Nor were the repeated efforts of English monarchs to keep alive the institution conspicuously successful. The original standard could not be maintained, and the tendency of these later times when the romances were being enriched and elaborated, when Arthur and his knights were regarded as models, and when tournaments were held in imitation of the ancient jousts, was in reality a downward tendency. The ideal which men strove to realise did not correspond with the spirit of the former age. “People had become more worldly,” writes Ten Brink, “and were generally anxious to protect the real interest of life from the unwarrantable interference of romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no longer formed a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life--an ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and was looked upon with a sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. But now chivalry was no longer the simple outflow of a dominant idea, but rather the product of a pleasant self-conscious reflection. Minds ideally constituted strove to fill the traditional moulds and formulas with a really ethical substance, and by trying in their own way to transpose these ancient poems into action, developed a really tender and humane disposition. The majority of people rejoiced merely in the splendour, and in the festive, dignified existence that raised them above the commonplace and distinguished them from the vulgar crowd. But in every case there was the intermixture of an incongruous element.” The lapse to Quixotism was inevitable, and with the lashings of the follies of the undiscriminating imitator of the knights of chivalry, the old custom passed away in derision. Cervantes did well and did evil by his destructive satire: in cutting away the parasite, the false and foolish chivalry which had fastened itself upon the wise and the true, he cut also to the roots of the goodly tree which deserved to fall more nobly, if fall it must. Renan reminds us that it was not Arthur the King who has been adopted by all peoples, but Arthur who charmed the world as the head of an order of equality in which all sat at the same table, and in which a man’s worth depended upon his valour and his natural gifts. The fate of an unknown peninsula mattered nothing to the world--“what enchanted it was the ideal court presided over by Guinevere, where around the monarchical unity the flower of heroes was gathered together, where ladies, as chaste as they were beautiful, loved according to the laws of chivalry, and where the time was passed in listening to stories, and learning civility and beautiful manners.”