But this was not the only change in that class of the chivalry of England. In former days pages had been the attendants of the great in the amusements of the chace and the baronial hall; and had sometimes shared, with the squire, the more perilous duties of the battle-plain. In the course of time, as the frame of society became more settled, the arts of peace smoothed the stern fierceness of chivalry, and the page was the honorary servant of the lord or his lady, in the proud ceremonial of nobility, and never mixed in war. He continued to be a person of gentle birth, and his dress was splendid; circumstances extremely favourable to that singular state of manners which permitted a woman, without any loss of her good name, to follow him she admired in the disguise of a gentle page, and gradually to win his affections by the deep devotion of her love. Poetry may have adorned such instances of passion, for the subject is full of interest and pathos; but the poets in the best days of English verse so frequently copied from the world around them, that we cannot but believe they drew also in this instance from nature. This form of manners was romantic; but it certainly was not chivalric: for in pure days of chivalry the knights, and not the damsels, were the wooers.--But every thing was changed or degraded. The general state of the page in the last days of chivalry may be collected from one of the dramas of Ben Jonson, where Lovel, a complete gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, is desirous to take as his page the son of Lord Frampul, who was disguised as the host of the Light Heart Inn at Barnet: