of peace, clothed in ermine, and venerable with age and learning; they were either the peers or equals of the challenger, or of his feudal superior, a baron, not of the coif, but of the sword. The trial of this appeal took place, as we have said, in the court of the Lord paramount, where the challenger did battle either with the first of the peers who had passed judgment on him, with three of their number, or with the whole of them, according to certain rules for this species of forensic display. If in the baron's court, where the accused was first brought to trial, as peers chose to give a judgment which they should have thus gallantly to defend, the baron himself was compelled to uphold the justice of his own court; which must needs have made him anxious to have about him ablebodied and stout-hearted councillors. Accordingly, there might accrue this advantage from even so preposterous a thing as the appeal of false judgment-it might present, more especially as it prevailed where subinfeudation had been permitted, the administration of justice from falling into mean and contemptible hands. In England, there was no appeal of false judgment, or rather none that was tried by arms. And in France, as no challenge could be given of the king's court, there being no superior court into which the appeal could be carried, there was one expedient by which the lord might escape the inconvenience of a combat, if in those fighting days this could possibly be thought an inconvenience. Should the criminal be too powerful to be dealt with by his immediate superior, the cause could be carried at once to the king's court, or he could send down his peers to try it.

Perhaps our readers may not be unwilling to take a glance at the manner in which the combat was dealt with by the English law, as it advanced in judicial wisdom and dignity. Even after that jurisprudence had assumed some degree of form and consistency, its lawyers were compelled to admit the combat into the system. They were fain to reason upon it as a mode of testing the credibility of a witness to be applied when there was a failure of corroborative evidence. Reason, before she triumphs over an absurdity, labours to make it look as much like good sense as she can. If a general belief existed that the party who spoke

truth would prevail in the combat, few men, it was argued, would dare to maintain a downright perjury in single fight, or if they did, would, under the fearful presentiments of an evil conscience, be likely to succeed in the encounter. At all events, it was but leaving, it might be said, to the chance of battle those cases which, as they afforded no grounds for legal decision, must in some sort be left to chance. After the trial by jury had been extensively applied by Henry II., there still remained a class of cases where the principle of the combat was ex. clusively applicable. Bracton, a law writer of the period, mentions a case of this kind. A person was charged with having poisoned a man; the accuser, called the appellant, (from an old French word, appeller, to accuse,) was willing, in the language of the times, to prove the fact on the body of the accused, the appellee. The accused, however, was not willing that his body should be used for any such judicial purpose, and desired to be tried by a jury-by the country, as it was then styled. But it was decided that he had no election-he must defend himself per corpus, by his body; for, says Bracton, "the patria, the country could know nothing of a con.. cealed fact like this."

At a later time the well-known encounter between the Dukes of Here. ford and Norfolk, which was interrupted so strangely by Richard II., was an instance of the strict application of the law of combat. The scandalous words which Hereford accused Norfolk of having uttered, being spoken in the presence of no witness, there could be no corroborative evidence; there was merely oath against oath, and the battle was to determine whose oath was strongest.

From the judicial combat, on the one hand, and, on the other, from a peculiar sense of honour generated by the institution of chivalry, we have derived our custom of duelling. The judicial combat had supplied men with the notion of a formal regulated engagement, by which legal disputes, especially between gentlemen, were to be decided; and chivalry created new offences by the extreme sensitiveness to personal indignity which it encouraged. By the law of the ancient Franks, if a freeman struck another freeman three blows, (a less number, we suppose, was not worth consideration,) he was fined three sous; if he drew blood, fifteen. With the de scendant of those Franks, a single blow, however slight, could be avenged only by the blood of the aggressor. Nay, the lie given was a mortal offence. Yet the laws of a country made for all men, citizen and noble, knight and peasant, could not visit

with death a rude contradiction, or a blow, which wounded nothing but pride. When, therefore, the lists were abandoned as a place for the trial of legal controversies, they were re-occupied, and with somewhat more propriety, for the determination of those private quarrels which no law could hope to determine.

This leads to our subject of chivalry -on which who is there that loves not to descant? Yet the reader need not fear that we shall din or dazzle him with battle or with tournament.

It is the peculiar advantage of this our miscellaneous literature, that it allows the writer to give out upon old topics just what he thinks may be new or acceptable, without trudging his methodical way, treatise-fashion, over ground familiar to all. He is enabled to communicate, with as little of introductory matter as may be, just those observations or notices which he thinks himself entitled to call his own; and can at once place his subject in that aspect which appears to him novel, or which, at least, has come out to his optics, as he fancies, with more than usual distinctness.

