing him as headmaster. It is impossible to read some of these whipping sermons, without a feeling of intense disgust. Flagellation is there hinted at, mentioned, menaced, caressed as it were, as if in the very idea there was a sort of delight. The worst passage of all is where the amiable master tells his youthful hearers that they are noble by birth, that the greatest humiliation to a noble person is the infliction of a blow, and that nevertheless, he, the absolute master, may have to flog many of them. How the young people over whom he rules, must love such an instructor! The circumstance reminds me of the late Mr. Ducrow, who was once teaching a boy to go through a difficult act of horsemanship, in the character of a page. The boy was timid, and his great master applied the whip to him unmercifully. Mr. Joseph Grimaldi was standing by, and looked very serious, considering his vocation. “You see,” remarked Ducrow to Joey, “that it is quite necessary to make an impression on these young fellows.”—“Very likely,” answered Grimaldi, dryly, “but it can hardly be necessary to make the whacks so hard!”

The discipline to which pages were subjected in the houses of knights and noblemen, does not appear to have been at all of a severe character. Beyond listening to precept from the chaplain, heeding the behests of their master, and performing pleasant duties about their mistress, they seem to have been left pretty much to themselves, and to have had, altogether, a pleasant time of it. The poor scholars had by far a harder life than your “Sir page.” And this stern discipline held over the pale student continued down to a very recent, that is, a comparatively recent period. In Neville’s play of “The Poor Scholar,” written in 1662, but never acted, the character of student-life at college is well illustrated. The scene lies at the university, where Eugenes, jun., albeit he is called “the poor scholar,” is nephew of Eugenes, sen., who is president of a college. Nephew and uncle are at feud, and the man in authority imprisons his young kinsman, who contrives to escape from durance vile, and to marry a maiden called Morphe. The fun of the marriage is, that the young couple disguise themselves as country lad and lass, and the reverend Eugenes, sen., unconsciously couples a pair whom he would fain have kept apart. There are two other university marriages as waggishly contrived; and when the ceremonies are concluded, one of the newly-married students, bold as any page, impudently remarks to the duped president, “Our names are out of the butteries, and our persons out of your dominions.” The phrase shows that, in the olden time, an “ingenuus puer” at Oxford, if he were desirous of escaping censure, had only to take his name off the books. But there were worse penalties than mere censure. The author of “The Poor Scholar” makes frequent allusion to the whipping of undergraduates, stretched on a barrel, in the buttery. There was long an accredited tradition that Milton had been thus degraded. In Neville’s play, one of the young Benedicks, prematurely married, remarks, “Had I been once in the butteries, they’d have their rods about me.” To this remark Eugenes, jun., adds another in reference to his uncle the president, “He would have made thee ride on a barrel, and made you show your fat cheeks.” But it is clear that even this terrible penalty could be avoided by young gentlemen, if they had their wits about them; for the fearless Aphobos makes boast, “My name is cut out of the college butteries, and I have now no title to the mounting a barrel.”

Young scions of noble houses, in the present time, have to endure more harsh discipline than is commonly imagined. They are treated rather like the buttery undergraduates of former days, than the pages who, in ancient castles, learned the use of arms, served the Chatellaine, and invariably fell in love with the daughters. They who doubt this fact have only to read those Whipping Sermons to which I have referred. Such discourses, in days of old, to a body of young pages, would probably have cost the preacher more than he cared to lose. In these days, such sermons can hardly have won affection for their author. The latter, no doubt, honestly thought he was in possession of a vigorously salubrious principle; but there is something ignoble both in the discipline boasted of, and especially in the laying down the irresistible fact to young gentlemen that a blow was the worst offence that could be inflicted on persons of their class, but that he could and would commit such assault upon them, and that gentle and noble as they were, they dared not resent it!

The pages of old time occasionally met with dreadful harsh treatment from their chivalrous master. The most chivalrous of these Christian knights could often act cowardly and unchristian-like. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the great and warlike Duke of Burgundy, on his defeat at Muret. He was hemmed in between ferocious enemies and the deep lake. As the lesser of two evils, he plunged into the latter, and his young page leaped upon the crupper as the Duke’s horse took the water. The stout steed bore his double burden across, a breadth of two miles, not without difficulty, yet safely. The Duke was, perhaps, too alarmed himself, at first, to know that the page was hanging on behind; but when the panting horse reached the opposite shore, sovereign Burgundy was so wroth at the idea that the boy, by clinging to his steed, had put the life of the Duke in peril, that he turned upon him and poignarded the poor lad upon the beach. Lassels, who tells the story, very aptly concludes it with the scornful yet serious ejaculation, “Poor Prince! thou mightest have given another offering of thanksgiving to God for thy escape, than this!” But “Burgundy” was rarely gracious or humane. “Carolus Pugnax,” says Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, “made Henry Holland, late Duke of Exeter, exiled, run after his horse, like a lackey, and would take no notice of him.” This was the English peer who was reduced to beg his way in the cities of Flanders.

Of pages generally, we shall have yet to speak incidentally—meanwhile, let us glance at their masters at home.

KNIGHTS AT HOME.

“Entrez Messìeurs; jouissez-vous de mon coin-de-feu. Me voilà, chez moi!”— Arlequin à St. Germains.

Ritter Eric, of Lansfeldt, remarked, that next to a battle he dearly loved a banquet. We will, therefore, commence the “Knight at Home,” by showing him at table. Therewith, we may observe, that the Knights of the Round Table appear generally to have had very solid fare before them. King Arthur—who is the reputed founder of this society, and who invented the table in order that when all his knights were seated none could claim precedency over the others—is traditionally declared to have been the first man who ever sat down to a whole roasted ox. Mr. Bickerstaff, in the “Tatler,” says that “this was certainly the best way to preserve the gravy;” and it is further added, that “he and his knights set about the ox at his round table, and usually consumed it to the very bones before they would enter upon any debate of moment.”

They had better fare than the knights-errant, who

“as some think,

Of old, did neither eat nor drink,

Because when thorough deserts vast,

And regions desolate they passed,

Where belly-timber above ground,

Or under, was not to be found,

Unless they grazed, there’s not one word

Of their provision on record:

Which made some confidently write,

They had no stomachs but to fight.”

This, however, is only one poet’s view of the dietary of the errant gentlemen of old. Pope is much nearer truth when he says, that—

“In days of old our fathers went to war,

Expecting sturdy blows and scanty fare,

Their beef they often in their morion stewed,

And in their basket-hilt their beverage brewed.”

—that basket-hilt of which it is so well said in Hudibras, that—

“it would hold broth,

And serve for fight and dinner both.”

The lords and chivalric gentlemen who fared so well and fought so stoutly, were not always of the gentlest humor at home. It has been observed that Piedmontese society long bore traces of the chivalric age. An exemplification is afforded us in Gallenga’s History of Piedmont. It will serve to show how absolute a master a powerful knight and noble was in his own house. Thus, from Gallenga we learn that Antonio Grimaldi, a nobleman of Chieri, had become convinced of the faithlessness of his wife. He compelled her to hang up with her own hand her paramour to the ceiling of her chamber; then he had the chamber walled up, doors and windows, and only allowed the wretched woman as much air and light, and administered with his own hand as much food and drink, as would indefinitely prolong her agony. And so he watched her, and tended her with all that solicitude which hatred can suggest as well as love, and left her to grope alone in that blind solitude, with the mute testimony of her guilt—a ghastly object on which her aching eyes were riveted, day by day, night after night, till it had passed through every loathsome stage of decomposition. This man was surely worse in his vengeance than that Sir Giles de Laval, who has come down to us under the name of Blue-Beard.

