nd, may be notably enregistered and placed in
perpetual memory, whereby chevaliers may take example to encourage
them in well-doing."

Chivalry, in the popular understanding, is the fine flower of
feudalism, its bloom of poetic and heroic life. But in reality it was
artificial, having grown from an exaggerated respect for certain human
qualities, at the expense of others fully as essential and indeed no
less beautiful. Courage is good; but it is not rare, and the love of
fighting for fighting's sake is made possible only by disregarding
large areas of life to which war brings no harvest of happiness, and
over which it does not even cast the glamor of romance. The works of
civilized communities--agriculture, industry, commerce, art, learning,
religion--were nearly at a standstill in the middle of the fourteenth
century, when Europe was turned into a playground for steel-clad
barbarians.

This perversion of nature could not last. The wretched Hundred Years'
War had run but half its course when the misery and disgust among the
real people, who thought and wrought, drove them to such despairing
efforts as the Jacquerie in France and Wat Tyler's Rebellion in
England. It was the English archers, as Froissart reluctantly admits,
and not the knights, who won the battle of Poitiers. Gunpowder and
cannon, a few years later, doomed the man-at-arms, and the rise of
strong monarchies crowded out the feudal system. The thunder of
artillery which echoes faintly in the last pages of Froissart is like
a parting salvo to all the pageantry the volume holds. From
cannon-ball and musket-shot the glittering procession has found refuge
there. Into the safe retreat of these illuminated parchments, all the
banners and pennons, lances, crests, and tapestries, knights and
horses under clanking mail, had time--and but just time--to withdraw.
We find them there, fresh as when they hurried in, the colors bright,
the trumpets blowing.

Jean Froissart was born at Valenciennes in Hainault, in 1337, the year
of his birth almost coinciding with Chaucer's. He tells us in his long
autobiographical poem, 'L'Espinette Amoureuse,' that he was fond of
play when a boy, and delighted in dances, carols, and poems, and had a
liking for all those who loved dogs and birds. In the school where he
was sent, he says, there were little girls whom he tried to please by
giving them rings of glass, and pins, and apples, and pears. It seemed
to him a most worthy thing t