a, except that shepherdesses are,
as a race, extinct, and that Lord Althorp had taken the tax off
shepherds' dogs, by way of a bonus, to relieve a distressed capital of
some hundred millions, to which the agricultural interest had very
properly replied, "Thank you for nothing, my Lord;" but from the sight
of the French paper what a host of recollections started up at the
moment! The mind flew back to history, and was revelling in all the
romance of chivalry, from King Arthur and his Knights, to the Field of
the Cloth of Gold.

"Yet, after all," thought I, at the end of a long reverie, "divest
chivalry, so called, of its imposing effect, examine well into its
nature and the manners of the times, and it must be acknowledged that
the modern warfare has a much greater claim than the ancient to the
title of chivalry. In former times men were cased in armour of proof,
and, before the discovery of gunpowder, had little to fear in a _melee_,
except from those who, like themselves, were equally well armed and
equally protected, and even then only from flesh wounds, which were
seldom mortal. The lower classes, who served as common soldiers, were
at the mercy of the mounted spearsmen, and could seldom make any
impression upon their defences. In those days, as in the present, he
who could command most gold carried the day, for the gold procured the
steel harness, and a _plump_ of spears brought into the field was more
than equal to a thousand common men. He who had the best tempered
armour was the most secure, and that was it be only procured by gold.
He who could mount and case in iron the largest number of his followers
was the most powerful, and, generally speaking, the most lawless.
Divest chivalry of its splendour, which threw a halo round it, and it
was brutal, and almost cowardly. Single combats did certainly prove
courage; but even in them, skill, and more than skill, personal
strength, or the best horse, decided the victory. In fact, although not
the origin, it was the upholder of the feudal system, in which might was
right; and we may add, that the invention of gunpowder, which placed
every man upon a level, if not the cause of, certainly much assisted to
break up the system. How much more of the true spirit of chivalry is
required in the warfare of the present day, in which every man must
stand for hours to be shot at like a target, witnessing the mowing down
of his comrades, and silently filling up the intervals