sed," "for they shall see God."
This is what the Quest of the Holy Grail means, and there is still many
a true Sir Galahad, who can say, as he did,

"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure,"

and who attains the highest glory of knighthood, as before his clear
vision

"down dark tides the glory glides,
And starlike mingles with the stars."

We call these beautiful stories of long ago Stories of Chivalry, for,
in the Middle Ages, chivalry influenced all that people did and said
and thought. It began in the times of Charlemagne, a hundred years
before our own King Alfred, and only very gradually it made its way
through all the social order. Charlemagne was really a very great man,
and because he was so, he left Western Europe a far better place to
live in than he found it. Into the social life of his time he brought
something like order and justice and peace, and so he greatly helped
the Christian Church to do its work of teaching the rough and warlike
Franks and Saxons and Normans the gentle ways of thrift and helpfulness.

Charlemagne's "heerban," or call to arms, required that certain of his
men should attend him on horseback, and this mounted service was the
beginning of what is known as chivalry. The lesser nobles of each
feudal chief served their overlords on horseback, _a cheval_, in times
of war; they were called _knights_, which originally meant
servants,--German _knechte_; and the system of knighthood, its rules,
customs, and duties, was called chivalry,--French _chevalerie_.

Chivalry belongs chiefly to the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth
centuries,--to about the time between King Richard of the Lion Heart
and Prince Hal. There is no trace of ideas peculiar to it in the
writings of the old Anglo-Saxons or in the _Nibelungen Lied_ of
Germany. Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died, it is said, in the year 1154,
is about the earliest writer who mentions customs that belong
especially to chivalry. The Crusades, of Geoffrey's century and of the
one following, gave much opportunity for its growth and practice; but
in the fifteenth century chivalrous fashions and fancies began to seem
absurd, and later, perhaps partly through the ridicule of that old-time
book "Don Quixote," chivalry was finally laughed quite out of existence.

The order of knighthood was given only after years of training and
discipline. From his seventh year to his fourteenth the nobleman's son
was a