Three things conduced to the production of a Chriſtian romance literature in the early ages of the Church:—(1) The neceſſity under which the Church lay of ſupplying a want in human nature; (2) The need there was for producing ſome light wholeſome literature to ſupply the place of the popular love-romances then largely read and circulated; (3) The fact that ſome biſhops and converts were experienced novel writers, and therefore ready to lend their hands to ſome better purpoſe than amuſing the leiſure and flattering the paſſions of the idle and young. Much the ſame conditions exiſted in the Middle Ages. There was an influx of ſenſuous literature from the Eaſt, through the Arabs of Spain and Sicily; Oriental tales eaſily took Weſtern garb, in which the caliphs became kings of Chriſtendom, and the fakirs and imauns were converted into monks and Catholic prieſts. To counteract theſe ſtories, collections of which may be found in Le Grand d’Auſſi and Von der Hagen, and in Boccaccio, the Geſta Romanorum was drawn up, a collection of moral tales, many of them of ſimilar Oriental parentage. But beſide theſe ſhort ſtories, or novels, were long romances, ſome heroic, and founded on early national traditions and ballads. To theſe belong the Niebelungen Lied and Noth, the Gudrun, the Heldenbuch, the cycles of Karlovingian and of Arthurian romance. As it happens, we have two authors in the Middle Ages, living much about the ſame time, one intenſely heathen in all his conceptions, the other as entirely Chriſtian, each dealing with ſubjects from the ſame cycle, and the one writing in avowed oppoſition to the tendency of the other’s book. I allude to Wolfram of Eschenbach and Gottfried of Straſſburg. The latter wrote the Triſtram, the former the Parzival. In Gottfried, the moral ſenſe ſeems to be abſolutely dead; there is no perception of the ſacredneſs of truth, of chaſtity, of honour, none of religion. Wolfram is his exact converſe. Wolfram gives us the hiſtory of the Grail, but he did not invent the myth of the Grail, he derived it from pre-exiſting material. The Grail myth is almoſt certainly heathen in its origin, but it has been entirely Chriſtianiſed. The holy baſin is that in which the Blood of Chriſt is preſerved, and only the pure of heart can ſee it; but the Grail was really the great cauldron of Nature, the baſin of Ceridwen, the earth goddeſs of the Kelts, or, among Teutonic nations, the ſacrificial cauldron of Odin, in which was brewed the ſpirit of poeſy, of the blood of Mimer. The remembrance of the myſterious veſſel remained after Kelt and Teuton had become Chriſtian, and the poets and romanciſts gave it a new ſpell of life by chriſtening it. It was much the ſame with the ſtory of the Croſs. In the Teutonic North, tree worſhip was widely ſpread; the tree was ſacred to Odin, who himſelf, according to the myſterious Havamal, hung nine nights wounded, as a ſacrifice to himſelf, a voluntary ſacrifice, in “the wind-rocked tree.”