Turning from romance to history, we are disappointed at finding that chivalry had so little influence on the manners of feudal barons who embraced the institution. If we regard these men of gentle blood in their more private life, we find them carrying on perpetual wars against each other, or even descending into the plains from their castles to pillage the inhabitants of towns, or the passing traveller; and, if we contemplate them as they come before us on the public stage, and in the full light of history, we find in their conduct, not only violence and bloodshed, but consummate treachery and falsehood, most unknightly vices. We need only turn to our own annals. Take the reign of Richard II., which immediately succeeded what we are accustomed to regard as the zenith of chivalry-we seem to be reading a page out of the worst period of Italian history, when the political adventurers of that country were constantly aiming at tyranny through fraud and assassination. Treachery more refined and cruelty less reluctant could hardly be practised; and the

only wonder is, that oaths and promises could continue to answer the purpose of deception, for which alone, in the court of Richard, they seem to have been employed. We begin to doubt if the virtues of chivalry ever existed except in fable and in song. But having disabused ourselves of the flattering notions which poets and fabulists may have instilled into us, we must not fall into the opposite error of a total and arid scepticism. The well-known fact that knights, when taken prisoner, were often released upon their parole, in order to obtain their ransom, shows that chivalry was not altogether a dead letter -at least in the intercouse of war. The higher virtues of chivalry never could have belonged to a whole class, any more than the enthusiastic and single-hearted piety which led to a seclusion from the world could be perpetuated in an order of monks. Its disinterested heroism-its pursuit of glory, through deeds not of valour only, but performed in defence of the right -in the service of the weak, or for the advocacy of the true faith, all this could have been realized only in a few singular and elevated spirits. But these, its true disciples and bright exemplars, threw a splendour over the whole order, and certainly extended throughout, and to the least of its members, a jealous sense of honour, and a fear of reproach from cowardice or falsehood, the effect of which European society feels to this day. Many a good knight might have been living in the worst of times, though the council-chamber of a crafty monarch was not the place to find him. Nor let us deny the institution its influence because it failed to answer purposes quite beyond its scope. From chivalry nothing could be expected in the way of political reformation. It taught no Roman or Attic virtue, whose object was the good of the commonwealth; nor did it induce its members to look into forms of government, or take a vivid interest in their administration. Its virtue was quite personal, and the knight remained self-centred. He was not converted into a patriot; he was not connected any more closely to his own country. It was a European order he had entered; one which made him a cosmopolite, or denizen of all nations-an order which extended wherever the Church extended, under the shadow of whose might it grew and flourished. His best qualities unfitted him for an instrument of political amelioration. Fidelity to engage ments, preserved with Stoic rigidity, was the leading virtue of a true knight; and, if once bound to a sovereign by personal allegiance, no views of expediency could have justified him in a departure from his plighted faith. How the king governed, was his responsibility-the knight had only to perform his own part to maintain his own loyalty. Nor was it to be expected that chivalry, itself an aristocratic institution, could assist in breaking down those barriers which distinctions of birth had thrown up between the several classes of society. Every knight could give the accolade, but could give it only to one of gentle blood. It was a new order of nobility, highly favourable to the poor gentleman, or the younger brother, and therefore in some measure a counterpoise to that feudal nobility which was founded on the proprietorship of the soil. But, though confessedly the reward of personal prowess, it served rather to increase than diminish the prejudice in favour of birth, by appearing to confine valour and courtesy to the wellborn; and, what is still more to the disparagement of knighthood, one is tempted to think, from the stories that are told, that not only were gentlemen the sole materials out of which knights could be made, but that gen tlemen were the only objects on which the virtues of knighthood were worthy of being practised. The courtesies of war seem rarely to have been extended to the rude rabblement, as Spencer (himself, in this particular, a somewhat too knightly poet) would have called them, or to the plebeian townsmen, who were slaughtered with as little mercy by their chivalrous conquerors, as they ever were by conquerors in any age of the world. That beautiful instance of conduct related

