Ritter Eric, of Lansfeldt, remarked, that next to a battle he dearly loved a banquet. We will, therefore, commence the “Knight at Home,” by showing him at table. Therewith, we may observe, that the Knights of the Round Table appear generally to have had very solid fare before them. King Arthur--who is the reputed founder of this society, and who invented the table in order that when all his knights were seated none could claim precedency over the others--is traditionally declared to have been the first man who ever sat down to a whole roasted ox. Mr. Bickerstaff, in the “Tatler,” says that “this was certainly the best way to preserve the gravy;” and it is further added, that “he and his knights set about the ox at his round table, and usually consumed it to the very bones before they would enter upon any debate of moment.” They had better fare than the knights-errant, who “as some think, Of old, did neither eat nor drink, Because when thorough deserts vast, And regions desolate they passed, Where belly-timber above ground, Or under, was not to be found, Unless they grazed, there’s not one word Of their provision on record: Which made some confidently write, They had no stomachs but to fight.” This, however, is only one poet’s view of the dietary of the errant gentlemen of old. Pope is much nearer truth when he says, that-- “In days of old our fathers went to war, Expecting sturdy blows and scanty fare, Their beef they often in their morion stewed, And in their basket-hilt their beverage brewed.” --that basket-hilt of which it is so well said in Hudibras, that-- “it would hold broth, And serve for fight and dinner both.” The lords and chivalric gentlemen who fared so well and fought so stoutly, were not always of the gentlest humor at home. It has been observed that Piedmontese society long bore traces of the chivalric age. An exemplification is afforded us in Gallenga’s History of Piedmont. It will serve to show how absolute a master a powerful knight and noble was in his own house. Thus, from Gallenga we learn that Antonio Grimaldi, a nobleman of Chieri, had become convinced of the faithlessness of his wife. He compelled her to hang up with her own hand her paramour to the ceiling of her chamber; then he had the chamber walled up, doors and windows, and only allowed the wretched woman as much air and light, and administered with his own hand as much food and drink, as would indefinitely prolong her agony. And so he watched her, and tended her with all that solicitude which hatred can suggest as well as love, and left her to grope alone in that blind solitude, with the mute testimony of her guilt--a ghastly object on which her aching eyes were riveted, day by day, night after night, till it had passed through every loathsome stage of decomposition. This man was surely worse in his vengeance than that Sir Giles de Laval, who has come down to us under the name of Blue-Beard.