antic atmosphere, in which all the
extravagances of chivalry were nourished by their peculiar situation.
Their hostile relations with the Moslem kept alive the full glow of
religious and patriotic feeling. Their history is one interminable
crusade. An enemy always on the borders invited perpetual displays of
personal daring and adventure. The refinement and magnificence of the
Spanish Arabs throw a luster over these contests such as could not be
reflected from the rude skirmishes with their Christian neighbors.
Lofty sentiments, embellished by the softer refinements of courtesy,
were blended in the martial bosom of the Spaniard, and Spain became
emphatically the land of romantic chivalry.

[Footnote 69: From the "Biographical and Critical Miscellanies," which
were collected by the author for publication in England in 1845. This
essay, and the others in the volume, with one exception, had been
published originally in _The North American Review_.]

The very laws themselves, conceived in this spirit, contributed
greatly to foster it. The ancient code of Alfonso X, in the thirteenth
century, after many minute regulations for the deportment of the good
knight, enjoins on him to "invoke the name of his mistress in the
fight, that it may infuse new ardor into his soul and preserve him
from the commission of unknightly actions." Such laws were not a dead
letter. The history of Spain shows that the sentiment of romantic
gallantry penetrated the nation more deeply and continued longer than
in any other quarter of Christendom....

The taste for these romantic extravagances naturally fostered a
corresponding taste for the perusal of tales of chivalry. Indeed, they
acted reciprocally on each other. These chimerical legends had once,
also, beguiled the long evenings of our Norman ancestors, but, in the
progress of civilization, had gradually given way to other and more
natural forms of composition. They still maintained their ground in
Italy, whither they had passed later, and where they were consecrated
by the hand of genius. But Italy was not the true soil of chivalry,
and the inimitable fictions of Bojardo, Pulci, and Ariosto were
composed with that lurking smile of half-supprest mirth which, far
from a serious tone, could raise only a corresponding smile of
incredulity in the reader.

In Spain, however, the marvels of romance were all taken in perfect
good faith. Not that they were received as literally true; but the
reader