of Sir Philip Sydney, was of a higher strain of chivalry than knights of old can be said to have attained. One of these might have passed the cup of water to a fellow knight, or to a poor gentleman, but hardly to the plebeian soldier. Even in the exercise of that chivalrous virtue, liberality, so especially extolled by romancers and troubadours, who had, we suspect, more interest in the largess of a knight than any other demonstration of virtue he could possibly make even here, we meet with instances of the most curious obliquity of moral vision. Hallam relates the following excellent anecdote: - A Count of Champagne was petitioned by a poor knight for a sum to marry his daughter with. A rich burgess, who was standing by at the time, in order to relieve the Count of an importunate suitor, told the knight that the Count had already given away so much that he had nothing left. "How say you," cried the Count, turning to the unfortunate burgess, "that I have nothing left, when I have yourself!" And therewith he gave the rich citizen to the poor knight, who, nothing embarrassed, seized his prize by the collar, relinquished him till he had paid a ransom of 500 crowns. The contemporary writer, it seems, who tells the story, notes in it nothing but a signal instance of liberality. The Count, having nothing more to give to poor gentlemen who wanted a dowery for their daughters, gives a worthy burgess to the next petitioner-a whole burgess of very squeezable material.

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After all these explanations and drawbacks, chivalry still remains a subject of just admiration, and will still continue to furnish the dream and romance of future ages. In dissecting its character, or tracing its origin, which are often one and the same process, there is no necessity to recur to the customs of the Germans or Scythians, or other barbarians, in their native woods, who introduced the young soldier into his military life, and placed the shield upon his arm with certain solemn ceremonies. Whether these solemnities were or were not of a religious character, they concern us little, for there is nothing extraordinary in the union of sacred rites with the profession of arms. Many people have mingled religion with their war-few have failed to do so-but with no equivalent result. The followers of Odin were pious in their way. What is peculiar to chivalry arose, not from a union of war and religion, but from the nature of that religion which was here combined with the martial character. It was Christianity disguised, but not extinct, which was seen in this, to it so strange companionship, -it was this religion which was animating the valour of battle, presiding over the pomp of life, distributing the glories of the world. Other warriors had fought under their gods of war, the knights were heroes marshalled under the God of Peace. Self-renunciation and lowliness of heart the perpetual prayer for pardon and for mercy sorrow, and pain, and humiliation, made divine in the sacred object of his worship-such was the spirit, such the duty, such the contemplation of him who embraced the Christian faith. Strange and incongruous, indeed, seems the association of such a faith with the profession of arms-the combination of its self-denying temper with the impetuosity of a military champion, and the boast of military triumph. But the association, incongruous as it may seem, took place. The Christian faith could not conquer the reigning passion for war, but it made close alliance with it. It pierced the stubborn heart of the warrior, though it could not turn it to peace. Disarm he would not, but he knelt in iron mail, and lowered his haughty crest, before the image of resignation and suffering, before the most tender objects of devotion, and the most affecting that ever were presented to the mind of man. And thus came forth the character of the knight -a bold instance of the resolution of moral forces. Christian humility was transmuted into the courtesy of knighthood; the patience of a disciple of the cross was sustaining the hardships of a camp; the self-renunciation of a Christian had become the devoted heroism of the soldier.

The Crusades brought out in full and sudden perfection this strange compound, this warrior-Christian. The knights were pilgrims, marching under spread banners to the tomb of Christ. Chivalry became all but a branch of the hierarchy; and indeed the two orders touched so closely at one point as to unite in the warriormonk, or the Knights of the Temple and St John. Over the whole insti

tution the Church affectionately watched. The priest assisted at the installation of its neophyte, who performed his vigils in the Church, and who received his arms from the altar. Many a form of external worship was devised in those days of sacred ritual, and the knight had his: when at mass, and while the Gospel was being read, the military champion of the cross held his drawn sword before him, the hilt upon his breast, and its point upwards and so he worshipped.

But the enthusiasm of the Crusades could not be perpetuated, and the character of chivalry undergoes no slight modification as the scene of its exploits changes. The knight was not always in Palestine, nor did the church alone employ his sword. Amongst those who claimed the protection of his valour the weaker sex held a conspicuous place. The knight, with all his capacity for endurance and voluntary toil, was no ascetic, nor turned with horror from the loveliness of woman. What more natural than that he, who had relinquished all selfish advantage of his arms except their glory, should lay that glory itself as a tribute at the feet of beauty? The knight became the champion of the fair a service not barren of reward. God and the ladies! was his favourite vow. Doubtless there was some imperfection in a theology which could mingle together these two objects of so different a species of devotion, but how fresh and single-hearted does the ejaculation sound! God and the ladies! How it tells of a free conscience along a joyous path of existence! of a spirit open to pleasure and to piety, and finding, perhaps, from a happy ignorance, no contradiction between them!

