accomplishments to qualify themselves for the honors of knighthood. From pages they were advanced to the rank of esquires.

76. Exercises: tilts and tournaments. Once a week in Lent, crowds of sprightly youth, mounted on horseback, rode into the fields in bands, armed with lances and shields, and exhibited representations of battles. Many of the young nobility, not yet knighted, issued from the houses of princes, bishops, earls, and barons, to make trial of their skill and strength in arms. The hope of victory rouses their spirits; their fiery steeds neigh, prance, and champ their foaming bits. The signal given, the sports begin; the youths, divided into bands, encounter each other. Some fly, others pursue without overtaking them; while in another quarter, one band overtakes and overthrows another.

77. Knighthood. After spending seven or eight years in these schools in the station of esquires, these youths received the_honors of knighthood, from the prince or baron. To prepare for this ceremony, they were obliged to submit to severe fastings, to spend nights in prayer, in a church-to receive the sacrament, to bathe and put on white robes, confess their sins, and hear sermons, in which christian morals were explained. Thus prepared, the candidate went to a church, and advanced to the altar with his sword slung in a scarf about his neck. This sword he presented to the priest, who blessed and returned it. When the candidate approached the personage who was to perform the ceremony, he fell on his knees and delivered him his sword,

78. Dubbing of Knights. The candidate, having taken an oath, was adorned with the armor and ensigns of knighthood, by the knights and ladies attending the ceremony. First they put on his spurs, beginning with his left foot; next his coat of mail; then his cuirass, then the armor for his legs, hands, and arms; and lastly, they girt on his sword. Then

the king or baron descended from his throne or seat, and gave him the accolade, which was three gentle strokes with the flat of his sword on the shoulder, or with the palm of his hand on the cheek; pronouncing in the name of St. George, "I make thee a knight; be brave, hardy and loyal." The young knight then rose, put on his shield and helmet, mounted his horse without the stirrup, and displayed his dexterity in the management of his horse, amidst the acclamations of a multitude of spectators.

79. Coats of arms, &c. The Saxon warriors adopted the practice of adorning their shields and banners with the figures of animals, or other devices, every one according to his own fancy, But after the conquest, and in the times of the first crusades, more attention was given to these devices; families adopted such as suited their fancy; they were appropriated to families, and became hereditary. This was the origin of heraldry, which, in England, is quite a science; every family of distinction having its escutch

eon.

80. Magnificence. Increase of wealth was attended with an increase of magnificence. Instead of mean houses, in which the English used to spend their nights in feasting and revelry, the Norman barons dwelt in stately palaces, kept elegant tables and a splendid equipage. As there were no good inns in those times, travelers were obliged to carry their own bedding and provisions, as they still are in Spain. A nobleman or a prelate, when he traveled, was attended with a train of servants and attendants; knights, esquires, pages, clerks, cooks, confectioners, gamesters, dancers, barbers, wagons loaded with furniture, provisions, and plate. To each wagon was chained a huge mastif, and on each pack-horse sat an ape or a monkey. Such was the retinue of Thomas Becket, chancellor of England.

81. Surnames. In early ages, men had no surnames. Among the Saxons, it was customary to dis

tinguish men by some descriptive epithet, as John. the black; Thomas, the white, Richard, the strong. Afterwards, it was the practice to designate particular persons by their occupations; as John, the smith, William, the saddler, David, the tailor, &c. and in time the name of the occupation became the surname of the family. After the conquest, the Norman barons introduced the practice of taking their surnames from their castles or estates: a practice which was formerly common in France, and from which many names of families have been derived.

82. Religion. The state of religion under the first Norman kings was miserably low, consisting chiefly in bilding churches and monasteries, and enriching them with donations; or in a round of insignificant ceremonies. Then flourished school-divinity, which consisted in discussing minutely nice abstruse questions in logic and morals. Two methods of preaching were in use; one was to expound the scripture sentence after sentence in regular order. This was called postillating, and the preachers, postillators. The other method was for the preacher to declare, at first, what subject he intended to preach on, without naming a passage of scripture as a text. This was called declaring. About the beginning of the thirteenth century, the method of naming a text was introduced, and the preacher divided the subject into a great number of particulars. This was severely censured at first, particularly by Roger Bacon; but it finally became universal.

The scriptures were divided into chapters and verses by Cardinal Langton, in the beginning of the thirteenth century.

83. Gun-powder and 'The discovery of gunguns. powder is ascribed to Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century; but that philosopher concealed the discovery, by transposing the letters of the words which were intended to express charcoal or the dust of charcoal, in his mention of the substance. It was there

fore a long time before the manufacture of this article became common.

The precise time when guns or cannon were first used is not ascertained. It is said that Edward III. had cannon in his campaign against the Scots, AD. 1327. They were called crakys. It is certain, cannon were used in Scotland in 1339; and Edward III. used them in France, in the famous battle of Cressy and at the siege of Calais, AD. 1346. The first cannon were clumsy, and wider at the mouth than at the other end. Small guns were called hand-cannon, carried by two men, and fired from a rest fixed in the ground.

84. Vices and miseries. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, astrology was in vogue among all classes of people. No prince would engage in an enterprise, till he had consulted the position of the stars. The belief in miracles was common. Pope Innocent VI. believed Petrarch to be a magician, because he could read Virgil. Judges of courts were almost universally corrupt; justice was every where perverted by bribes; some judges were found guilty, and fined in enormous sums; one judge was condemned to be hanged, for exciting his followers to commit a murder. Robbery was so common that no person could travel in safety. Robbers in Hampshire were so numerous, that juries would not find any of them guilty. They formed companies under powerful barons who shared with them the booty. Princes, cardinals and bishops were robbed, as they were traveling, and sometimes imprisoned, till they paid large sums for their ransom. The common people were every where oppressed, ignorant and wretched.

85. Dress. Never were wantonness, pride, vanity, folly and false taste, carried to a greater excess, than in the richness, extravagance and variety of the dresses of the nobles in this period. The love of finery, the passion of weak and silly people, infected all the higher orders, kings, barons and knights. At

the marriage of Alexander III. of Scotland to Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry III. king of England, the king of England was attended by a thousand knights, dressed in silk robes; and these were, the next day, exchanged for other dresses equally expensive and splendid. Furred garments, fine linens, jewels, gold and silver plate, rich furniture and utensils, the spoils of Caen and Calais, were brought into England, and every woman of rank had her share. King Richard II. had a coat which cost him thirty thousand marks; and Sir John Arundel had no fewer than fifty suits of cloth of gold. This love of finery infected the common people; and a sumptuary law was passed, AD. 1363, to restrain this extravagance; but with little effect.

86. Fashions. Fashion had, in this period, a no less despotic influence, than it has in modern times. The men wore pointed shoes, in which they could not walk, without fastening the points to their knees with chains. The upper part of the shoe was cut in the shape of a church window. These shoes, called crackows, continued in fashion three hundred years. The men of fashion wore hose of one color on one leg, and of another color on the other; a coat, half white and half black or blue; a long beard; a silk hood buttoned under the chin, embroidered with odd figures. Fashionable ladies wore party-colored tunics, half of one color and half of another; and small caps wrapped about the head with cords; girdles ornamented with gold and silver, and short swords, called daggers, fastened a little below the navel. Sometimes their head-dresses rose like pyramids nearly three feet high, with streamers of fine silk flowing and reaching to the ground.

87. Manners. The manners of the English, by their intercourse with foreign countries, gradually improved. But even in the reign of Henry VII. they were rude. When Catharine of Arragon arrived in England, Henry was informed the princess had