il
society. It is like those admirable principles in the order of the
material universe, or those grand discoveries brought to light from time
to time by superior genius, so obvious and simple, that we wonder the
most common understanding could have missed them, yet so pregnant with
results, that they seem at once to put a new life and inspire a new
character into every part of a mighty and all-comprehensive mass.

The passion between the sexes, in its grosser sense, is a momentary
impulse merely; and there was danger that, when the fit and violence
of the passion was over, the whole would subside into inconstancy and
a roving disposition, or at least into indifference and almost brutal
neglect. But the institutions of chivalry immediately gave a new face to
this. Either sex conceived a deep and permanent interest in the other.
In the unsettled state of society which characterised the period when
these institutions arose, the defenceless were liable to assaults of
multiplied kinds, and the fair perpetually stood in need of a protector
and a champion. The knights on the other hand were taught to derive
their fame and their honour from the suffrages of the ladies. Each sex
stood in need of the other; and the basis of their union was mutual
esteem.

The effect of this was to give a hue of imagination to all their
intercourse. A man was no longer merely a man, nor a woman merely
a woman. They were taught mutual deference. The woman regarded her
protector as something illustrious and admirable; and the man considered
the smiles and approbation of beauty as the adequate reward of his toils
and his dangers. These modes of thinking introduced a nameless grace
into all the commerce of society. It was the poetry of life. Hence
originated the delightful narratives and fictions of romance; and human
existence was no longer the bare, naked train of vulgar incidents,
which for so many ages of the world it had been accustomed to be. It
was clothed in resplendent hues, and wore all the tints of the rainbow.
Equality fled and was no more; and love, almighty, perdurable love, came
to supply its place.

By means of this state of things the vulgar impulse of the sexes towards
each other, which alone was known to the former ages of the world, was
transformed into somewhat of a totally different nature. It became
a kind of worship. The fair sex looked upon their protectors, their
fathers, their husbands, and the whole train of their chiva