animating its
halls and banquet chambers, and from the general outlines of feudal
society and government, a tolerably faithful portrait of it may be drawn.

The age of feudalism has been extolled with enthusiasm only equal to that
which has deprecated it beyond measure; it has even been proposed as a
model for future ages by the cotemporary voice to that which has
pronounced it as exclusively a time of immorality, despotism, and
superstition; between the two extremes, a wide field of truth lies open
to be explored.

"It was a time," as Guizot says, "when religion was the principle and end
of all institutions, while military functions were the forms and means of
action."

All social movements partook of this twofold character, as questions of
commerce and industry were decidedly subordinate.

The land was divided between the military barons possessed of regal
authority and governing as kings in their petty kingdoms--the church,
also proprietors of large estates, and the cities, then only beginning to
rise from their abject nullity into an importance that has gone on
increasing until commerce has become the sovereign of the world--Mammon
its god. The individualism of barbarism was sunk in the centralisation
to which this system gave birth; and from the social arrangements
connected with it, sprung up that spirit of chivalry that was so marked a
characteristic of the times, than which nothing more fully exemplified
the singular combination of military and religious fervour. Isolated
from all communion with general society, a castle was at once a city and
a family in itself, youths were apprenticed, as it were, to learn the
usages of knighthood, and in the capacity of pages, from earliest
boyhood, were initiated into the forms and courtesies of chivalrous and
military exercises. In this task women bore their part, the youths being
ever treated as sons of the lord or knight under whose tutelage they had
been placed; from this they became promoted to the rank of esquires, and
perfected in the arts of tilting, riding, hunting, and hawking,
frequently of music, and in case of war were qualified to follow the
banner of their instructors. The rank or military renown of a baron
helped to swell the list of esquires and pages in his retinue; hence many
castles were complete colleges of chivalry. The close association of
years in such familiar relationship cut off from all other social
communion, engendered strong attachment