SHREWSBURY SHOW. [Sidenote: _Characteristic features of the Middle Ages._] A strange glamour hangs around the Middle Ages. We know so little of man's actual life in those years,--and what little we do know seems to partake so largely of the mysterious and the picturesque--all, his modes of life and manners of thought are so far removed from our own,--that mediaeval history would easily resolve itself into an enchanting pageant bright with its colour and bewildering with its contradictions. It is perhaps in the strange contrasts which are presented to us that its chief wonder is found. In those years we find lust and rapine, and sacrilege and tyranny, side by side with the fairest forms of chivalry[178], the most devoted readiness to champion the cause of religion, the firmest attachment to the forms of law[179]. We see only the prominent lights and the great shadows of the picture, but all that should go to make it human and comprehensible to us is hidden under the dust of centuries. We have noticed the existence of something of this contradictory spirit in the view we have had of the early Gilds[180]. The elevated ideal which they set before their members must of course have been far above the level which was ever actually reached. We may smile at their vain attempts after the impossible, yet we cannot but allow that their perseverance betokens the widespread acceptance of a nobler conception of human life than is common in our own too merely practical age. To the men of those days there seemed no great incongruity in the lofty ideals of the Gild-compositions and the lower standard which the brethren actually attained. It added but another to the many striking contrasts which environed their daily life. [Sidenote: _Fondness for pageantry._] [Sidenote: _Its social importance._] That life was one passed largely in dulness and perhaps comparative squalor. But the occasions of colour and merriment were not few. Each season had its festivities, social and religious, when rich and poor met on something like equal ground in the rude merry-making. This feature in ordinary life was not without its social importance, and if only for this reason no account of the Gilds would be complete which failed to take notice of their processions and, in so doing, of the general life and habits of the brethren at the different epochs of Gild history. We have now nothing to take the place of those occasions of mutual enjoyment and mirth, when "ceremony doff'd his pride" without censure, when the bashful apprentice might perhaps tread a measure with his master's daughter, and when the condescending mistress of the house might even allow herself to be led out for a dance by one or other of her goodman's journeymen. "A Christmas gambol oft would cheer A poor man's heart through half the year[181]." [Sidenote: _The Corpus Christi procession._]