This celebrated personage, famous by his pseudonym, was not less so in his own proper person. There was not a braver knight in France, during the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., than this Marquis de Laval, Marshal of France. The English feared him almost as much as they did the Pucelle. The household of this brave gentleman was, however, a hell upon earth; and licentiousness, blasphemy, attempts at sorcery, and, more than attempts at, very successful realizations of, murder were the little foibles of this man of many wives. He excelled the most extravagant monarchs in his boundless profusion, and in the barbaric splendor of his court or house: the latter was thronged with ladies of very light manners, players, mountebanks, pretended magicians, and as many cooks as Julian found in the palace of his predecessor at Constantinople. There were two hundred saddle-horses in his stable, and he had a greater variety of dogs than could now be found at any score of “fanciers” of that article. He employed the magicians for a double purpose. They undertook to discover treasures for his use, and pretty handmaids to tend on his illustrious person, or otherwise amuse him by the display of their accomplishments. Common report said that these young persons were slain after a while, their blood being of much profit in making incantations, the object of which was the discovery of gold. Much exaggeration magnified his misdeeds, which were atrocious enough in their plain, unvarnished infamy. At length justice overtook this monster. She did not lay hold of him for his crimes against society, but for a peccadillo which offended the Duke of Brittany. Giles de Laval, for this offence, was burnt at Nantes, after being strangled—such mercy having been vouchsafed to him, because he was a gallant knight and gentleman, and of course was not to be burnt alive like any petty villain of peasant degree. He had a moment of weakness at last, and just previous to the rope being tightened round his neck, he publicly declared that he should never have come to that pass, nor have committed so many excesses, had it not been for his wretched education. Thus are men, shrewd enough to drive bargains, and able to discern between virtue and vice, ever ready, when retribution falls on them at the scaffold, to accuse their father, mother, schoolmaster, or spiritual pastor. Few are like the knight of the road, who, previous to the cart sliding from under him, at Tyburn, remarked that he had the satisfaction, at least, of knowing that the position he had attained in society was owing entirely to himself. “May I be hanged,” said he, “if that isn’t the fact.” The finisher of the law did not stop to argue the question with him, but, on cutting him down, remarked, with the gravity of a cardinal before breakfast, that the gentleman had wronged the devil and the ladies, in attributing his greatness so exclusively to his own exertions.

I have said that perhaps Blue-Beard’s little foibles have been exaggerated; but, on reflection, I am not sure that this pleasant hypothesis can be sustained. De Laval, of whom more than I have told may be found in Mezeray, was not worse than the Landvogt Hugenbach, who makes so terrible a figure in Barante’s “Dukes of Burgundy.” The Landvogt, we are told by the last-named historian, cared no more for heaven than he did for anybody on earth. He was accustomed to say that being perfectly sure of going to the devil, he would take especial care to deny himself no gratification that he could possibly desire. There was, accordingly, no sort of wild fancy to which he did not surrender himself. He was a fiendish corruptor of virtue, employing money, menaces, or brutal violence, to accomplish his ends. Neither cottage nor convent, citizen’s hearth nor noble’s château, was secure from his invasion and atrocity. He was terribly hated, terribly feared—but then Sir Landvogt Hugenbach gave splendid dinners, and every family round went to them, while they detested the giver.

He was remarkably facetious on these occasions, sometimes ferociously so. For instance, Barante records of him, that at one of his pleasant soirées he sent away the husbands into a room apart, and kept the wives together in his grand saloon. These, he and his myrmidons despoiled entirely of their dresses; after which, having flung a covering over the head of each lady, who dared not, for her life, resist, the amiable host called in the husbands one by one, and bade each select his own wife. If the husband made a mistake, he was immediately seized and flung headlong down the staircase. The Landvogt made no more scruple about it than Lord Ernest Vane when he served the Windsor manager after something of the same fashion. The husbands who guessed rightly were conducted to the sideboard to receive congratulations, and drink various flasks of wine thereupon. But the amount of wine forced upon each unhappy wretch was so immense, that in a short time he was as near death as the mangled husbands, who were lying in a senseless heap at the foot of the staircase.

They who would like to learn further of this respectable individual, are referred to the pages of Barante. They will find there that this knight and servant of the Duke of Burgundy was more like an incarnation of the devil than aught besides. His career was frightful for its stupendous cruelty and crime; but it ended on the scaffold, nevertheless. His behavior there was like that of a saint who felt a little of the human infirmity of irritability at being treated as a very wicked personage by the extremely blind justice of men. So edifying was this chivalrous scoundrel, that the populace fairly took him for the saint he figured to be; and long after his death, crowds flocked to his tomb to pray for his mediation between them and God.

The rough jokes of the Landvogt remind me of a much greater man than he—Gaston de Foix, in whose earlier times there was no lack of rough jokes, too. The portrait of Gaston, with his page helping to buckle on his armor, by Giorgione da Castel Franco, is doubtless known to most of my readers—through the engraving, if not the original. It was formerly the property of the Duke of Orleans; but came, many years ago, into the possession, by purchase, of Lord Carlisle. The expression of the page or young squire who is helping to adjust Gaston’s armor is admirably rendered. That of the hero gives, perhaps, too old a look to a knight who is known to have died young.

This Gaston was a nephew of Louis XII. His titles were Duke of Nemours and Count d’Etampes. He was educated by his mother, the sister of King Louis. She exulted in Gaston as one who was peculiarly her own work. “Considering,” she says, “how honor became her son, she was pleased to let him seek danger where he was likely to find fame.” His career was splendid, but proportionally brief. He purchased imperishable renown, and a glorious death, in Italy. He gained the victory of Ravenna, at the cost of his life; after which event, fortune abandoned the standard of Louis; and Maximilian Sforza recovered the Milanese territories of his father, Ludovic. This was early in the sixteenth century.

But it is of another Gaston de Foix that I have to speak. I have given precedence to one bearer of the name, because he was the worthier man; but the earlier hero will afford us better illustrations of the home-life of the noble knights who were sovereigns within their own districts. Froissart makes honorable mention of him in his “Chronicle.” He was Count de Foix, and kept court at Ortez, in the south of France. There assembled belted knights and aspiring ’squires, majestic matrons and dainty damsels. When the Count was not on a war-path, his house was a scene of great gayety. The jingle of spurs, clash of swords, tramp of iron heels, virelays sung by men-at-arms, love-songs hummed by audacious pages, and romances entoned to the lyre by minstrels who were masters in the art—these, with courtly feasts and stately dances, made of the castle at Ortez anything but a dull residence. Hawking and hunting seem to have been “my very good Erle’s” favorite diversion. He was not so much master of his passions as he was of his retainers; and few people thought the worse of him simply because he murdered his cousin for refusing to betray his trust, and cut the throat of the only legitimate son of the Earl.

