declaims
with his usual fiery rhetoric against this habit. "I see some women," says
the African, "who dye their hair with yellow; they are ashamed of their
very nation, that they are not the natives of Gaul or Germany. Evil and
most disastrous to them is the omen which their fiery head portends, while
they consider such abomination graceful." This charitable hint of future
reprobation, savage as it appears, seems to have been much admired by the
Fathers; it is repeated by St Jerome and St Cyprian with equal triumph.
Well, indeed, might Theophilus of Antioch, in his letter to Autolycus,
place the Christian opinions concerning women in startling contrast with
the revolting scheme proposed in relation to them by the most refined
philosopher of antiquity. Well might the matrons of Antioch refuse to
gratify Julian by a sacrifice to gods whose votaries had steeped their sex
in impurity and degradation. The death of Hypatia is indeed a blot in
Christian annals, but she fell the victim of an infuriated multitude; and
how often had the Proconsul and the Emperor beheld, unmoved, the arena wet
with the blood of Christian virgins, and the earth blackened with their
ashes! Indeed, the deference paid to weakness is the grand maxim, the
practical application of which, in spite of some fantastic notions, and
some most pernicious errors that accompanied it, entitles chivalry to our
veneration, and prevented the dark ages from being one scene of unmixed
violence and oppression. The flashes of generosity that gild with a
momentary splendour the dreadful scenes of feudal tyranny, were struck out
by the force of this principle acting upon the most rugged nature in the
most superstitious ages. While the fire that had consumed the surprised
city was slaked in the blood of its miserable inhabitants, the distress of
high-born beauty, or the remonstrances of the defenceless priest, often
arrested the career of the warrior, who viewed the slaughter of
unoffending peasants and of simple burghers with as much indifference as
that of the wild-boar or the red-deer which it was his pastime and his
privilege to destroy. Who does not remember the beautiful passage in
Tasso, where the crusaders burst into tears at the sight of the holy
sepulchre?--

"Nudo ciascuno il pie calca il sentiero,
Ch'l'esempio de duci ogn' altromuove
Serico fregio d'or, piuma e criniero
Superbo dal suo capo ognon rimuove,
_E d'insieme del cor l'abito al