drink, but the guilty spill; and by the enchanted garland,
which blooms on the brow of the chaste, but withers on that of the
faithless. Inventions such as these were regarded as facts, or at least
as possible occurrences, by the readers of romantic fiction. Men
believed what they were told, and to doubt, to inquire were
intellectual efforts which they knew not how to make, and which all the
influences of their life opposed their making. There were no fictions
in the romances more improbable than the accounts of foreign parts
brought back by travellers. Sir John of Mandeville was not doubted when
he wrote that he had met with a race of men who had only one eye, and
that in the middle of the forehead, or a people with only one foot and
that one large enough to be used as a parasol. The knight who had
mastered the art of reading looked upon such stories as curious facts.
His religion was a religion of miracles, and, ignorant of natural laws,
he was accustomed to refer any unusual occurrence to the influence of
supernatural beings, a habit of thought which presented an ever-ready
solution to mysteries and problems otherwise inexplicable.

The entire credence accorded to the supernatural features of the
romance gave to it a power and an interest which has now, of course,
disappeared; but the influence of the supernatural upon the work is so
strong, that even the modern reader, wandering with Launcelot and
Tristram in a world of wonders, meets a giant without surprise, and
feels at home in an enchanted castle.

When Arthur is finally established on his throne, the knights of the
Round Table begin their wonderful career of adventure and gallantry.
With them the reader roams over a vague and unreal land called Britain
or Cornwall, in full armor, the ever ready lance in rest. At almost
every turn a knight is met who offers combat, and each detail of the
conflict--the rush of the horses, the breaking of lances, the final
hand-to-hand with swords--is described with a minuteness which only the
military enthusiasm of the Middle Ages could thoroughly appreciate.
Sometimes our hero meets a damsel who tells a tale of wrong, and leads
the knight to champion her cause; again, he encounters some old
companion in arms, breaks a lance upon him by way of friendly
salutation, and wanders with him in search of adventures, inquiring of
a chance peasant or dwarf, of a wrong to be avenged, or a danger to be
incurred. The reader attends tournam