ful in person; now glittering in polished steel and fiercely battering the walls of Jerusalem; now clad in silken jupon and tilting with ribboned lance at the gorgeous tournament; always associated with the sound of martial music, the jingle of armor, and the clashing of swords, or with the rustle of quaintly robed ladies in castle halls,the ideal chevalier rides through the middle ages, the central hero of all its romance. We see him first, a lad of seven years, joining a group of high-born pages and damsels who cluster about a fair lady in a stately castle. Here he studies music, chess, and knightly courtesies, and commits to memory his Latin Code of Manners. He carries his lady's messages, sends and re

calls her falcon in the chase, and imitates the gallantry he sees about him. When a pilgrim-harper with fresh tidings from the Holy Land knocks at the castle gate, and sits down by the blazing fire in the great pillared hall, hung with armor, banners, and emblazoned standards, or is summoned to a cushion on the floor of my lady's chamber, the little page's heart swells with emulous desire as he hears of the marvelous exploits of the Knights of the Holy Grail, or listens to the stirring Song of Roland. At fourteen he is made squire, and assigned to some office about the castle, the most menial duty being an honor in the

knightly apprenticeship. His physical, moral, and military education becomes more rigid. Seated on his horse, he learns to manage arms, scale walls, and leap ditches. He leads the war-steed of his lord to battle or the tournament, and "rivets with a sigh the armor he is forbidden to wear." At twenty-one his probatioL is ended. Fasting, ablution, confession, communion, and a night in prayer at the altar, precede the final ceremony. He takes the vow to defend the faith, to protect the weak, to honor womankind; his belt is slung around him; his golden spurs are buckled on; he kneels; receives the accolade, 1

1 This was a blow on the neck of the candidate with the flat of a sword, given by the conferring prince, who at the same time pronounced the words: "I dub thee knight, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

and rises a chevalier. His horse is led to the church door, and, amid the shouts of the crowd and the peal of trumpets, he rides away into the wide world to seek the glory he hopes to win.-Not many knights, it is true, were like Godfrey and Bayard. The very virtues of chivalry often degenerated into vices; but any approach to courtesy in this violent age was a great advance upon its general lawlessness.1

The Tournament was to the medieval knight what public games had been to the Greek, and the gladiatorial contest to the Roman. Every device was used to produce a gorgeous spectacle. The painted and gilded lists were hung with tapestries, and were overlooked by towers and galleries, decorated with hangings, pennants, shields, and banners. Here, dressed in their richest robes, were gathered kings, queens, princes, knights, and ladies. Kings-at-arms, heralds, and pursuivants-at-arms-the reporters of the occasion-stood within or just without the arena; musicians were posted in separate stands; and valets and sergeants were stationed everywhere, to keep order, to pick up and replace broken weapons, and to raise unhorsed knights. At the sound of the clarions the competing chevaliers, arrayed in full armor and seated on magnificently caparisoned horses, with great plumes nodding above their helmets and ladies' ribbons floating from their lances, rode slowly and solemnly into the lists, followed by their several esquires, all gayly dressed and mounted. Sometimes the combatants were preceded by their chosen ladies, who led them in by gold or silver chains. When all was ready, the heralds cried, "Laissez-les aller" (let them go), the trumpets pealed, and from the opposite ends of the arena the knights dashed at full speed to meet with a clash in the center. Shouts of cheer from the heralds, loud flourishes from the musicians, and bursts of applause from thousands of lookers-on, rewarded every brilliant feat of arms or horsemanship. And when the conquering knight bent to receive the prize from the hand of some fair lady, the whole air trembled with the cries of "honor to the brave," and "glory to the victor." But tournaments were not all joyous play. Almost always some were carried dead or dying from the lists, and in a single German tourney sixty knights were killed.

Arms, Armor, and Military Engines.-Mail armor was composed of metal rings sewed upon cloth or linked together in the shape of garments. Afterward metal plates and caps were intermixed with it,

1 The knight who had been accused and convicted of cowardice and falsehood incurred a fearful degradation. Placed astride a beam, on a public scaffold, under the eyes of assembled knights and ladies, he was stripped of his armor, which was broken to pieces before his eyes and thrown at his feet. His spurs were cast into the filth, his shield was fastened to the croup of a cart-horse and dragged in the dust, and his charger's tail was cut off. He was then carried on a litter to the church, the burial service was read over him, and he was published to the world as a dead coward and traitor.

and in the 15th century a complete suit of plate armor was worn. This consisted of several pieces of highly tempered and polished steel, so fitted, jointed, and overlapped as to protect the whole body. It was fastened over the knight with hammer and pincers, so he could neither get in nor out of it alone, and it was so cumbrous and unwieldy that, once down, he could not rise again. Thus he was "a castle of steel on his war-horse, a helpless log when overthrown." Boiled leather was sometimes used in place of metal. Common soldiers wore leather or quilted jackets, and an iron skull-cap.

