"The feudal institutions, by raising the military tenants to a kind of sovereign dignity, by rendering personal strength and valour requisite, and by making every knight and baron his own protector and avenger, begat that martial pride and sense of honour, which, being cultivated and embellished by the poets and romance writers of the age, ended in chivalry. The virtuous knight fought not only in his own quarrel, but in that of the innocent, of the helpless, and, above all, of the fair, whom he supposed to be for ever under the guardianship of his valiant arm. The uncourteous knight, who, from his castle, exercised robbery on travellers, and committed violence on virgins, was the object of his perpetual indignation; and he put him to death without scruple, or trial, or appeal, whenever he met with him. The great independence of men made personal honour and fidelity the chief tie among them, and rendered it the capital virtue of every true knight, or genuine professor of chivalry. The solemnities of single combat, as established by law, banished the notion of every thing unfair or unequal in rencounters, and maintained an appearance of courtesy between the combatants till the moment of their engagement. The credulity of the age grafted on this stock the notions of giants, enchanters, spells, and a thousand wonders, which still multiplied during the time of the crusades, when men, returning from so great a distance, used the liberty of imposing every fiction on their believing audience. These ideas of chivalry infected the writings, conversations, and behaviour of men during some ages; and even after they were in a great measure banished by the revival of learning, they left modern _gallantry_, and the _point of honour_, which still maintain their influence, and are the genuine offspring of those ancient affectations." [28:1] Perhaps few authors afford so many curious illustrations of the substitution of fanciful analogy for the severe logic of a practical lawyer, as Lord Kames--_e. g._ when, in his essays on British antiquities, he identifies hereditary descent with the law of gravitation, and the inclination of the mind to continue downwards in a straight line, as a stone falls from a height; so that, "in tracing out a family, the mind descends by degrees from the father, first to the eldest son, and so downwards in the order of age:" pleasant enough speculations, yet not likely to serve any good purpose in practical law. [29:1] Essay on Eloquence. [45:1] Philosophical Principles of Natural Religion, 1705, 8vo.