Look again at the Past, and observe the _change in dress_. Down to a period quite recent the sword was the indispensable companion of the gentleman, wherever he appeared, whether in street or society; but he would be deemed madman or bully who should wear it now. At an earlier period the armor of complete steel was the habiliment of the knight. From the picturesque sketch by Sir Walter Scott, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," we learn the barbarous constraint of this custom. "Ten of them were sheathed in steel, With belted sword, and spur on heel; They quitted not their harness bright, Neither by day nor yet by night: They lay down to rest With corslet laced, Pillowed on buckler cold and hard; They carved at the meal With gloves of steel, And they drank the red wine through the helmet barred." But all this is changed now. Observe the _change in architecture and in domestic life_. Places once chosen for castles or houses were savage, inaccessible retreats, where the massive structure was reared to repel attack and to enclose its inhabitants. Even monasteries and churches were fortified, and girdled by towers, ramparts, and ditches,--while a child was stationed as watchman, to observe what passed at a distance, and announce the approach of an enemy. Homes of peaceful citizens in towns were castellated, often without so much as an aperture for light near the ground, but with loopholes through which the shafts of the crossbow were aimed. The colored plates now so common, from mediæval illustrations, especially of Froissart, exhibit these _belligerent armaments_, always so burdensome. From a letter of Margaret Paston, in the time of Henry the Sixth, of England, I draw supplementary testimony. Addressing in dutiful phrase her "right worshipful husband," she asks him to procure for her "some crossbows, and wyndacs [grappling-irons] to bind them with, and quarrels [arrows with square heads]," also "two or three short pole-axes to keep within doors"; and she tells her absent lord of apparent preparations by a neighbor,--"great ordnance within the house," "bars to bar the door crosswise," and "wickets on every quarter of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and with hand-guns."[105] Savages could hardly live in greater distrust. Let now the Poet of Chivalry describe another scene:-- "Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men, Waited the beck of the warders ten; Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight, Stood saddled in stable day and night, Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow, And with Jedwood axe at saddle-bow; A hundred more fed free in stall: Such was the custom of Branksome Hall." [105] Paston Letters, CXIII. (LXXVII. Vol. III. p. 315.) This also is all changed now.