We may form some idea of the practical jests of those days, from an anecdote told by Froissart. Gaston de Foix had complained, one cold day, of the scanty fire which his retainers kept up in the great gallery. Whereupon one of the knights descended to the court-yard, where stood several asses laden with wood. One of them he seized, wood and ass together, and staggering up-stairs into the gallery, flung the whole, the ass heels uppermost, on to the fire. “Whereof,” says Froissart, “the Earl of Foix had great joy, and so had all they that were there, and had marvel of his strength, how he alone came up all the stairs with the ass and the wood on his neck.”

Gaston was but a lazy knight. It was high noon, Froissart tells us, before he rose from his bed. He supped at midnight; and when he issued from his chamber to proceed to the hall where supper was laid, twelve torches were carried before him, and these were held at his table “by twelve varlets” during the time that supper lasted. The Earl sat alone, and none of the knights or squires who crowded round the other tables dared to speak a word to him unless the great man previously addressed him. The supper then must have been a dull affair.

The treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay relates in a very delicate manner how Gaston came to murder his little son. Gaston’s wife was living apart from her husband, at the court of her brother, the King of Navarre, and the “little son” in question was residing there on a visit to his mother. As he was on the point of returning, the king of Navarre gave him a powder, which he directed the boy to administer to his father, telling him that it was a love-powder, and would bring back his father’s affection for the mother. The innocent boy took the powder, which was in fact poison; and a night or two after his return to Ortez, an illegitimate son of Gaston found it in the boy’s clothes. The base-born lad informed against his brother, and when Gaston had given the powder to a dog, which immediately died, he could scarcely be kept from poniarding his son upon the spot. The poor child was flung into a dungeon, where, between terror and despair, he refused to take any food. Upon being told of this, the earl entered the chamber in which the boy was confined, “he had at the same time a little knife in his hand, to pare withal his nails.... In great displeasure he thrust his hand at his son’s throat, and the point of his knife a little entered into his throat into a certain vein; and the earl said, ‘Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat thy meat?’ and therewith the earl departed without any more doing or saying.” Never was brutal murder more daintily glozed over, but Froissart is so afraid that he may not have sufficiently impressed you with a conviction of its being a little accident, that he goes on to say “The child was abashed, and afraid of the coming of his father, and was also feeble of fasting, and the point of the knife a little entered into his throat, into a certain vein of his throat; and so [he] fell down suddenly and died!”

The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it; but he too one day “fell down suddenly and died.” He had overheated himself with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold water as soon as he reached home. The description of the whole of this domestic scene is one of the most graphic in Froissart, but it is too long for quotation. It must suffice that the vast possessions of the count fell into the hands of that villanous illegitimate son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The latter was one of the six knights who, with Charles VI., entered a ball-room disguised as satyrs, and fast chained together. Some one, who is supposed to have owed no good-will to the king, flung a torch into the group. Their inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir Jenbayne de Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king himself, as is well known, had a very narrow escape.

Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights when not engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle country gentlemen now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this respect, and for want of or distaste for other vocations, spend three fourths of their rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as ever, there were clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting and moreover not less so to trespassing. These were not reverend rectors on their own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed ponies, but dignified prelates—even archbishops. One of the latter, Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, presumed to hunt without permission, on the grounds of a young knight, the Earl of Arundel, a minor. On the day the Earl came of age, he issued a prohibition against the archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in return snapped his fingers at the earl, and declared that his way was as legally open to any chase as it was free into any church. Accordingly, the right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with hounds and horses, and a “numerous meet” of clerical friends and other followers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however, was spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience to their master’s orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths, warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of the prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it impossible to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself to the master, summarily devoting him ad inferos for daring to interfere with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young earl, who would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in his company, whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the head of the church in England to act in the woods of Arundel as if he were also lord of the land, made appeal to the only competent court—that of the Pope. The contending parties went over and pleaded their most respective causes personally; the earl with calmness, as feeling that he had right on his side; Edmund with easy arrogance, springing from a conviction that the Pontiff would not give a layman a triumph over a priest. The archbishop, however, was mistaken. He not only lost his cause, but he was condemned in the expenses; and if any one thinks that this decree checked him in trespassing, such an idea would show that the holder of it knew little of the spirit which moved prelates fond of hunting. The archbishop became the most confirmed poacher in the country; and if he did not spoil the knight’s sport by riding in advance of the hounds with a red herring, he had resort to means as efficacious for marring the pleasures of others in the chase. He affected, too, to look down upon the earl as one inferior to him in degree, and when they encountered at court, the prelate exhibited no more courtesy toward the gallant knight than was manifested by Lord Cowley in Paris toward the English Exhibition Commissioners, when the mere men of intellect were kept at what the peer thought a proper distance by the mere men of rank.

There is, however, no lack of instances of young knights themselves being brought up in arrogance and wilfulness. This sort of education lasted longer, perhaps, in France than elsewhere. As late as the last century this instruction prevailed, particularly where the pupil was intended for the army. Thus, the rearing of the little Vidame d’Amiens affords us an illustration. He was awkward and obstinate, but he might have been cured of both defects, had his mother been permitted to have some voice in his education. She was the last to be consulted, or rather, was never consulted at all. The more the little man was arrogant, the more delighted were his relatives with such manifestation of his spirit; and one day, when he dealt to his aunt, the Marquise de Belliere Plessis, a box of the ear which sent the old lady staggering, her only remark was, “My dear, you should never strike me with the left hand.” The courteous Vidame mortally hated his tutor, and expressed such a desire to kill him, that the pedagogue was asked to allow the little savage to believe that he had accomplished the desired act of homicide. Accordingly, a light musket was placed in the boy’s hands, from which the ball had been drawn, unknown to him, and with this, coming suddenly upon his instructor, who feigned the surprise he did not feel, the Vidame discharged the piece full at the breast of his monitor and friend. The servile sage pretended to be mortally wounded, and acted death upon the polished floor. He was quietly got rid of, and a pension of four hundred francs, just sixteen pounds a year, rewarded his stupid servility. The little chevalier was as proud as Fighting Fitzgerald of having, as he supposed, “killed his man.”

Let us return to earlier times for illustrations of the knight at home, and also abroad. There is no lack of such illustration in the adventures of Fulke Fitzwarren. Fulke was one of the outlawed barons of the reign of King John. In his youth, he was brought up with the four sons of King Henry; he was much beloved by them all, except John. “It happened that John and Fulke were sitting all alone in a chamber playing at chess; and John took the chess-board, and struck Fulke with a great blow. Fulke felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John in the middle of the stomach; and his head flew against the wall, and he became all weak, and fainted. Fulke was in consternation; but he was glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed John’s ears, who recovered from his fainting fit, and went to the king his father, and made a great complaint. ‘Hold your tongue, wretch,’ said the king, ‘you are always quarrelling. If Fulke did anything but good to you, it must have been by your own desert;’ and he called his master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining. John was much enraged against Fulke, so that he could never afterward love him heartily.”

