What was the type of the lady of Provence of whom so much has been said in verse and prose? Was she a demure, well-conducted person clad in sober colours, mending stockings and cutting bread and butter for the children; a model housewife, in fact, such as might be found in a best-possible world of Mrs. Lynn Linton’s devising? Or was she, on the other hand, a progressively minded female, despising the frivolities of society, and thirsting for medical degrees and the franchise, or whatever may have been the mediæval equivalents of these much-desired prerogatives? I fear that even Margarida de Rossilho, ‘the lady most praised of her time for all that is praiseworthy, and noble, and courteous,’ would have fallen far short of these divergent ideals of our latter days. Her main purpose of existence was—shocking though it may sound—altogether not practical, but ornamental. It was her choice and her duty to wield in a society, only just emerging from barbarism, the softening influence to which we owe the phenomenon of a highly finished literature and of an astonishing degree of social refinement at the very outset of the mediæval epoch. Whether this result was altogether unworthy of woman’s mission in the history of civilisation graver judges must decide. There is extant, dating from about the middle of the thirteenth century, a curious poem in rhymed couplets entitled ‘L’essenhamen de la donzela que fe Amanieus des Escas com apela dieu d’amors;’ _Anglicè_: ‘Instruction to a young lady, composed by Sir Amanieu des Escas, called God of Love.’ In this treatise we are supplied with a minute account of the accomplishments expected from a well-educated young lady, and of the bad habits most prejudicial to her character. The poet is supposed to be addressing a noble damsel living at the court of some great baron, as a sort of ‘lady-help’ to his wife; this being a not unusual, and undoubtedly a most efficient, method of polite education in Provence. The young lady has accosted Amanieu on a lonely walk, asking for his advice in matters fashionable. This the poet at first refuses to tender, alleging that ‘you (the damsel) have ten times as much sense as I, and that is the truth.’ But, after his modest scruples are once overcome, he launches forth into a flood of good counsel. He systematically begins with enforcing the good old doctrine of ‘early to rise;’ touches delicately on the mysteries of the early toilet, such as lacing, washing of arms, hands, and head, which, he sententiously adds, ought to go before the first-mentioned process; and, after briefly referring to the especial care required by teeth and nails, he leaves the dressing-room for the church, where a quiet, undemonstrative attitude is recommended; the illicit use of eyes and tongue being mentioned amongst the temptations peculiarly to be avoided. Directions of similar minuteness assist the young lady at the dinner table; the cases in which it would be