personal antagonist of Satan,-St George, St James, and St Martin, all of whom popular faith had invested with the honours of Chivalry,-were frequently selected as the appropriate champions of the militant adventurers yet on earth. The knights used their names adjected to their own, as their insignia, watch-word, or signal for battle. Edward III., fighting valiantly in a night-skirmish before the gates of Calais, was heard to accompany each blow he struck with the invocation of his tutelar saints, Ha! Saint Edward! ha! St George! but the Virgin Mary, to whom their superstition ascribed the qualities of youth, beauty, and sweetness, which they prized in their terrestrial mistresses, was an especial object of the devotion of the followers of Chivalry, as of all other good Catholics. Tournaments were undertaken, and feats of arms performed in her honour, as in that of an earthly mistress; and the veneration with which she was regarded seems occasionally to have partaken of the character of romantic affection. She was often held to return this love by singular marks of her favour and protection. During an expedition of the Christians to the coast of Africa, Froissart informs us that a large black dog was frequently seen in their camp, which barked furiously whenever the infidels approached it by night, and rendered such service to the Christian adventurers by its vigilance, that with one consent they named it "The Dog of Our Lady."

But although, as is incidental to human institutions, the mixture of devotion in the military character of the knight degenerated into brutal intole

rance and superstition in its practical effects, nothing could be more beautiful and praiseworthy than the theory on which it was grounded. That the soldier drawing the sword in defence of his country and its liberties, or of the oppressed innocence of damsels, widows, and orphans, or in support of religious rights, for which those to whom they belonged were disqualified by their profession to combat in person,-that he should blend with all the feelings which these offices inspired, a deep sense of devotion, exalting him above the advantage and even the fame which he himself might derive from victory, and giving dignity to defeat itself, as a lesson of divine chastisement and humiliation; that the knight on whose valour his countrymen were to rely in danger should set them an example in observing the duties and precepts of religion, are circumstances so well qualified to soften, to dignify, and to grace the profession of arms, that we cannot but regret their tendency to degenerate into a ferocious propensity to bigotry, persecution, and intolerance. Such, however, is the fate of all human institutions, which, however fairly framed in theory, are in practice too often corrupted by our evil passions, until the results which flow from them become the very reverse of what was to have been expected and desired.

The next ingredient in the spirit of Chivalry, second in force only to the religious zeal of its professors, and frequently predominating over it, was a devotion to the female sex, and particularly to her whom each knight selected as the chief object

of his affection, of a nature so extravagant and unbounded as to approach to a sort of idolatry.

The original source of this sentiment is to be found, like that of Chivalry itself, in the customs and habits of the northern tribes, who possessed, even in their rudest state, so many honourable and manly distinctions, over all the other nations in the same stage of society. The chaste and temperate habits of these youth, and the opinion that it was dishonourable to hold sexual intercourse until the twentieth year was attained, was in the highest degree favourable not only to the morals and health of the ancient Germans, but must have contributed greatly to place their females in that dignified and respectable rank which they held in society. Nothing tends so much to blunt the feelings, to harden the heart, and to destroy the imagination, as the worship of the Vaga Venus in early youth. Wherever women have been considered as the early, willing, and accommodating slaves of the voluptuousness of the other sex, their character has become degraded, and they have sunk into domestic drudges and bondswomen among the poor,—the captives of a haram among the more wealthy. On the other hand, the men, easily and early cloyed with indulgences, which soon lose their poignancy when the senses only are interested, become first indifferent, then harsh and brutal, to the unfortunate slaves of their pleasures. The sated lover,— and perhaps it is the most brutal part of humanity, -is soon converted into the capricious tyrant, like the successful seducer of the modern poet.

"Hard! with their fears and terrors to behold
The cause of all, the faithless lover cold,
Impatient grown at every wish denied,
And barely civil, soothed and gratified."

CRABBE'S Borough.

Habitual indulgence seeks change of objects to relieve satiety. Hence polygamy, and all its brutalizing consequences, which were happily unknown to our Gothic ancestors. The virtuous and manly restraints imposed on their youth were highly calculated to exalt the character of both sexes, and especially to raise the females in their own eyes and those of their lovers. They were led to regard themselves, not as the passive slaves of pleasure, but as the objects of a prolonged and respectful affection, which could only be finally gratified when their lovers had attained the age of mature reason, and were capable to govern and to defend the family which should arise around them. With the young man imagination and sentiment combined to heighten his ideas of a pleasure which nature instructed him to seek, and which the wise laws of his country prevented him from prematurely aspiring to share. To a youth so situated, the maiden on whom he placed his affections became an object of awe as well as of affection; the passion which he indulged for her was of a nature as timid and pure as engrossing and powerful; the minds of the parties became united before the joining of their hands, and a moral union preceded the mere intercourse of the sexes.

The marriages formed under these wise auspices were, in general, happy and affectionate."Adultery," says Tacitus," was infrequent, and

punished with the utmost rigour; nor could she who had undergone the penalty of such a crime find a second husband, however distinguished by beauty, birth, or wealth." The awe and devotion with which the lover had regarded his destined bride during the years in which the German youth were enjoined celibacy, became regard and affection in the husband towards the sharer of his labours and the mistress of his household. The matron maintained that rank in society which love had assigned to the maiden. No one then, says the Roman historian, dared to ridicule the sacred union of marriage, or to term an infringement of its laws a compliance with the manners of the age. The German wife, once married, seldom endeavoured to form a second union, but continued, in honoured widowhood, to direct and manage the family of her deceased husband. This habitual subjection of sensuality to sentiment, these plain, simple, virtuous, and temperate manners of the German women, placed the females in that high rank of society, which the sex occupies when its conduct is estimable, and from which it as certainly declines in ages or climates prone to luxurious indulgence. The superintendence of the domestic affairs was assigned to the German women, a duty in which the men seldom interfered, unless when rendered by age or wounds incapable of warfare. They were capable of exercising the supreme authority in their tribe, and of holding the honours of the priesthood. But the influence of the women in a German tribe, as well as their duties in war, will be best understood from the words of Tacitus.