As we proceed in the poem, the history becomes more apparent. The Lady Una, riding upon a lowly ass, shrouded by a veil, covered with a black stole, "as one that inly mourned," and leading "a milk-white lamb," is the Church. The ass is the symbol of her Master's lowliness, who made even his triumphant entry into Jerusalem upon "a colt the foal of an ass;" the lamb, the emblem of the innocence and of the helplessness of the "little flock;" the black stole is meant to represent the Church's trials and sorrows in her former history as well as in that naughty age. The dragon is the old serpent, her constant and bitter foe, who, often discomfited, returns again and again to the attack in hope of her overthrow. THE WOOD OF ERROR.--The adventures of the knight and the lady take them first into the Wood of Error, a noble and alluring grove, within which, however, lurks a loathsome serpent. The knight rushes upon this female monster with great boldness, but ... Wrapping up her wreathed body round, She leaped upon his shield and her huge train All suddenly about his body wound, That hand and foot he strove to stir in vain. God help the man so wrapt in Error's endless chain. The Lady Una cries out: ... Now, now, sir knight, shew what ye bee, _Add faith unto thy force_, and be not faint. Strangle her, else she sure will strangle thee. He follows her advice, makes one desperate effort, Error is slain, and the pilgrimage resumed. Thus it is taught that the Church has waged successful battle with Error in all its forms--paganism, Arianism, Socinianism, infidelity; and in all ages of her history, whether crouching in the lofty groves of the Druids, or in the more insidious forms of later Christian heresy. THE HERMITAGE.--On leaving the Wood of Error, the knight and Lady Una encounter a venerable hermit, and are led into his hermitage. This is _Archimago_, a vile magician thus disguised, and in his retreat foul spirits personate both knight and lady, and present these false doubles to each. Each sees what seems to be the other's fall from virtue, and, horrified by the sight, the real persons leave the hermitage by separate ways, and wander, in inextricable mazes lost, until fortune and faery bring them together again and disclose the truth. Here Spenser, who was a zealous Protestant, designs to present the monastic system, the disfavor into which the monasteries had fallen, and the black arts secretly studied among better arts in the cloisters, especially in the period just succeeding the Norman conquest. THE CRUSADES.--As another specimen of the historic interpretation, we may trace the adventures of England in the Crusades, as presented in the encounter of St. George with _Sansfoy_, (without faith,) or the Infidel. From the hermitage of Archimago,