n
degenerated into ferocity, its Christianity into narrow bigotry, its
worship of women into license and brutality. Chivalry, supplying a
standard of excellence adapted by its nature to excite the admiration
of men, did much to refine and civilize the rude age in which it arose;
and this result is not belittled by the fact that that standard was
pitched above the possibility of human attainment. Chivalry was the
spontaneous expression of what was best in the time, and gave sentiment
and charm to lives otherwise hard and barren. Its very exaggerations
and grotesqueness illustrate the eagerness with which it was received,
and the greatness of the want which it supplied. This was an ideal,
too, separate and distinct from any that had been known before,
possessing enduring characteristics of greatness and beauty which have
never ceased to command sympathy and admiration. Though changed in
outward form, and appearing under different manifestations, the
chivalry of the Middle Ages is essentially the chivalry of to-day, but
it now exerts a moral and intellectual, instead of a physical force.

The new dignity which woman assumed in connection with the growth of
chivalry was owing considerably to a cause separate from the Northern
sentiment concerning them, and as the position of women is an important
part of the social condition we are now examining, a glance at this
other cause will not be without value or interest. It is indeed
remarkable that in the Middle Ages woman should for the first time have
attained her true rank, and that the highest conception of the female
character which the world had yet known should have been developed in
so rude and ferocious a time. The estimation in which women were held
among Eastern nations was little lower than their position among the
Jews. Where polygamy exists, and where purchase-money is paid to the
father of the bride, women never attain to high appreciation or
respect. Beauty rather than virtue was the ideal of Greece. The women
of that country, living in continual seclusion, deprived alike of
opportunities for attaining culture or exerting influence, became
narrowed in thought and intelligence, and passed their lives in
obscurity under the control of their husbands or sons.[8] Roman history
gives us examples of female excellence and distinction, and represents
women during some periods in a better position than had previously been
known. But the female sex was never accorded among t