LECTURE XXX.-MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND (continued).

The knights. The state of education. The households, dress, and luxury of the rich. The condition of the poor.

1. We have already heard a great deal of the knights of those days. Chaucer gives us a most charming account of the one who went on pilgrimage with him, accompanied by his Chivalry. son and one servant. We cannot conceive a more perfect gentleman. Though very brave, having fought many battles, and seen a great deal of the world, there is no boasting or bluster about him. His manners are as gentle as a maid's. With all the mixed company he falls into, he gives himself no airs. He rides pleasantly with the rest, agrees to the host's proposal, draws lots with the others, and tells his story most cheerfully and courteously.

2. This brave warrior, who had been in fifteen battles, besides sieges, has a very tender heart. One of the other pilgrims tells, for his tale, of a great many people who, from happiness and prosperity, had fallen into misery; at last he tells a most piteous story of one who was starved to death with his three children. The little ones die before his eyes, and then he himself, for despair and hunger, dies. The knight cannot bear this; he breaks in and prays there may be no more of it. He says it is great sorrow to him to hear of the unhappiness of those who have been happy.

"And the contrar is joye, and gret solas!
As when a man hath been in poor estate
And climbeth up, and waxeth fortunate
And there abideth in prosperitee-

Such thing is gladsome, as it thinketh me."

We see in him the best and beautiful side of chivalry. Chaucer teaches us, in another place, what it is to be a gentleHe says we are not to think it is to be rich and nobly born, but we should look who is most vir

The gentle man.

man.

tuous, and tries always

"to do the gentil dedës that he canAnd take him for the greatest gentleman."

Froissart had begun to think something of the same kind too, or at any rate he knew that treacherous and wicked actions were unworthy of a gentleman. He tells us of a squire who did a very base and cowardly deed, that "he was scarcely a gentleman, for no gentleman would ever have practised such base wickedness." This is a much more noble idea of a "gentleman" than many people hold now-a-days, for it is to be feared a great many now think "gentillesse" lies in gold and silver more than in "gentil deeds."

The lady.

3. It would have been very pleasant for us if, as well as his son, the knight had brought his wife with him, that we might have seen what a married lady in those times was like, and how she employed herself. But the only lady who went on the pilgrimage was a prioress, that is, the head of a nunnery. In both monasteries and convents they seem to have paid a good deal of attention to manners. All the little things which are taught to children in the nursery now, were serious matters of regulation then. The monks of Westminster had special rules for their behaviour at dinner, forbidding them to stare, or to put their elbows on the table, or to crack nuts with their teeth. This lady was very refined, indeed, she took great pains to be elegant and stately in her demeanour, as if she had been at court. She talked French too, to seem more fashionable; but Chaucer very slyly tells us that her French was

"after the school of Stratford atte Bow, For French of Paris was to her unknowe."

One of the marks of good manners in those times was to "eat nicely," and not to spill crumbs and sauce about, and she took great pains in that respect. Fine ladies were particularly fond of little pet lap-dogs; in the pictures painted at this time we frequently see them sitting idly in gardens, or even riding on horseback, nursing little dogs. So this lady had "small hounds" that she fed with roast meat, and milk, and the finest bread. And if one of them died she wept sore. She was so tender-hearted, indeed, that she would weep if a mouse were killed or hurt in a trap. She would have been a very sweet lady had she spent some of her gentleness and tender-heartedness upon the poor, which we do not hear that she did.

4. The knights and ladies had very refined tastes in some ways. They loved gardens and flowers; above all, roses (but Chaucer loved best the simple English daisy). They loved the songs of birds; walking in a grove with the soft grass under their feet,

and the thrushes and nightingales singing above their heads, was as sweet to them as to us. By this time, also, there was a good deal more education among them than there had been formerly. We may be sure all these English books would not have been written if there had been no one to read them. And it was evidently the pleasant custom for those who knew how, Education of to read aloud to those who did not, as Ro ert Bruce a gentleman. used to amuse his companions, when they were driven to their wild life among the mountains. One man (a little before this time), who wrote a history of England in rhyme, says expressly that he wrote it in English, not for learned people, but for unlearned, who knew neither Latin nor French, that they might have solace and pleasure, when they were sitting together in fellowship.

He

5. This knight had a son with him, a dear young fellow, about twenty years old. He was a squire as yet, but of course would be a knight like his father in due time. Chaucer fortunately tells us what he had been taught, so we see the best education which a gentleman's son would get in those days. had learned to sit well on his horse, and all things belonging to the soldier's art, for he had already seen real fighting, and "borne him well," besides jousting, or the fighting in play, which was then so fashionable. Moreover, he could sing and play on the flute; he could write, so of course he could read; he could draw; he could even make songs himself; and he could dance.

