THE KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS. A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE. "La bravoure est une qualité innée, on ne se la donne pas." 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, 66 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 AngloSaxons, 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 |