In Russia, Peter the Great founded the Order of St. Catherine, in honor of his wife, and gave as its device, _Pour l’amour et la fidélité envers la patrie_. It was at first intended for men, but was ultimately made a female order exclusively. A similar change was found necessary in the Spanish Order of the Lady of Mercy, founded in the thirteenth century by James, King of Aragon. There were other female orders in Spain, and the whole of them had for their object the furtherance of religion, order, and virtue. In some cases, membership was conferred in acknowledgment of merit. Who forgets Miss Jane Porter in her costume and insignia of a lady of one of the orders of Polish female chivalry--and who is ignorant that Mrs. Otway has been recently decorated by the Queen of Spain with the Order of Maria Louisa? The Order of St. Ulrica, in Sweden, was founded in 1734, in honor of a lady, the reigning Queen, and to commemorate the liberty which Sweden had acquired and enjoyed from the period of her accession. Two especial qualities were necessary in the candidates for knighthood in this order. It was necessary that a public tribunal should declare that they were men of pure public spirit; and it was further required of them to prove that in serving the country, they had never been swayed by motives of private interest. When the order was about to be founded, not less than five hundred candidates appeared to claim chivalric honor. Of these, only fifty were chosen, and decree was made that the number of knights should never exceed that amount. It was an unnecessary decree, if the qualifications required were to be stringently demanded. But, in the conferring of honors generally, there has often been little connection between cause and effect; as, for instance, after Major-General Simpson had failed to secure the victory which the gallantry of our troops had put in his power at the Redan, the home government was so delighted, that they made field-marshals of two very old gentlemen. The example was not lost on the King of the Belgians. He, too, commemorated the fall of Sebastopol by enlarging the number of his knights. He could not well scatter decorations among his army, for that has been merely a military police, but he made selection of an equally destructive body, and named eighteen doctors--Knights of St. Leopold. These orders of later institution appear to have forgotten one of the leading principles of knighthood--love for the ladies--but perhaps this is quite as well. When Louis II., Duke of Bourbon, instituted the Order of the Golden Shield, he was by no means so forgetful. He enjoined his knights to honor the ladies above all, and never permit any one to slander them with impunity; “because,” said the good duke, “after God, we owe everything to the labors of the ladies, and all the honor that man can acquire.” One portion of which assertion may certainly defy contradiction.