The above, as has been remarked, evinces how little respect there was in those early times for royal authority and the doctrine of non-resistance. But it may be observed, that even in these more polite times, were the heir-apparent to strike a playfellow, his royal highness would probably meet in return with as ready-handed, if not quite so rough a correction as was inflicted upon John. The latter could not forgive a bold companion of his boyhood, as James I. did, in subsequent times, with regard to “Jamie Slates.” On the contrary, when John became king, he plotted with as unscrupulous a person as himself, to deprive Fulke of his estate. The conversation between the king and his confederate, Moris de Powis, was overheard; and what came of it is thus told in the history of Fulke Fitzwarren, as edited by Thomas Wright Esq., for the Warton Club:—

“There was close by a knight who had heard all the conversation between the king and Moris, and he went in haste to Sir Fulke, and told him that the king was about to confirm by his charter, to Sir Moris, the lands to which he had right. Fulke and his four brothers came before the king, and prayed that they might have the common law and the lands to which they had claim and right, as the inheritance of Fulke; and they prayed that the king would receive from them a hundred pounds, on condition that he should grant them the award of his court of gain and loss. The king told them that what he had granted to Sir Moris, he would hold to it whoever might be offended or who not. At length Sir Moris spoke to Sir Fulke, and said, ‘Sir Knight, you are a great fool to challenge my lands; if you say that you have a right to White-Town, you lie; and if we were not in the king’s presence I would have proved it on your body.’ Sir William, Fulke’s brother, without a word more, sprang forward and struck Sir Moris with his fist in the middle of his face, that it became all bloody; knights interfered that no more hurt was done; then said Sir Fulke to the king: ‘Sir King, you are my liege-lord, and to you was I bound by fealty, as long as I was in your service, and as long as I held the lands of you; and you ought to maintain me in right, and you fail me in right and common law; and never was he good king who denied his frank tenants law in his court; wherefore I return you your homages:’ and with this word, he departed from the court and went to his hostel.”

Fulke was most unjustly exiled, but after a while he returned to England, wandered about in various disguises, and at length, with a ripe project, settled down as a collier or charcoal-burner in Windsor Forest. I will once more draw from Mr. Wright’s edition of this knightly biography for what ensued.

“At length came the king with three knights, all on foot to Fulke, where he was arranging his fire. When Fulke saw the king, he knew him well enough, and he cast the fork from his hand and saluted his lord and went on his knees before him very humbly. The king and his three knights had great laughter and game at the breeding and bearing of the collier. They stood there very long. ‘Sir Vilain,’ said the king, ‘have you seen no stag or doe pass here?’ ‘Yes, my lord, awhile ago.’ ‘What beast did you see?’ ‘Sir, my lord, a horned one; and it had long horns.’ ‘Where is it?’ ‘Sir, my lord, I know very well how to lead you to where I saw it.’ ‘Onward then, Sir Vilain, and we will follow you.’ ‘Sir,’ said the collier, ‘shall I take my fork in my hand? for if it were taken I should have thereby a great loss.’ ‘Yea, Vilain, if you will.’ Fulke took the great fork of iron in his hand and led the king to shoot; for he had a very handsome bow. ‘Sir, my lord,’ said Fulke, ‘will you please to wait, and I will go into the thicket and make the beast come this way by here?’ ‘Yea,’ said the king. Fulke did hastily spring into the thick of the forest; and commanded his company hastily to seize upon King John, for ‘I have brought him there only with three knights; and all his company is on the other side of the forest.’ Fulke and his company leaped out of the thicket, and rushed upon the king and seized him at once. ‘Sir King,’ said Fulke, ‘now I have you in my power, such judgment I will execute on you as you would on me, if you had taken me.’ The king trembled with fear for he had great dread of Fulke.”

There is here, perhaps, something of the romantic history, but with a substantiality of truth. In the end, Fulke, who we are told was really one of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta, and who was anathematized by the pope, and driven into exile again and again, got the better of all his enemies, pope and king included. There are two traditions touching his death. One is, that he survived to the period of the battle of Lewes, where he was one of a body of Henry the Third’s friends who were drowned in the adjacent river. The other tells a very different story, and is probably nearer the truth. We are inclined to think with Mr. Wright, the editor of the biographical history in question, that he who was drowned near Lewes, was the son of Fulke. We add the following account, less because of its detail touching the death of the old knight than as having reference to how knights lived, moved, and had their being, in the period referred to:—

“Fulke and Lady Clarice his wife, one night, were sleeping together in their chamber; and the lady was asleep, and Fulke was awake, and thought of his youth; and repented much in his heart for his trespasses. At length, he saw in the chamber so great a light, that it was wonderful; and he thought what could it be? And he heard a voice, as it were, of thunder in the air, and it said:—‘Vassal, God has granted thy penance, which is better here than elsewhere.’ At that word the lady awoke, and saw the great light, and covered her face for fear. At length this light vanished. And after this light Fulke could never see more, but he was blind all his days. Then Fulke was very hospitable and liberal, and he caused the king’s road to be turned through his hall at his manor of Alleston, in order no stranger might pass without having meat or lodging, or other honor or goods of his. This Fulke remained seven years blind, and suffered well his penance. Lady Clarice died and was buried at the New Abbey; after whose death Fulke lived but a year, and died at the White-town; and in great honor was he interred at the New Abbey—on whose soul may God have mercy. Near the altar is the body. God have mercy on us all, alive and dead. Amen!”

The religious sentiment was strong in all Norman knights, but not more so, perhaps, than in the wild chivalry of North America, when first its painted heroes heard of the passion and death of Christ. Charlevoix tells us of an Iroquois, who, on hearing of the crucifixion, exclaimed with the feeling of a Christian crusader, “Oh, if I had been there!” Precisely such an exclamation was once made by a Norman knight, as he listened to a monk narrating the great sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The more savage warrior, however, has always had the more poetical feeling. Witness the dying request of a young Indian chief, also noticed by Charlevoix. The dying victor asked to be buried in a blue robe, because that was the color of the sky: the fashion, with many Norman knights, of being interred in a robe and cowl of a monk, had far less of elevated feeling for its motive.

Having shown something of what the knight did at home, let us contemplate also what he taught there, by precept, if not by example. There was a knight who was known by the title of “the White Knight,” whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a contemporary of Edward the Black Prince, and who is supposed to have fought at Poictiers. He, is, however, best known, or at least equally well known, as the author of a work entitled “Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay.” This book was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable idea of the young ladies who could bear such instruction as is here imparted. The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and easy fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated as “two priests and two clerks,” whose task it was to procure for him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes, apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all sources, sacred and profane—from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or historical, that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically together, adding such wise saw, moral, counsel, or sentiment, as he deemed the case most especially required;—with a sprinkling of stories of his own collecting. A critic in the “Athenæum,” commenting upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it affords good materials for an examination into the morals and manners of the times. “Nothing,” says the reviewer, “is urged for adoption upon the sensible grounds of right or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted moral standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some superstition which outrages common sense.”

In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday’s fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoined upon much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason, that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the practice thereof is placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope, but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning, gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of black dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative argument. A burgher’s wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist, which smashed her nose, and felled her to the ground. “It is reason and right,” says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, “that the husband should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her husband, whether right or wrong, and especially before other people.” Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. The knight places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined by the moralizing knight, namely, that “L’obéissance aux volontés d’un chef absolu assimile l’homme à la brute.” This, with a verbal alteration, may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight’s teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus agreed with a heathen poet—particularly as it was in Christian times that the maxim was first published, which says, “Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut!”

