en equally matched belligerents on the theatre of history, that
they should come to terms, make a treaty of peace, or at least settle
certain laws of warfare, that they may not waste their strength in idle
hostilities.

The nations of antiquity had a way of settling this question in a very
summary mode. As certain Oriental tribes have determined that women have
no souls, and that nothing can be more proper than to shut them up,
like singing birds in cages, so the Greeks and Romans for the most
part excluded their females from the society of the more martial sex.
Marriage with them was a convenience merely; and the husband and wife
were in reality nothing more than the master and the slave. This point
once settled as a matter of national law, there was certainly in most
cases little danger of any vexatious rivalship and struggle for power.

But there is nothing in which the superiority of modern times over the
ancient has been more conspicuous, than in our sentiments and practices
on this subject. This superiority, as well as several other of our most
valuable acquisitions, took its rise in what we call the dark ages.
Chivalry was for the most part the invention of the eleventh century.
Its principle was built upon a theory of the sexes, giving to each a
relative importance, and assigning to both functions full of honour and
grace. The knights (and every gentleman during that period in due time
became a knight) were taught, as the main features of their vocation,
the "love of God and the ladies." The ladies in return were regarded as
the genuine censors of the deeds of knighthood. From these principles
arose a thousand lessons of humanity. The ladies regarded it as their
glory to assist their champions to arm and to disarm, to perform for
them even menial services, to attend them in sickness, and to dress
their wounds. They bestowed on them their colours, and sent them forth
to the field hallowed with their benedictions. The knights on the other
hand considered any slight towards the fair sex as an indelible stain to
their order; they contemplated the graceful patronesses of their valour
with a feeling that partook of religious homage and veneration, and
esteemed it as perhaps the first duty of their profession, to relieve
the wrongs, and avenge the injuries of the less powerful sex.

This simple outline as to the relative position of the one sex and the
other, gave a new face to the whole scheme and arrangements of civ