accurate reflection of actual life would show an entire ignorance of their nature; but there can be no doubt that these fictions were the natural outcome of existing thought and manners; that they were sufficiently life-like to interest; and that they increased and intensified the habits and ideas in which they had their origin. The combination of qualities and motives which we are accustomed to express in the general term of chivalry was the mediaeval ideal of virtue, and as such was in practice inevitably subject to imperfection and inconsistency. The Roman _virtus_ was simply courage. Chivalry meant courage and skill in arms, united to gentle birth, to courtesy, to gallantry, and to a faithful observance of the laws of combat; the whole inspired by military glory, religious enthusiasm, or devotion to women. We should admire the greatness and nobility of this ideal, standing out as it does against a background of lawlessness and ignorance, rather than complain that in practice its valor often 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.