adies
standing in the niches on either side of the west door of Chartres
Cathedral.

But when we have contemplated this gorgeous and dainty apparel, and
all the other personal luxury that accompanied it, such as enamelled
and jewelled gold circlets for the head, jewelled girdles with each
jewel chosen for its own special virtue, carved ivory combs, tablets
and hand-mirrors, and the like, we are forced to wonder how all this
refinement and beauty could go hand in hand with so much that is
unpleasing. If we turn to consider the manners of the men, we find the
same contrasts--on the one hand the maximum of gallantry and courtesy,
and on the other a corresponding churlishness and brutality.
Metaphorically and actually, the lance and the battle-axe were still
rivalling each other in the warfare of daily life. Although the
battle-axe must eventually yield to the lance, still strange extremes
have flourished side by side all down the ages. Turning to but
comparatively recent times, the coarseness we associate with much of
the reign of Charles II. stands out in glaring contrast with the
delicate, graceful poetry that found expression then. And coming still
nearer to our own days, we think of the unseemly manners in the reigns
of George III. and IV. and the dainty miniatures such as those painted
by Cosway, and wonder how these could exist together. Might we not
just as well wonder why the olive tree has a gnarled, distorted stem,
whilst its delicate, symmetrical leaves, of the tenderest green grey,
glisten in the sunshine like silvery shells fresh from ocean's bed?

Renan, amongst the many thinkers on life's mysteries, tells us that
"Life is the result of a conflict between contrary forces." But to
philosophise is useless, and it is still more useless to question
life's seeming anomalies. We can only bow in silence before "what Time
in mists confounds."

As has been already said, it is only a general idea of the women of
the Middle Ages that can be gleaned from the Romances. For something
to bring us into more real touch with them, and to reveal more of
their personality, we must consider some who have made themselves
known to us through their work, since history, until we come to the
fourteenth century, is almost silent about them. Thus it is that as we
study these women, it almost seems at first as if we were looking at
some faded frescoes in a dimly lighted church. But just as the
half-obliterated figures take form and l