When knights formed themselves into religious orders, to fight in defence of the holy sepulchre, they were required to take a vow of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience. A Knight Templar was forbidden to kiss maid, wife, or widow, not even excepting his mother and his sisters; and was not permitted to adorn his helmet with tokens either of nobility or love. But the principles of these pious knights yielded to the slightest pressure of circumstances. Men of large fortune paid little attention to their vow of poverty; connubial fidelity was substituted for perpetual celibacy; and even in this improved form, the history of the crusades gives us small reason to suppose that the promise was considered binding. Such a project as that of the crusades naturally took powerful hold of the imaginations of women educated amid the splendid pageants of war and religion, and accustomed to the continual combination of things in their nature so discordant. Many accompanied their lovers and husbands to the Holy Land, and, after performing the most romantic exploits, died beside them on the field of battle. Whole squadrons of women sometimes took arms in defence of the holy cross. Those that accompanied the emperor Conrad were remarkable for the splendor of their military dresses. Their leader was called “the golden-footed dame.” The ardor with which chivalry was embraced by all the principal nations of Europe, and the powerful hold it still retains on the imagination, notwithstanding the detestable pride and tyranny of those gallant nobles, is to be attributed to the sacred principles on which the institution was originally founded; viz. the chaste union of the sexes, and the forgetfulness of self in the effort to do good to others. But chivalry gradually degenerated from its original purity, and became a ridiculous mania for renown. Knighthood was no longer the reward of high-minded virtue, but was bestowed on any man who had wealth or power to obtain it for his own selfish purposes. The profligacy of the troubadours was open and flagrant; the crusaders, who made a pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre in expiation of their sins, fearfully added to the list on their way; poor knights, who had no money to pay their retainers, made no scruple of obtaining it by robbery and violence, and wandered about in quest of adventures, letting out their swords to richer brethren; women departed from the modesty which had procured them homage, and bestowed their smiles so indiscriminately that they lost their value. Yet, as the affectation of any thing is always more excessive than the reality, the exploits of the knights during the rapid decline of chivalry were more outrageously fantastical than they had ever been. It was common for a cavalier to post himself in some very public place, and fight every gentleman who passed, unless he instantly acknowledged that the lady of his affections was the handsomest and most virtuous lady in the world; and if, as often