Young scions of noble houses, in the present time, have to endure more harsh discipline than is commonly imagined. They are treated rather like the buttery undergraduates of former days, than the pages who, in ancient castles, learned the use of arms, served the Chatellaine, and invariably fell in love with the daughters. They who doubt this fact have only to read those Whipping Sermons to which I have referred. Such discourses, in days of old, to a body of young pages, would probably have cost the preacher more than he cared to lose. In these days, such sermons can hardly have won affection for their author. The latter, no doubt, honestly thought he was in possession of a vigorously salubrious principle; but there is something ignoble both in the discipline boasted of, and especially in the laying down the irresistible fact to young gentlemen that a blow was the worst offence that could be inflicted on persons of their class, but that _he_ could and would commit such assault upon them, and that gentle and noble as they were, they dared not resent it! The pages of old time occasionally met with dreadful harsh treatment from their chivalrous master. The most chivalrous of these Christian knights could often act cowardly and unchristian-like. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the great and warlike Duke of Burgundy, on his defeat at Muret. He was hemmed in between ferocious enemies and the deep lake. As the lesser of two evils, he plunged into the latter, and his young page leaped upon the crupper as the Duke’s horse took the water. The stout steed bore his double burden across, a breadth of two miles, not without difficulty, yet safely. The Duke was, perhaps, too alarmed himself, at first, to know that the page was hanging on behind; but when the panting horse reached the opposite shore, sovereign Burgundy was so wroth at the idea that the boy, by clinging to his steed, had put the life of the Duke in peril, that he turned upon him and poignarded the poor lad upon the beach. Lassels, who tells the story, very aptly concludes it with the scornful yet serious ejaculation, “Poor Prince! thou mightest have given another offering of thanksgiving to God for thy escape, than this!” But “Burgundy” was rarely gracious or humane. “Carolus Pugnax,” says Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, “made Henry Holland, late Duke of Exeter, exiled, run after his horse, like a lackey, and would take no notice of him.” This was the English peer who was reduced to beg his way in the cities of Flanders. Of pages generally, we shall have yet to speak incidentally--meanwhile, let us glance at their masters at home. KNIGHTS AT HOME. “Entrez Messìeurs; jouissez-vous de mon coin-de-feu. Me voilà, chez moi!”--_Arlequin à St. Germains._