s,
filled with the most extravagant visions that ever visited the slumbers
of a mad poet. Merely to unravel the story of one of these gigantic
romances is a task which would tax the strongest brain. They dealt with
the adventures of Knights-Errant, who wandered about the earth
redressing grievances and succoring the oppressed. Those who venture
into these vast jungles of romance are occasionally rewarded by passages
of great sweetness, nobility, and charm; but the modern reader soon
grows weary of enchanted forests, haunted by giants, dragons, and other
impossible monsters, of deserts where despairing lovers roam haggard and
forlorn, of dwarfs, goblins, wizards, and all the wild and grotesque
creations of the mediaeval fancy.

But in the times of which we are writing the passion for Books of
Chivalry rose to such a height that it became a serious public evil. In
Spain it reached its climax; and our humble gentleman of La Mancha is
only an extreme example of the effect which such studies produced on the
national mind. Being bitten by the craze for chivalrous fiction, he
gradually forsook all the healthy pursuits of a country life and gave
himself up entirely to reading such books as Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of
England, and Belianis of Greece; and his infatuation reached such a
point that he sold several acres of good arable land to provide himself
with funds for the purchase of those ponderous folios with which we saw
him surrounded when he was first introduced to our notice. From dawn
till eve he pored over his darling books, and sometimes passed whole
nights in the same pursuit, until at last, having crammed his brain with
this perilous stuff, he began to imagine that these wild inventions were
sober reality. From this delusion there was but one step to the belief
that he himself was a principal actor in the adventures of which he
read; and when the fit was on him, he would take his sword and engage in
single combat with the creatures of his brain, stamping his feet and
alarming the household with his cries.

At first his frenzy was intermittent, and each attack was followed by a
lucid interval; but finally he lost his wits altogether and came to the
insane resolution of turning knight-errant and going out into the world
as the redresser of wrongs and the champion of the innocent. His
intention once formed, he at once took steps to carry it into effect.
From a dark corner of the house he brought out an old suit of arm