Such were the martial amusements and exercises of preux chevaliers. All the noble and graceful virtues of chivalry were reflected in the tournament and joust, and the warrior who had displayed them in the lists could not but feel their mild and beneficent influence even in the battle-field. He pricked on the plain with knightly grace as if his lady-mistress had been beholding him: skill and address insensibly softened the ferocity of the mere soldier, and he soon came to consider war itself only as a great tournament. Thus the tourneying lists were schools of chivalric virtue as well as of chivalric prowess, while the splendour and joyousness of the show brought all classes of society into kind and merry intercourse. Through the long period of the middle ages tournaments were the elegant pastimes of Europe, and not of Europe only, but of Greece; and knighthood had its triumph over classical institutions when the games of chivalry were played in the circus of Constantinople. The Byzantines learnt them from the early Crusaders; and when the French and Venetians in the twelfth century became masters of the East, chivalric amusements were the common pastimes of the people, and continued so even when the Greeks recovered the throne of their ancestors; nor were they abolished until the Mussulmans captured Constantinople, and swept away every Christian and chivalric feature.[350] In the West the tournament and joust survived chivalry itself, whose image they had reflected and brightened, for changes in the military art did not immediately affect manners; and the world long clung with fondness to those splendid and graceful shows which had thrown light and elegance over the warriors and dames of yore. CHAP. VII. THE RELIGIOUS AND MILITARY ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD. _General Principles of the Religious Orders ... Qualifications for them ... Use of these Orders to Palestine ... Modern History of the Knights Templars ... Their present Existence and State ... Religious Orders in Spain ... That of St. James ... Its Objects ... Change of its Objects ... Order of Calatrava ... Fine Chivalry of a Monk ... Fame of this Order ... Order of Alcantara ... Knights of the Lady of Mercy ... Knights of St. Michael ... Military Orders ... Imitations of the Religious Orders ... Instanced in the Order of the Garter ... Few of the present Orders are of Chivalric Origin ... Order of the Bath ... Dormant Orders ... Order of the Band ... Its singular Rules ... Its noble Enforcement of Chivalric Duties towards Woman ... Order of Bourbon ... Strange Titles of Orders ... Fabulous Orders ... The Round Table ... Sir Launcelot ... Sir Gawain ... Order of the Stocking ... Origin of the Phrase Blue Stocking._