visits with each other.  They rarely visited cities, which at that time were small and uninteresting.  The lordly proprietor of ten thousand acres may have been jolly, frank, and convivial, but he was still rough, and had little to say on matters of great interests.  Circumscribed he was of necessity, ignorant and prejudiced.  Conscious of power, however, he was proud and insolent to inferiors.  He was merely a physical man,—­ruddy, healthy, strong indeed, but without refinement, or knowledge, or social graces.  His castle was a fort and not a palace; and here he lived with boisterous or sullen companions, as rough and ignorant as himself.  His wife and daughters were more interesting, but without those attainments which grace and adorn society.  They made tapestries and embroideries, and rode horseback, and danced well, and were virtuous; but were primitive, uneducated, and supercilious.  Their beauty was of the ruddy sort, —­physical, but genial.  They were very fond of ornaments and gay dresses; and so were their lords on festive occasions, for semi-barbarism delights in what is showy and glittering,—­purple, and feathers, and trinkets.

Feudalism was intensely aristocratic.  A line was drawn between the noble and ignoble classes almost as broad as that which separates liberty from slavery.  It was next to impossible for a peasant, or artisan, or even a merchant to pass that line.  The exclusiveness of the noble class was intolerable.  It held in scorn any profession but arms; neither riches nor learning was of any account.  It gloried in the pride of birth, and nourished a haughty scorn of plebeian prosperity.  It was not until cities and arts and commerce arose that the arrogance of the baron was rebuked, or his iron power broken.  Haughty though ignorant, he had no pity or compassion for the poor and miserable.  His peasantry were doomed to perpetual insults.  Their cornfields were trodden down by the baronial hunters; they were compelled even to grind their corn in the landlord’s mill, and bake their bread in his oven.  They had no redress of injuries, and were scorned as well as insulted.  What knight would arm himself for them; what gentle lady wept at their sorrows?  The feeling of personal consequence was entirely confined to the feudal family.  The poorest knight took precedence over the richest merchant.  Pride of birth was carried to romantic extravagance, so that marriages seldom took place between different classes.  A beautiful peasant girl could never rise above her drudgeries; and she never dreamed of rising, for the members of the baronial family were looked up to as superior beings.  A caste grew up as rigid and exclusive as that of India.  The noble and ignoble classes were not connected by any ties; there was nothing in common between them.  Even the glory of successful warfare shed no radiance on a peasant’s hut.  He fought for his master, and not for himself, and scarcely for his country.  He belonged to his master as completely as if he could