Disbanded from the Holy Wars, the knight frequently had no other resource than to offer his sword to the several potentates of Europe, whose contests found for it abundant employment. He was now the soldier of fortune; but if a true knight, he carried with him a high sense of honour that placed him above all fortune. With a steadfast, but certainly not too rigid piety, with a heart prepared for danger, open to delight, he often wandered from court to court, partaking gaily of what pleasure or what battle might be found. The unsettled nature of the times fostered this spirit of independence and of jovial ease, com

bined with toughest fortitude. Quiet times breed timid hearts. The orderly progress of affairs brings with it so strict a dependence upon that very order that we dare trust nothing to fortune. And wisely are we distrustful. Fortune has nothing to bestow. Every thing is in the gift of sober industry, or devolves in due course of law. But the very violence of rude times which gives uncertainty to possession, and throws a fear upon the prosperous, takes also half the cloud from adversity, and, releasing the mind from its too anxious moorings, permits it at once to be adventurous and gay. The word of a knight! There was a moral re-action here which has not, perhaps, been sufficiently noticed. Notwithstanding the sacred or superstitious character which jurisprudence in the Middle Ages had assumed, and perhaps, indeed, owing in part to this very circumstance, there prevailed, according to all accounts, the most abundant perjury. Whatever was the cause of this evil, or whether it resulted solely from the ignorance and barbarity of the times, (though people as ignorant and barbarous have been renowned for speaking the truth,) certain it is that the remedy men persisted to apply, tended only to aggra vate the malady. Oaths were invented and imposed of still greater sanctity than those which had been found so unavailing. To swear by the cross of Canterbury, or on the relics of a saint, was peculiarly stringent; and thus it came to be a matter of general, of popular belief, that one oath was more binding than another. Now, to speak the truth, and adhere to your word in obedience to your vow, is all that in any case can be done; and if a distinction is to be made between two oaths, if more or less sacred, this can only be effected by sometimes breaking one of them. If to swear by the cross of Canterbury is more binding than a simple oath, the simple oath suffers disparagement. Besides which, every addition to the ceremonial of superstition increases that mischief which is inherent in all superstition, namely, that it transfers the attention from the real virtue to be performed, to that which has in fact no value except as an auxiliary to the virtue. Never was the simple obligation of veracity so completely obscured and lost sight of in the attendant sanctions of the oath, as in these times, Robert

of France, a, pious prince, grieved at the amount of perjury committed, and that on the most sacred relics, had an empty reliquary made, that men might swear on that, and so be saved at least from the most heinous part of their offence. All kinds of subterfuges and tricks, such as not in reality touching the sacred emblem, were used by the swearer to exculpate himfrom what? from the crime of meditated falsehood, of which the very subterfuge convicted him. Sometimes the trick was played by the opposite party, and the swearer was made to take a greater oath than he thought for. When Haroldwent over to Normandy, William, then duke of that province, prevailed on him to swear that he would assist him in his future claims to the throne of England. Harold took the oath, laying his hand, as he thought, on a table merely covered with a cloth; on the cloth being removed, it was discovered that there had been secretly conveyed under it a box of relics of the most awful character. But in such matters there is happily a point of reaction in men's minds. When all this perjury and inefficient superstition was most rife, the knight stood forth, and challenged faith in his veracity on the simple word of a gentleman. And, from that day the word of a man of honour is the surest bond of confidence between man and man.

Why are these times of the knight and the monk so favoured of the poet, - why are they held pre-eminently entitled to the epithet, "romantic?" Mainly, we think, because in no period of history are the great varieties of human character so broadly distinguished; each being, at the same time, informed with its full complement of passion, and an undivided will. This, together with the circumstance that the external pomp of life was well fitted to figure forth to the eye this striking contrast of character, forms the secret charm which renders these ages so acceptable and captivating to all who court the exercise of imagination. Pass the procession in review-the feudal monarch, the feudal noble, the bishop, the monk, the knight, the burgess; when was life so varied, when was the individual allowed to deliver himself so entirely, and with so little self-contradiction, to the prevailing temper of his mind? He who craved solitude, and