profession; wandering from court to court, and from shore to shore, bound on high adventure, and seeking, with equal readiness, their fortunes in love and in war. It would not be difficult to deduce from this very early period some of those peculiar habits and customs, which, brought by the Gothic conquerors into the provinces of the divided empire of Rome, subsisted and became ingrafted upon the institutions of Chivalry. Tacitus, for example, informs us, that among the Germans, and especially among the Catti, every youthful champion permitted his beard and hair to grow, and did not shave them until he had performed some signal feat of arms. In the like manner, as the general reader may have learned from that irrefragable authority, Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight who received his order was obliged to wear white armour, and a shield without a device, until, by some daring and distinguished achievement, he had acquired title to an honourable badge of distinction. If this correspondence of customs shall be thought too farfetched, and too general, the next, which we also derive from Tacitus, is too close to be disputed. The German warriors, who piqued themselves upon their bravery, used, at the commencement of a war, to assume an iron ring, after the fashion of a shackle, upon their arm, which they did not remove until they had slain an enemy. The reader may be pleased to peruse the following instance of a similar custom from the French romance of Jehan de Saintré, written in the year 1459, and supposed to be founded, in a great measure, upon

real incidents. The hero, with nine companionsat arms, four of whom were knights, and five squires, vowed to carry a helmet of a particular shape, that of the knights having a visor of gold, and that of the squires a visor of silver. Thus armed, they were to travel from court to court for the space of three years, defying the like number of knights and squires, wherever they came, to support the beauty of their mistresses with sword and lance. The emblems of their enterprise were chained to their left shoulders, nor could they be delivered of them until their vow was honourably accomplished. Their release took place at the court of the Emperor of Germany, after a solemn tournament, and was celebrated with much triumph. In like manner, in the same romance, a Polish knight, called the Seigneur de Loiselench, is described as appearing at the court of Paris wearing a light gold chain attached to his wrist and ankle in token of a vow, which emblem of bondage he had sworn to wear for five years, until he should

1 [L'Hystoire et plaisant Chronique du petit JEHAN DE SAINTRE, et de la jeune Dame des Belles Cousines, sans autre nom nommer. Paris: 1517.] We may here observe, once for all, that we have no hesitation in quoting the romances of Chivalry as good evidence of the laws and customs of knighthood. The authors, like the painters of the period, invented nothing, but copying the manners of the age in which they lived, transferred them, without doubt or scruple, to the period and personages of whom they treated. But the romance of Jehan de Saintré is still more authentic evidence, as it is supposed to contain no small measure of fact, though disguised and distorted. Probably the achievement of the Polish knights may have been a real incident.

find some knight or squire without reproach, by encountering with whom he might be delivered (such was the phrase) of his vow and enterprise. Lord Herbert of Cherbury mentions, in his Memoirs, that when he was made Knight of the Bath. a tassel of silken cordage was attached to the mantle of the order, which, doubtless, had originally the same signification as the shackle worn by the German champion. The rule was, however, so far relaxed, that the knot was unloosed so soon as a lady of rank gaged her word that the new Knight of the Bath would do honour to the order; and Lord Herbert, whose punctilious temper set great store by the niceties of chivalrous ceremony, fails not to record, with becoming gratitude, the name of the honourable dame who became his security on this important occasion.

Other instances might be pointed out, in which the ancient customs of the Gothic tribes may be traced in the history of Chivalry; but the above are enough to prove that the seeds of that singular institution existed in the German forests, though they did not come to maturity until the destruction of the Roman empire, and the establishment of the modern states of Europe upon its ruins.

Having thus given a general view of the origin of Chivalry, we shall, I. briefly notice the causes from which it drew its peculiar characters, and the circumstances in which it differs so widely from the martial character as it existed, either among the ancient Greeks and Romans, or in other countries and nations. II. We shall attempt a general abstract of its institutions. III. The rise and pro

gress of Chivalry,-its effects upon the political state of Europe, and its decay and extinction, will close the article.

I. Agreeably to this division, the general nature and spirit of the institution of chivalry falls first under our consideration.

In every age and country valour is held in esteem, and the more rude the period and the place, the greater respect is paid to boldness of enterprise and success in battle. But it was peculiar to the institution of Chivalry, to blend military valour with the strongest passions which actuate the human mind, the feelings of devotion and those of love. The Greeks and Romans fought for liberty or for conquest, and the knights of the middle ages for God and for their ladies. Loyalty to their sovereigns was a duty also incumbent upon these warriors; but although a powerful motive, and by which they often appear to have been strongly actuated, it entered less warmly into the composition of the chivalrous principle than the two preceding causes. Of patriotism, considered as a distinct predilection to the interests of one kingdom, we find comparatively few traces in the institutions of knighthood. But the love of personal freedom, and the obligation to maintain and defend it in the persons of others as in their own, was a duty particularly incumbent on those who attained the honour of Chivalry. Generosity, gallantry, and an unblemished reputation, were no less necessary ingredients in the character of a perfect knight. He was not called upon simply to practise these

virtues when opportunity offered, but to be sedulous and unwearied in searching for the means of exercising them, and to push them without hesitation to the brink of extravagance, or even beyond it. Founded on principles so pure, the order of Chivalry could not, in the abstract at least, but occasion a pleasing, though a romantic developement of the energies of human nature. But as, in actual practice, every institution becomes deteriorated and degraded, we have too much occasion to remark, that the devotion of the knights often degenerated into superstition, their love into licentiousness, their spirit of loyalty or of freedom into tyranny and turmoil, their generosity and gallantry into hare-brained madness and absurdity.

We have mentioned devotion as a principal feature in the character of Chivalry. At what remote period the forms of Chivalry were first blended with those of the Christian religion, would be a long and difficult enquiry. The religion which breathes nothing but love to our neighbour and forgiveness of injuries, was not, in its primitive purity, easily transferable into the warlike and military institutions of the Goths, the Franks, and the Saxons. At its first infusion, it appeared to soften the character of the people among whom it was introduced so much, as to render them less warlike than their heathen neighbours. Thus the pagan Danes ravaged England when inhabited by the Christian Saxons,— the heathen Normans conquered Neustria from the Franks, the converted Goths were subdued by the sword of the heathen Huns, the Visigoths of