The longbow was to the middle ages what the rifle is to our day. The English excelled in its use, and their enemies sometimes left their walls unmanned, because, as was said, "no one could peep but he would have an arrow in his eye before he could shut it." The Genoese were famous crossbow-men. The bolts of brass and iron sent from their huge crossbows would pass through the head-piece of a man-at-arms and pierce his brain. Many military arts and defenses used from the earliest times were still in vogue, and so remained until gunpowder was invented. Indeed, a mediæval picture of a siege does not strikingly differ from Ninevite sculptures or Theban paintings, either in the nature of its war-engines or in the perspective art of the drawing itself. Education and Literature.-During the 11th and 12th centuries, schools and seminaries of learning were multiplied, and began to expand into universities; that of Paris, the "City of Letters," taking the lead. Now, also, arose the Scholastic Philosophy, which applied the logic of Aristotle to intricate problems in theology. The Schoolmen began with Peter Lombard (d. 1160), a professor in the University of Paris, where he had studied under the brilliant Abelard,- -an eloquent lecturer, now remembered chiefly as the lover of Heloise. Lombard has been styled the "Euclid of Scholasticism." Another noted schoolman was Albertus Magnus, a German of immense learning, whose scientific researches brought upon him the reputation of a sorcerer. The doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk, and of Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, divided the schools, and the reasonings and counter-reasonings of Thomists and Scotists filled countless pages with logical subtleties. The vast tomes of scholastic theology left by the 13th century schoolmen "amaze and appall the mind with the enormous accumulation of intellectual industry, ingenuity, and toil, of which the sole result to posterity is this barren amazement." Roger Bacon was at this time startling the age by his wonderful discoveries in science. Accused, like Albert the Great, of dealing with magic, he paid the penalty of his advanced views by ten years in prison.

While in monastery and university the schoolmen racked their brains with subtle and profound distinctions, the gay French Troubadours, equipped with their ribboned guitars, were flitting from castle to castle,

where the gates were always open to them and their flattering rhymes. The Trouvères supplied the age with allegories, comic tales, and long romances, while the German Minnesänger (love-singers) numbered kings and princes among their poets.

STYLUS.1 (13th and 14th Centuries.)

In Scandinavia, the mythological poems or sagas of the 8th-10th centuries were collected into what is called the older Edda (11th or 12th century); and afterward appeared the younger Edda,-whose legends linked the Norse race with the Trojan heroes (p. 115). The German Nibelungenlied (12th century) was a collection of the same ancestral legends woven into a grand epic by an unknown poet.

To the 13th and 14th centuries respectively, belong the great poets Dante and Chaucer. About this time a strong desire for learning was felt among the common people, it being for them the only road to distinction. The children of burghers and artisans, whose education began in the little public school attached to the parish church, rose to be lawyers, priests, and statesmen. The nobility generally cared little for scholarship. A gentleman could always employ a secretary, and the glory won in a crusade or a successful tilt in a tournament was worth more to a medieval knight than the book-lore of ages. Every monastery had a "writingroom," where the younger monks were employed in transcribing manuscripts. After awhile copying became a trade, the average price being about four cents a leaf for prose, and two for verse,-the page containing thirty lines. Adding price of paper, a book of prose cost not

far from fifty cents a leaf.

Arts and Architecture.-As learning was confined mostly to the Church, art naturally found its chief ex.pression in cathedral building. Toward the close of the 12th century, the round-arched, Romanesque style gave place to the pointed-arched, spired, and buttressed edifice. The use of painted glass for windows crowned the glory of the Gothic cathedral.2 Religious ideas

1 The style, or stylus, was the chief instrument of writing during the middle ages. With the pointed end the letters were cut on the waxen tablet, while the rounded head was used in making erasures. If the writing was to be preserved, it was afterward copied by a scribe on parchment or vellum with a rude reed pen, which was dipped in a colored liquid. The style was sometimes made of bone or ivory, some. times of glass or iron, while those used by persons of rank were made of gold or silver, and were often ornamented with curious figures.

2 The Italians relied more on brilliant frescoes and Mosaics for interior effect;

were expressed in designs and carvings. Thus the great size and loftiness of the interior symbolized the Divine Majesty; the high and pointed towers represented faith and hope; and, as the rose was made to signify human life, everywhere on windows, doors, arches, and columns, the cross sprang out of a rose. So, too, the altar was placed at the East, whence the Saviour came, and was raised three steps to indicate the Trinity. These mighty structures were the work often of centuries. The Cologne Cathedral was begun in 1248; its chancel was finished in 1320; but the lofty spire was not completed till our own day.

The Guilds and Corporations of the middle ages were a great power, rivaling the influence of the nobles, and frequently controlling the municipal government.

COLOGNE CATHEDRAL,

Manners and Customs.-Extravagance in dress, equipage, and table marked all high life. Only the finest cloths, linens, silks, and velvets, adorned with gold, pearls, and embroidery, satisfied the tastes of the nobility.1 In the midst of the Hundred-Years' War England

the French and English cathedrals excelled in painted glass. "Nothing can compare with the party-colored glories of the windows of a perfect Gothic cathedral, where the whole history of the Bible is written in the hues of the rainbow."-Fergusson.

1 Men took the lead in fashion. Once peaked shoes were worn, the points two feet long; then the toes became six inches broad. A fop of the 14th century "wore longpointed shoes, fastened to his knees by gold and silver chains; hose of one color on one leg and of another on the other; knee breeches; a coat one half white, the