hanged. In
place of the porticoed villa with its marble floor and beautiful
statuary, its highly decorated atrium and sparkling fountains, she is
now seen in what was the rudiment of the turreted castle with its rough
hall and rush-strewn floor. She has lost the learning by which she was
wont to delight her idle hours with classic poetry and Greek philosophy;
if she can read at all, her accomplishment is a rare one, and the most
powerful stimulus to her imagination is the song of illiterate bards who
recite the heroic achievements of her race. In this she has reverted to
literature in its embryonic condition. Her religion has gained morality,
though emphatically more in theory than in practice, but it has
distinctly lost in poetry. Elegance has disappeared from every phase of
her life. When she rides abroad it is no longer in a splendidly equipped
litter, but, in hardier fashion, upon horseback. While for her to lead
men-at-arms is an extreme rarity, she is far likelier to attain ruling
authority than she was under the refined civilization of older times.
With the Franks, however, supreme rule by a woman, in any direct manner,
was rendered impossible by the ancient Salic law which prescribed that
"no portion of really Salic land (that is to say, in the full
territorial ownership of the head of the family) should pass into the
possession of women, but it should belong altogether to the virile sex."

To us the early Mediaeval life seems more remote and less intelligible
than that of the classic age. We are more at home in the villas of Rome
than in the castles of Charlemagne. This is partly because the
literature of the latter age has not presented such a satisfying picture
as have the immortal productions of the former; but more largely because
the genius of modern civilization has its counterpart in the social
ideas of classic times, rather than in the individualistic motive of
mediaevalism.

The period covered by this chapter extends over four hundred years, from
the end of the fifth century to the tenth. In our selection of
characters from the successive generations during that term, we shall
have an eye to their utility as representing types of the feminine, even
more than to their aptitude for illustrating any special development in
civilized habits. Evolution proceeded slowly in those days, and,
consequently, a century or two did not greatly change social habits.

Somewhere about the middle of the fifth century,