We have no inclination to deny that life is more safe and easy in these days than it was in the Middle Ages, but it certainly is less picturesque, and adventurous, and joyous. This country then presented the features of interest which those among us who have wealth and leisure now travel to foreign lands to find. There were vast tracts of primeval forest, and wild unenclosed moors and commons, and marshes and meres. The towns were surrounded by walls and towers, and the narrow streets of picturesque, gabled, timber houses were divided by wide spaces of garden and grove, above which rose numerous steeples of churches full of artistic wealth. The villages consisted of a group of cottages scattered round a wide green, with a village cross in the middle, and a maypole beside it. And there were stately monasteries in the rich valleys; and castles crowned the hills; and moated manor-houses lay buried in their woods; and hermitages stood by the dangerous fords. The high roads were little more than green lanes with a narrow beaten track in the middle, poached into deep mud in winter; and the by-roads were bridle-paths winding from village to village; and the costumes of the people were picturesque in fashion, bright in colour, and characteristic. The gentleman pranced along in silks and velvets, in plumed hat, and enamelled belt, and gold-hilted sword and spurs, with a troop of armed servants behind him; the abbot, in the robe of his order, with a couple of chaplains, all on ambling palfreys; the friar paced along in serge frock and sandals; the minstrel, in gay coat, sang snatches of lays as he wandered along from hall to castle, with a lad at his back carrying his harp or gittern; the traders went from fair to fair, taking their goods on strings of pack horses; a pilgrim, passed now and then, with staff and scrip and cloak; and, now and then, a knight-errant in full armour rode by on his war-horse, with a squire carrying his helm and spear. It was a wild land, and the people were rude, and the times lawless; but every mile furnished pictures for the artist, and every day offered the chance of adventures. The reader must picture to himself the aspect of the country and the manners of the times, before he can appreciate the spirit of knight-errantry, to which it is necessary that we should devote one of these chapters on the Knights of the Middle Ages.