This sentiment reminds me, that it is time to show how the knight was affected by the tender passion, how it was sometimes his glory and sometimes his shame. He was sometimes the victim, and at others the victimizer.

LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN
LOVE.

“How pleasing are the steps we lovers make,

When in the paths of our content we pace

To meet our longings!”—The Hog hath Lost his Purse.

Butler, in his Hudibras (part iii. cant. 1), has amusingly illustrated the feeling which moved knights-errant, and the particular object they had in view: “the ancient errant knights,” he says:—

“Won all their ladies’ hearts in fights,

And cuts whole giants into fritters,

To put them into amorous twitters;

Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,

Until their gallants were half killed:

But when their bones were drubbed so sore

They durst not win one combat more,

The ladies’ hearts began to melt,

Subdued by blows their lovers felt.

So Spanish heroes with their lances

At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”

However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out of her bower and into his saddle.

The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife Tiphania.

There are many instances in romance which would seem to imply, that so strained was the sentiment which bound knights to respect ladies, it compelled them not to depart therefrom even in extreme cases, involving lightness of conduct and infidelity. The great northern chiefs, who were a sort of very rough knights in their way, were, however, completely under the distaff. Their wives could divorce themselves at will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief, who, bringing home a guest whom his wife not only refused to welcome, but attempted to stab, administered such correction to his spouse in return, that the lady called in witnesses and divorced herself on the spot. Thereupon the household goods were divided among them, and the affair was rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an Ecclesiastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated the idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry spouse. Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the religious one; and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked that the knight must have been more than ordinarily devout who had God on his right hand (the place of honor), and his lady on his left.

To ride at the ring was then the pleasantest pastime for knights; and ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the failures. The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is still common enough at our fairs, for children; but in France and Germany, it is seriously practised in both its simple and double forms, by persons of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of an organ, and look as grave as if they were on desperate business.

It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was bound to be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found whose wooing was of the very roughest; and there were others who, if not rough, were rascally.

The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied exclusively by the “professed pourpoint-makers,” as a modern tailor might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially in times when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, or promising to pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. When I say the street was thus occupied exclusively, I must notice an exception. There were a few other residents in it, the Jew money-lenders or usurers; and when I hear the old French proverb cited “patient as a Lombard,” I do not know whether it originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders, both of whom were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here is an illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as lucky as Shylock’s daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly treated than Shylock’s daughter’s father—whom I have always considered as one of the most ill-used of men.

In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put his money out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and key at home. But the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, and the Lombard street Jessica, sitting all day at the window, attracted the homage of many passers-by. These were chiefly knights who came that way to be measured for pourpoints; and no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of the young lady in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That name indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the original knight was “my Beverley.”

Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world; for which he had obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon the Jew to borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportunity to also borrow the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in both exploits; for, as he remarked, if he could not pay the money he was about to borrow, he could borrow it of his more prudent relatives, and so acquit himself of his debt. With regard to the lady, he had serenaded her, night after night, till she looked as ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who played to Barry’s Romeo;—and he had sung “Ecco ridente il sole,” or what was then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking as ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Rosina. Our Jew, like old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician.

Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the usurer, and he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust to his promises. He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by a mock-marriage, and spent all that he had borrowed from the father, in celebrating his pretended nuptials with the daughter. There never was a more recreant knight than Giles de Pontoise.

However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their names to them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his daughter. He failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he carried off by violence, she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance to leave the Château de Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the Rue des Lombards.

This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not of that quality which his confessor would have recommended, but rather of a satanic aspect. “In the usurer’s house,” thought Giles, “live the tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew who holds my promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I have been so unjustly deprived. I will set fire to the house. If I burn tailor, money-lender, and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall have done a good night’s work, if I therewith can carry off little Jessica.”

Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and with such aid as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped the Jew’s dwelling in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and money-bags. The knight groped through the smoke and carried off the daughter. The Jew still held the promissory note of the Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary act, however, had destroyed half of one side of the Rue des Lombards. Therewith had perished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers to Jew money-lenders. “Sic vos non vobis,” thought Giles, “but at all events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica.”

The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He persecuted the pretended husband with a pertinacity which eventually overcame Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. The knight owed the usurer three thousand golden crowns, and had stolen from him his only daughter. Giles agreed to surrender his “lady,” on condition that the money-lender should sign an acquittance of the debt. This done, the Jew and daughter walked homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the result of their dealings with a knight.

The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the knight’s door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean’s in Shylock when he was told to make haste and go home, and begin to be a Christian. “It is little but sorrow I get by you, at all events,” said the Jew to the Chevalier.

“Do you make so light of your grandson?” asked Giles. And with this Parthian dart he shut his door in the face of the trio who were his victims.

This knight was a victimizer; but below we have an illustration of knights victimized through too daring affection.

The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those crowned knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry in him, with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two wives, but to neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, however, not with his two wives, but his two daughters and their chevaliers par amours, with whom we have now to do.

In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, rather than the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor Julian, and which was long known by the name of the “old palace.” It served as a palace about a thousand years and half a century ago, when one night there drew up before it a couple of knights, admirably mounted, and rather roughly escorted by a mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the riders, and handled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre the knights than to marshal them.

All the civility they received on this February night was of a highly equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the first and largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked and barred the gate behind them. An officer too approached to bid them welcome, but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil mission when he peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of their swords.

“We are the King’s own messengers,” said one of the knights, rather puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them;—“and we have, moreover, a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious master’s own hand,” remarked the second knight.

“Vive Louis le Debonnaire!” exclaimed the seneschal; “how fares it with our sovereign?”

“As well as can be,” was the reply, “with a monarch who has been engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and predecessor, Charlemagne. Here is his missive.” This missive was from Louis the Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or Louis of Fair Aspect. He was morose, wittily disposed, and ill-featured;—but then the poet-laureate had given him his fine name; and the king wore it as if it had been fairly won. He had clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural brothers, and then shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect for treaties than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished when they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal perused the letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, and immediately requested the two knights to enter the palace itself.

They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground floor, which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on duty; it was for the moment, however, empty. They who have visited the old Palais de Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, remarked and admired this solid relic of the past.

After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to the flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the knights, coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for some duty imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learning by rote, the names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. “Those are our names,” observed the first; “we have ridden hither by the king’s orders to announce his coming; and having done so, let us have fire and food, lest we be famished and frozen before he arrives.”

“Hem!” muttered the seneschal, “I am extremely sorry; but, according to this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow you must remain in this apartment;” and, seeing them about to remonstrate, he added, “You will be quite at liberty here, except, of course, that you can’t get out; you will have separate quarters to-morrow.”

It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, the nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had further to expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the monarch. He himself knew nothing more than his orders, and by them he was instructed to keep the two friends in close confinement till the sovereign’s arrival. “On second thoughts,” said the seneschal, “I must separate you at once. There is the bell in the tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and to-morrow will be upon us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I really must trouble one of you gentlemen to follow me.” The voice was not so civil as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the two friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer; and Raoul, who was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if harm was to come to them under such a roof.

