s oak-trees are felled, and we
see a brighter field of battle where Christ wars with the heathen. This
appears in the saga-cycle of Charlemagne, in which what we really see is
the Crusades reflecting themselves with their religious influences. And
now from the spiritualizing power of Christianity, chivalry, the most
characteristic feature of the Middle Ages, unfolds itself, and is at
last sublimed into a spiritual knighthood. This secular knighthood
appears most attractively glorified in the sagacycle of King Arthur, in
which the sweetest gallantry, the most refined courtesy, and the most
adventurous passion for combat prevail. Among the charmingly eccentric
arabesques and fantastic flower-pictures of this poem we are greeted by
the admirable Iwain, the all-surpassing Lancelot du Lac, and the bold,
gallant, and true, but somewhat tiresome, Wigalois. Nearly allied and
interwoven with this cyclus of sagas is that of the Holy Grail, in which
the spiritual knighthood is glorified; and in this epoch we meet three
of the grandest poems of the Middle Ages, the _Titurel_, the _Parsifal_,
and the _Lohengrin_. Here indeed we find ourselves face to face with
Romantic Poetry. We look deeply into her great sorrowing eyes; she
twines around us, unsuspectingly, her fine scholastic nets, and draws us
down into the bewildering, deluding depths of medieval mysticism.

At last, however, we come to poems of that age which are not
unconditionally devoted to Christian spiritualism; nay, it is often
indirectly reflected on, where the poet disentangles himself from the
bonds of abstract Christian virtues and plunges delighted into the world
of pleasure and of glorified sensuousness; and it is not the worst poet,
by any means, who has left us the principal work thus inspired. This is
_Tristan and Isolde_; and I must declare that Gottfried von Strassburg,
the composer of this most beautiful poem of the Middle Ages, is perhaps
also its greatest poet, towering far above all the splendor of Wolfram
von Eschenbach, whom we so admire in _Parsifal_ and the fragments of
_Titurel_. We are at last permitted to praise Gottfried unconditionally,
though in his own time his book was certainly regarded as godless, and
similar works, among them the _Lancelot_, were considered as dangerous.
And some very serious results did indeed ensue. The fair Francesca da
Polenta and her handsome friend had to pay dearly for the pleasure of
reading on a summer day in such a