Of the two great systems of Romance, one has Lancelot, the other has Orlando for its culminating point; these heroes being exhibited as the respective specimens in whose characters the fullest development of man, such as he was then conceived, was to be recognised.  The one put forward Arthur for the visible head of Christendom, signifying and asserting its social unity; the other had Charlemagne.  Each arrays about the Sovereign a fellowship of knights.  In them Valour is the servant of Honour; in an age of which violence is the besetting danger, the protection of the weak is elevated into a first principle of action; and they betoken an order of things in which Force should be only known as allied with Virtue, while they historically foreshadow the magnificent aristocracy of mediaeval Europe.  The one had Guinevere for the rarest gem of beauty, the other had Angelica.  Each of them contained figures of approximation to the knightly model, and in each these figures, though on the whole secondary, yet in certain aspects surpassed it:  such were Sir Tristram, Sir Galahad, Sir Lamoracke, Sir Gawain, Sir Geraint, in the Arthurian cycle; Rinaldo and Ruggiero, with others, in the Carlovingian.  They were not twin systems, but they were rather twin investitures of the same scheme of ideals and feelings.  Their consanguinity to the primitive Homeric types is proved by a multitude of analogies of character and by the commanding place which they assign to Hector as the flower of human excellence.  Without doubt, this preference was founded on his supposed moral superiority to all his fellows in Homer; and the secondary prizes of strength, valour, and the like, were naturally allowed to group themselves around what, under the Christian scheme, had become the primary ornament of man.  The near relation of the two cycles to one another may be sufficiently seen in the leading references we have made, and it runs into a multitude of details both great and small, of which we can only note a few.  In both the chief hero passes through a prolonged term of madness.  Judas, in the College of Apostles, is represented under Charlemagne in Gano di Maganza and his house, who appear, without any development in action, in the Arthurian romance as “the traitours of Magouns,” and who are likewise reflected in Sir Modred, Sir Agravain, and others; while the Mahometan element, which has a natural place ready made in a history that acknowledges Charlemagne and France, for its centres, finds its way sympathetically into one which is bound for the most part by the shores of Albion.  Both schemes cling to the tradition of the unity of the Empire as well as of Christendom; and accordingly, what was historical in Charlemagne is represented in the case of Arthur by an imaginary conquest reaching as far as Rome, the capital of the West:  even the sword Durindana has its counterpart in the sword Excalibur.