The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like the covering of a place in which very much harm might be very quietly effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who might have been taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, and so loveable were the two spirits in question. They were no other than the two daughters of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. The romancers, who talk such an infinite deal of nonsense, say of them that their sweet-scented beauty was protected by the prickles of principle. The most rapid of analysers may see at once that this was no great compliment to the ladies. It was meant, however, to be the most refined flattery; and the will was accepted for the deed.

Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had not, neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the Arminians in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues of romance, nor Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, nor unworthy ægomet have applied it to the illustration of daring lovers.

These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had been wooed by emperors; but feeling no inclination to answer favorably to the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put force upon their affections, and bade them love only where their hearts directed them. This “license” gave courage to numberless nobles of various degrees, but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all their regular advances. The Princesses were, in fact, something like Miss Languish, thought love worth nothing without a little excitement, and would have considered elopement as the proper preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother, Hildegarda, was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte, who let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah More, she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and the young Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with gallant gentlemen of—as compared with princesses—rather low degree. In this respect, there is a parallel between the house of Karloman and some other houses of more modern times.

Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, an impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters’ affairs. He was, here, the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely empowered to dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families and fortunes of his people. He had learned the love-passages that had been going on, and he had hinted that when he reached the old palace in Paris, he would make it as calmly cold as a cloister, and that there were disturbed hearts there, which should be speedily restored to a lasting tranquillity. The young ladies did not trouble themselves to read the riddle of a brother who was for ever affecting much mystery. But they prepared to welcome his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily delighted when they knew that intelligence of his approaching coming had been brought by the two knights then in the castle.

Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the great guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty portion of skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked; drank, with intense disgust, part of a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality; and then having gazed on the miniature of Rotrude, which he took from beneath the buff jerkin under his corslet, he apostrophized it till he grew sleepy, upon which he blew out his lamp, and threw himself on an execrably hard couch. He was surprised to find that he was not in the dark. There was very good reason for the contrary.

As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noiselessly open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold—one hand holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was veiled; and she and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who as hurriedly rushed forward to meet them. He had laid his armor by; and they who recollect Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how he looked in tight buff suit, before he put his armor on, may have some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in which Raoul appeared to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and had not time to remark it even had she not been so accustomed.

Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, made anxious inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told him that her sister would speedily be with them, that there was certain danger, even death, threatening the two cavaliers, and probable peril menacing—as Gisla remarked, with a blush—those who loved them. The King, she added, had spoken angrily of coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from Count Volrade, who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his office, with all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old chamberlain in Denmark.

“Death to us!” exclaimed Robert. “Accursed be the prince who transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or his father’s friends.” “We were the favored servants of Charlemagne,” said Raoul. “We were of his closest intimacy,” exclaimed Robert. “Never,” interrupted Raoul, “did he ascend his turret to watch the stars, without summoning us, his nocturnal pages, as he called us, to his side.” “He dare not commit such a crime; for the body of Charlemagne is scarcely sealed down in its tomb; and Louis has not a month’s hold of the sceptre.”

“He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany,” exclaimed Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to a flight of stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy appearance of Rotrude.

And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the word “tableau!” ought to be written at this situation, and if it appears to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural, I am not in fault. I refer them to all the histories and romances in which this episode in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that Louis makes his appearance exactly as I have described, and precisely like Signor Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia.

Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative, dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the wrist. The background was occupied by four guards, wearing hoods; and I can not think of them without being reminded of those same four old guards, with M. Desmousseaux at their head, who always represented the Greek or Roman armies upon the stage of the Théâtre Français, when Talma was the Nero or the Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night.

With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself as a bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and then grew good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence gave a chill to the entire company. They turned as pale as any Russian nobleman to whom Nicholas was extraordinarily civil.

“We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes,” said Louis, laughingly, “as well as our sisters; and I have not gone through them to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister whom I encountered there, or the other sister whom I see here. I am a kind-hearted brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. I need only appeal to these four gentlemen of my guard, who will presently take off their hoods, and serve as witnesses this night in a little ceremony having reference to my dear Rotrude.”

“A ceremony! this night!” exclaimed the two princesses.

“Ay, by the nails of the cross! Two ceremonies. You shall both be married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double wedding, here in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall espouse Robert, Count de Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You might have aimed higher, but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my deceased sire; and, by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and ceremony! Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms.”

He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight. They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and unparalleled of brothers.

“We have no great faith in human gratitude,” said Louis, “and shall not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sisters,” added he, “retire for awhile; put on what you will; but do not tarry here at the toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls looking at the equipping of two pikemen.”

The two princesses withdrew; and there would have been a smile upon their lips, only that they suspected their brother. Hoping the best, however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers to the knights, and tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They were true daughters of their sire, who reckoned love-passages as even superior to stricken fields. He was not an exemplary father, nor a faithful husband. His entourage was not of the most respectable; and in some of his journeys he was attended by the young wife of one of his own cavaliers, clad in cavalier costume. It was a villanously reprobate action, not the less so that Hermengarde was living. The mention of it will disgust every monarch in Europe who reads my volume; and I am sure that it will produce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom of an admirable personage “over the water.”

The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the prickles of principle as the romances told of them. But, considering the example set them by their imperial father, they were really very tolerable princesses, under the circumstances.

“Don your suits, gentlemen!” exclaimed the king.

The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, at which the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, as two foxes might at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. They were greatly delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew impatient, and the knights addressed themselves at once to their adornment. They put aside their own armor, and with the assistance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms they fitted on the brassards or arm-pieces, which became them as though the first Milainer who ever dressed knight had taken their measure. With some little trouble they were accoutred, less as became bridegrooms than barons going to battle; and this done, they took their seats, at a sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an end with what remained of the toilette.

The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the services of the four mysterious valets! and, in a short time, the preparations were complete, even to the helmet with the closed visor. This done, the knights took their places, or were led rather to two high-backed oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated there, the four too-officious attendants applied their hands to the closed head-pieces; and in a very brief space the heads of the cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts, as if they were in deep slumber or as deep meditation.

Two o’clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms, and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought that the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them; for they remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters of Charlemagne advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully; and, at length, finding the knights not disposed to address them, gently called to each by his name. Raoul and Robert continued motionless and mute. They were in fact dead. They had been strangled or suffocated in a peculiar sort of armor, which had been sent to Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return for a jewelled vase presented by that emperor to the ancient city. “In 1560,” says Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian manuscript, there were several researches made in this part of the palace of Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ‘casque à soufflet,’ all the openings in which could be closed in an instant by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same instant the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the throat, and the patient was disposed of. “In this helmet,” adds the author, “was found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard and teeth admirable for their beauty.” I think, however, that in this matter M. de Beauvoir proves a little too much.

Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the lovers of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance have been derived from an Italian source; and it is said that an Italian monk, named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this dreary drama, impelled thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands of Raoul, by way of punishment for some contemptuous phrases which the monk had presumed to apply to the great Charlemagne.

Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected as “Trousseaux et Layettes,” which are always named together in the shop-fronts of a Parisian “Lingere.” There was once an ample field for the accommodation of both the sentiments of love and bravery in the old Chaussée d’Antin, when it was merely a chaussée or highway, and not the magnificent street it now is. It was, down even to comparatively modern times, the resort of lovers of every degree, from dukes and duchesses to common dragoons and dairymaids. They were not always, however, under this strict classification.

But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, there was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of bloody encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. Here if two cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a matter of honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was to be forced at the point of the sword. While the champions were contending, the ladies would scarcely affect to faint; they would stand aside, remain unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the two simpletons had pinked one another; or lounge in their cumbrous coaches till the lovers limped back to them.

It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not even in a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escorting Madame de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was chaperoning Louison d’Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, and neither would make way for the other to pass. Thereupon the two cavaliers leaped from their coaches, drew their swords, planted their feet firmly on the ground, and began slashing at each other like two madmen, to the great delight of a large crowd who enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble gentlemen cutting one another’s throats.

The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their champions. Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular friend had made a more than ordinary successful thrust; and each was generous enough to applaud any especial dexterity, even when her own lover thereby bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows only poked at each other with the more intensity. And when they had sufficiently slit their pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, the ladies, weary of waiting any longer for a more exciting denouement, rushed between the combatants, like the Sabine ladies between the contending hosts; each gentleman gallantly kissed the lady who did not belong to him; and the whole four gayly supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the world.

This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and death, as illustrated by chivalry.

DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL.

“Le duel, ma mie, ne vaut pas un duo, de Lully.”

Crispin Mourant.

As an effect of chivalry, duelling deserves some passing notice. Its modern practice was but an imitation of chivalric encounters, wherein the issue of battle was left to the judgment of God.

Bassompierre dates the origin of duelling (in France) from the period of Henri II. Previous to that king’s reign, the quarrels of gentlemen were determined by the decree of the constable and marshals of France. These only allowed knightly encounters in the lists, when they could not of themselves decide upon the relative justice and merits of the dispute.

“I esteem him no gentleman,” said Henri one day, “who has the lie given him, and who does not chastise the giver.” It was a remark lightly dropped, but it did not fall unheeded. The king in fact encouraged those who resorted, of their own will, to a bloody arbitrament of their dissensions; and duelling became so “fashionable,” that even the penalty of death levelled against those who practised it, was hardly effectual enough to check duellists. At the close of the reign of Henri IV. and the commencement of that of Louis XIII. the practice was in least activity; but after the latter period, as the law was not rigorously applied, the foolish usage was again revived; and sanguinary simpletons washed out their folly in blood.

But duelling has a more remote origin than that ascribed to it by Bassompierre. Sabine, in his “Dictionary of Duelling,” a recently-published American work, dates its rise from the challenge of the Philistine accepted by David! However this may be, it is a strange anomaly that an advocate for the savage and sinful habit of duelling has appeared in that France which claims to be the leader of civilization. Jules Janin has, among his numberless feuilletons published three reasons authorizing men to appeal to single combat. The above M. Janin divides the world into three parts—a world of cravens; a world in which opinion is everything; and a world of hypocrites and calumniators. He considers the man who has not the heart to risk his life in a duel, as one lost in the world of cravens, because the legion of cowards by whom he is surrounded will assume courage at his expense.

Further, according to our gay neighbor’s reasoning, the man is lost in this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not seek to obtain a good opinion at the sword’s point.

Again, says M. Janin, the man is lost in this world of hypocrites and calumniators who will not demand reparation, sword in hand, for the calumnies and malicious reports to which he has been exposed. It would be insulting to the common sense of my readers to affect to point out to them the rottenness of reasons like these. They could only convince such men as Buckingham and Alfieri, and others in circumstances like theirs; Buckingham after killing Lord Shrewsbury at Barnes, and pressing the head of Lady Shrewsbury on his bloody shirt; and Alfieri, who, after a vile seduction, and very nearly a terrible murder in defence of it, went home and slept more peacefully than he had ever slept before: “dopo tanto e si stranie peripizie d’un sol giorno, non ho dormito mai d’un sonno piu tenace e piu dolce.” Alfieri would have agreed with M. Janin, that in duelling lay the safeguard of all that remains to us of civilization. But how comes it then that civilization is thus a wreck, since duelling has been so long exercising a protective influence over it?

However few, though dazzling, were the virtues possessed by the chivalrous heroes of ancient history, it must be conceded to them, that they possessed that of valor, or a disregard of life, in an eminent degree. The instances of cowardice are so rare that they prove the general rule of courage; yet these men, with no guides but a spurious divinity and a false philosophy, never dreamed of having recourse to the duel, as a means of avenging a private wrong. Marius, indeed, was once challenged, but it was by a semi-barbarous Teutonic chief, whom the haughty Roman recommended, if he were weary of his life to go and hang himself. Themistocles, too, whose wisdom and courage the most successful of our modern gladiators may admire and envy, when Eurybiades threatened to give him a blow, exclaimed, “Strike, but hear me!” Themistocles, it must be remembered, was a man of undaunted courage, while his jealous provoker was notorious for little else but his extreme cowardice.

But, in truth, there have been brave men in all countries, who have discouraged this barbarous practice. A Turkish pacha reminded a man who had challenged a fellow Spahi, that they had no right to slay one another while there were foes to subdue. The Dauphin of Viennois told the Count of Savoy, who had challenged him, that he would send the count one of his fiercest bulls, and that if the count were so minded, his lordship of Savoy might test his prowess against an antagonist difficult to overcome. The great Frederick would not tolerate the practice of duelling in his army; and he thoroughly despised the arguments used for its justification. A greater man than Frederick, Turenne, would never allow himself to be what was called “concerned in an affair of honor.” Once, when the hero of Sintzheim and the Rhine had half drawn his sword to punish a disgusting insult, to which he had been subjected by a rash young officer, he thrust it back into the sheath, with the words: “Young man, could I wipe your blood from my conscience with as much ease as I can this filthy proof of your folly from my face, I would take your life upon the spot.”

Even the chivalrous knights who thought duelling a worthy occupation for men of valor, reduced opportunities for its practice to a very small extent. Uniting with the church, they instituted the Savior’s Truce, by which duels were prohibited from Wednesday to the following Monday, because, it was said, those days had been consecrated by our Savior’s Passion. This, in fact, left only Tuesday as a clear day for settling quarrels by force of arms.

There probably never existed a mortal who was opposed by more powerful or more malignant adversaries than St. Augustin was. His great enemies the Donatists never, it is true, challenged him to any more dangerous affray than a war of literary controversy. But it was in answer to one of their missiles hurled against him, in the form of an assertion, that the majority of authors was on their side, he aptly told them that it was the sign of a cause destitute of truth when only the erring authority of many men could be relied on.

The Norman knights or chiefs introduced the single combat among us. It is said they were principally men who had disgraced themselves in the face of the enemy, and who sought to wipe out the disgrace in the blood of single individuals. It is worthy of remark too, that when king and sovereign princes had forbidden duelling, under the heaviest penalties, the popes absolved the monarchs from their vows when the observance of them would have put in peril the lives of offending nobles who had turned to Rome in their perplexity, and who had gained there a reputation for piety, as Hector did, who was esteemed so highly religious, for no other reason than that he had covered with rich gifts the altar of the father of Olympus.

