castles, who in
time of peace had little to do. They were isolated from their neighbors
by acres, forests, and a stately etiquette, if not actual hostility.
There was no open-air theatre in the vicinity, no forum alive with
gossip and harangues, no public games, not even a loquacious barber's
shop. During the intervals between public or private wars,--when the
Turks were unmolested, the crescent and the dragon left in harmless
composure, and no Christians were in mortal turmoil with each other,--it
is little wonder that restless knights went forth from their loneliness
errant in quest of adventures. What was there to occupy life in those
barricaded stone-towers?

It was then that the domestic passion, love, rose into dignity. Homage
to woman assumed the potency of an idea, chivalry arose, and its truth,
honor, and obeisance were the first social responses from mankind to
Christianity. The castle was the emblem and central figure of the time:
it was the seat of power, the arena of manners, the nursery of love, and
the goal of gallantry; and around it hovered the shadows of religion,
loyalty, heroism. Domestic events, the private castellar life, were thus
exalted; but they could hardly suffice to engross and satisfy the spirit
of a warrior and crusader. A new diversion and excitement were demanded,
and soon, in response to the call, minstrels began to roam from castle
to castle, from court to court, telling long stories of heroism and
singing light songs of love. A spark from the Saracenic schools and
poets of Spain may have flitted into Provence to kindle the elements
of modern literature into its first development, the songs of the
Troubadours. Almost contemporary were the lays of the Minnesingers in
Germany and the romances of the Trouveres in Northern France. Beneath
the brooding spirit of a new civilization signs of life had at length
appeared, and Europe became vocal in every part with fantastic poems,
lyrical in the South, epical in the North. They were wildly exuberant
products, because severe art was unknown, but simple, _naive_, and gay,
and suited to the taste of a time when the classics were regarded as
superstitiously as the heavens. Love and heroism, which somehow are the
leading themes of literature in all ages, now assumed the chivalric type
in the light hands of the earliest modern poets.

Yet these songs and metrical romances were most inadequate
representatives of the undeveloped principles which lay a