And there is every reason to believe that the women of Frauenlob’s period deserved his praises, because they were in æsthetic, moral, and intellectual culture far superior to the women before or directly after their time. We read in Gottfried von Strassburg’s poem how Tristan, while Isolde healed his wound, instructed her in the arts and manners of court life. Isolde knew French and Latin besides her own language. She played the violin and the harp, and sang; she wrote letters and poems, and would indeed have been a model of culture even at the present day. The twelfth century even had a genuine blue-stocking, the nun Herrad von Landsberg, who wrote a cyclopædia of all human knowledge, in the Latin tongue, called the _Hortus Deliciarum_. Learning throughout the mediæval ages was all concentrated in the monasteries; but at the period in question the monks did not retain everything for themselves, but aided the knights and the poets in instructing the women of the court and nobility. Nor did these women neglect their domestic affairs or physical exercise. They accompanied the men on their falcon-hunting parties, and at home learned to spin, weave, sew, and make clothing for themselves and their husbands and children. At the tournaments and other games they appeared as Queens of Beauty to distribute prizes and inspire their admirers to heroic deeds; and at banquets and other social gatherings they seem to have supplied more of the wit and entertainment than the men, whose military occupations left them less time for the cultivation of the arts. At the same time one cannot help smiling at the elementary rules of conduct which had to be given even to women of the nobility. You must not stare at a man long, or refuse to return his salutation, young ladies were told; nor must you in walking take too long or too short steps. A poet of the middle of the thirteenth century (quoted by Mr. Hueffer) gives this advice to a girl: “If a gentleman takes you aside and wishes to talk of courtship to you, do not show a strange or sullen behaviour, but defend yourself with pleasant and pretty repartees. And if his talk annoys you and makes you uneasy, I advise you to ask him questions,” and contradict his statements, in order “to give a harmless turn to the conversation.”