these things are a modern improvement, borrowed from the customs of the Romans.  The awe and devotion with which the lover regarded his bride became regard and affection in the husband.  The matron maintained the rank which had been assigned to her as a maiden.  The gallant warriors blended even the adoration of our Lord with adoration of our Lady,—­the deification of Christ with the deification of woman.  Chivalry, encouraged by the Church and always strongly allied with religious sentiments, accepted for eternal veneration the transcendent loveliness of the mother of our Lord; so that chivalric veneration for the sex culminated in the reverence which belongs to the Queen of Heaven,—­virgo fidelis; regina angelorum.  Woman assumed among kings and barons the importance which she was supposed to have in the celestial hierarchy.  And besides the religious influence, the poetic imagination of the time seized upon this pure and lovely element, which passed into the songs, the tales, the talk, the thought, and the aspirations of all the knightly order.

Whence, now, this veneration for woman which arose in the Middle Ages,—­a veneration, which all historians attest, such as never existed in the ancient civilization?

It was undoubtedly based on the noble qualities and domestic virtues which feudal life engendered.  Women were heroines.  Queen Philippa in the absence of her husband stationed herself in the Castle of Bamborough and defied the whole power of Douglas.  The first military dispatch ever written in the Middle Ages was addressed to her; she even took David of Scotland a prisoner, when he invaded England.  These women of chivalry were ready to undergo any fatigues to promote their husbands’ interests.  They were equal to any personal sacrifices.  Nothing could daunt their courage.  They could defend themselves in danger, showing an extraordinary fertility of resources.  They earned the devotion they called out.  What more calculated to win the admiration of feudal warriors than this devotion and bravery on the part of wives and daughters!  They were helpmates in every sense.  They superintended the details of castles.  They were always employed, and generally in what were imperative duties.  If they embroidered dresses or worked tapestries, they also wove the cloth for their husband’s coats, and made his shirts and knit his stockings.  If they trained hawks and falcons, they fed the poultry and cultivated the flowers.  They understood the cares of the kitchen, and managed the servants.

But it was their moral virtues which excited the greatest esteem.  They gloried in their unsullied names; their characters were above suspicion.  Any violation of the marriage vow was almost unknown; an unfaithful wife was infamous.  The ordinary life of a castle was that of isolation, which made women discreet, self-relying, and free from entangling excitements.  They had no great pleasures, and but little society.  They were absorbed with their duties, and contented