Supported by the appearance that impunity was to be purchased at Rome, and encouraged by the example of fighting-cardinals themselves, duelling and assassination stalked hand in hand abroad. In France alone, in the brief space of eighteen years, four thousand gentlemen were killed in rencontres, upon quarrels of the most trivial nature. In the same space of time, not less than fourteen thousand pardons for duelling were granted. In one province alone, of France, in Limousin, one hundred and twenty gentlemen were slain in six months—a greater number than had honorably fallen in the same period, which was one of war, in defence of the sovereign, their country, and their homes. The term rencontre was used in France to elude the law. If gentlemen “met” by accident and fought, lawyers pleaded that this was not a duel, which required preliminaries between the two parties. How frequent the rencontres were, in spite of the penalty of death, is thus illustrated by Victor Hugo, in his Marion Delorme:—

“Toujours nombre de duels, le trois c’était d’Angennes

Contre d’Arquien, pour avoir porté du point de Gènes.

Lavarde avec Pons s’est rencontré le dix,

Pour avoir pris à Pons la femme de Sourdis.

Sourdis avec Dailly pour une du théâtre

De Mondorf. Le neuf, Nogent avec Lachâtre,

Pour avoir mal écrit trois vers de Colletet.

Gorde avec Margaillan, pour l’heure qu’il était.

D’Himière avec Gondi, pour le pas à l’église.

Et puis tous les Brissac avec tous les Soubise,

A propos d’un pari d’un cheval contre un chien.

Enfin, Caussade avec Latournelle, pour rien.

Pour le plaisir, Caussade a tué Latournelle.

Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, and with due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. “Yea; but flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. Grant that too; but take this into the account: flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

What man could endure for honor’s sake, however, is shown in the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth century, was asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punishable by death to all parties concerned in them. The friend of De Pontis pressed it on him, as a custom always practised among friends; and his captain and lieutenant-colonel did not merely permit, but ordered him to do what his friend desired.

Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who did their best, and that very wisely, to avoid “the inevitable.”

Valorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the German knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adversary when they could. For this purpose, they put on the Noth-hemd or shirt of need. It was supposed to cover the wearer with invulnerability. The making of the garment was a difficult and solemn matter. Several maidens of known integrity assembled together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove and sewed together this linen garment, in the name of the devil! On the bosom of the shirt were worked two heads; one was long-bearded and covered with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either side. How this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it would be difficult to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps the helmeted effigy was supposed to protect the warrior, and the demoniacal one to affright his adversary. But then, this shirt similarly made and adorned, was woven by ladies when about to become mothers of knights or of common men. What use it could be in such case, I leave to the “commères” to settle. My own vocation of “gossip” will not help me to the solution.

But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from death, in England and France it had its “mercy-knives” to swiftly inflict it. Why they were so called I do not know, for after all they were only employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by plunging the knife through the bars of the visor into the eye. After the battle of Pavia, many of the French were killed with pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking and hewing through the joints of the armor.

How anxious were the sires of those times to train their children how best to destroy life! This was more especially the case among what were called the “half-christened Irish” of Connaught. In this province, the people left the right arms of their male infants unchristened. They excepted that part coming under the divine influences of baptism, in order that the children, when grown to the stature of fighting men, might deal more merciless and deadly blows. There was some such superstitious observance as this, I think, in ancient Germany. It can not be said, in reference to the suppressing of this observance, as was remarked by Stow after the city authorities had put down the martial amusement of the London apprentices—contending against one another of an evening with cudgels and bucklers, while a host of admiring maids as well as men stood by to applaud or censure—that the open pastime being suppressed, worse practice within doors probably followed.

Stout fellows were some of the knights of the romantic period, if we may believe half that is recorded of them. There is one, Branor le Brun, who is famous for having been a living Quintain. The game so called consists of riding at a heavy sack suspended on a balanced beam, and getting out of its way, if possible, before the revolving beam brought it round violently against the back of the assailant’s head. When Palamedes challenged old Branor, the aged knight rather scornfully put him aside as an unworthy yet valiant knight. Branor, however, offered to sit in his saddle motionless, while Palamedes rode at him, and got unhorsed by Branor’s mere inert resistance. I forget how many knights Branor le Brun knocked over their horses’ cruppers, after this quiet fashion.

It was not all courtesy in battle or in duel. Even Gyron, who was called the “courteous,” was a very “rough customer” indeed, when he had his hand on the throat of an antagonist. We hear of him jumping with all his force upon a fallen and helpless foe, tearing his helmet from its fastenings by main force, battering the knight’s face with it till he was senseless, and then beating on his head with the pommel of his sword, till the wretched fellow was dead. At this sort of pommelling there was never knight so expert as the great Bayard. The courtesy of the most savage in fight, was however undeniable when a lady was in the case. Thus we hear of a damsel coming to a fountain at which four knights were sitting, and one of them wishes to take her. The other three object, observing that the damsel is without a knight to protect her, and that she is, therefore, according to the law of chivalry, exempt from being attacked. And again, if a knight slew an adversary of equal degree, he did not retain his sword if the latter was a gift from some lady. The damsel, in such case, could claim it, and no knight worthy of the name would have thought of refusing to comply with her very natural request. Even ladies were not to be won, in certain cases, except by valor; as Arthur, that king of knights, would not win, nor retain, Britain, by any other means. The head of Bran the Blessed, it may be remembered, was hidden in the White Hill, near London, where, as long as it remained, Britain was invulnerable. Arthur, however removed it. He scorned to keep the island by any other means than his own sword and courage; and he was ready to fight any man in any quarrel.

Never did knight meet death more nobly than that Captain Douglas, whose heroism is recorded by Sir William Temple, and who “stood and burnt in one of our ships at Chatham, when his soldiers left him, because it never should be said a Douglas quitted his post without orders.” Except as an example of heroic endurance, this act, however, was in some degree a mistake, for the state did not profit by it. There was something more profitable in the act of Von Speyk, in our own time. When hostilities were raging between Holland and Belgium, in 1831, the young Dutch captain, just named, happened to be in the Scheldt, struggling in his gun-boat against a gale which, in spite of all his endeavors and seamanship, drove him ashore, under the guns of the Belgians. A crowd of Belgian volunteers leaped aboard, ordered him to haul down his colors and surrender. Von Speyk hurried below to the magazine, fell upon his knees in prayer, flung a lighted cigar into an open barrel of powder, and blew his ship to atoms, with nearly all who were on board. If he, by this sacrifice, prevented a Dutch vessel from falling into the enemy’s power, he also deprived Holland of many good seamen. The latter country, however, only thought of the unselfish act of heroism, in one who had been gratuitously educated in the orphan house at Amsterdam, and who acquitted his debt to his country, by laying down his life when such sacrifice was worth making. His king and countrymen proved that they could appreciate the noble act. The statue of Von Speyk was placed by the side of that of De Ruyter, and the government decreed that as long as a Dutch navy existed there should be one vessel bearing the name of Von Speyk.