Reading, writing, poetry, music, drawing, dancing, riding, and fighting a very nice education for a young officer. But he had learnt with all this, besides, to be modest and polite.

"Curteis he was, lowly and servisable,
And carf before his fader at the table."

To carve the meat for their elders and betters was considered
part of the duty of the young squires and pages.
"He was as
fresh as is the month of May," and had curly hair. He wore a
very pretty dress: a sort of short tunic, with long and wide
sleeves, all embroidered like a meadow, with "fresh flowers,
white and red." His father was very soberly dressed.
"His.
horse was good, but he ne was not gay."

6. The country gentlemen lagged far behind in the matter of education. There was one of them, too, in the company, a rich man who had often been knight of the shire, or member of parliament for his part of the country. The principal

thing he seemed to have cared about was eating and drinking. When his turn came to tell his tale, he begs all his hearers to excuse him for his plain way of speaking, because he has never learned much. But he certainly wished for something better. He took a great liking to the curly-headed young squire, and quite appreciated the pleasing way in which he spoke and told his tale. He wished his own son were like him; instead of which, he thought of nothing but playing at dice and wasting his money, and he did not care about talking with gentlemen, that he might "learn gentillesse aright."

7. The young squire's education was just suited to fit him for his life in the world; but there was one of the company who was a real scholar-an Oxford man. They are generally pretty gay and lively in our times, but Learning this one was a real hard-worker, very poor and very philosophy. learned.

"As lenë was his horse as is a rake,

And he was not right fat, I undertake.”

and

He did not care for elegant clothes, nor for music and dancing. All he wanted was books. Though he had "but little gold in coffer," he did not care for that. Whatever money he got, or that his friends gave him, it all went in books. He liked to have learned books at his bed's head; they were his delight and joy.

"And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche."

8. In the universities there was a great deal of hard study; they went very deeply into logic and metaphysics and other profound matters, and sometimes seem to have wasted a great deal of good labour and cleverness on what led to very little result. Besides all sorts of abstruse questions very difficult to solve, and perhaps not worth solving after all, learned people, who gave their attention to visible and material objects, as yet believed a great many things which we know now to be quite untrue.

Besides their belief about comets and eclipses, which were still considered as supernatural, and having much to do with the affairs of men, they had many other strange ideas about the heavenly bodies. They thought that all a Astrology. man's life and fortunes in the world depended on what stars could be seen in the sky, and in what part of the sky, at the moment he was born. We still have the saying of a person having been born under a lucky or an unlucky star, or of being of

a jovial, mercurial, or saturnine temper, though we do not now think a man will be of a joyous, friendly spirit if the planet Jupiter shone upon his birth, or gloomy and morose if he was born under Saturn. One clever old writer, who believed the stars influenced the characters of whole nations, and who had noticed, quite accurately, that Englishmen were fond of roving, and always keen to see foreign lands and strange sights, while the natives of India are content to stay at home and never wish to change, accounts for it by the theory that India is under Saturn, which, he says, takes thirty years in travelling through the signs of the zodiac; while our country is under the moon, which moves rapidly, and goes through those signs in one month.

9. It was also thought that the stars continued to have an influence over the actions of their lives. Before beginning any business, or doing anything important, people would consult some astrologer or learned man, who should tell by the stars whether it would prosper or not. A lady would perhaps take his opinion about her marriage, whether her suitor loved her or not, &c. The astrologer believed or pretended that he could find out that, by looking where the moon and some of the stars were; as though they would not have been in the very same places if neither the lady nor her lover had ever been born. Others would consult astrologers as to whether they would prosper if they took to dealing in sheep or pigs, instead of considering how much land they had, and how they should feed them, and so Doctors also attempted to cure their patients by studying the stars, and making images of them when particular stars were in the ascendant.

10. The astrologers were very learned in their way, and no doubt by observing the sky so much they found out many things which helped on the real science of astronomy; but as yet the wisest of them still believed that our earth was the centre of the universe, and that it alone was fixed and immovable, while the sun, moon, and stars revolved around it. They had begun, however, to believe that it was not flat, but a round globe, and the same traveller, who thought it was the moon made Englishmen so restless, was quite convinced that it would be possible to go all round it. In the very centre of the earth they believed hell was placed.

11. Another way in which learned men wasted a great deal of time, and wore out their lives and hearts, was in trying to make gold. They were fully convinced that, in some way or other, by mixing things together, melting

Alchemy.