During the anarchy of the Middle Ages, every man was compelled to look upon war as his natural occupation, if he hoped to preserve life or property.  His land was held as a condition of military service.  As long as there was no effective administration of justice, redress for the aggrieved lay in the sword alone.  A military career had no rival in the eyes of the ambitious and the noble.  There was no learning, no art, to share with skill in arms, the honors to which a youth aspired.  Religion and love, the most powerful inspirations of his moral life, made force of arms the merit most worthy of their rewards.  The growth of the people in the mechanical arts took the direction of improving the instruments of warfare; the increase of refinement and humanity tended less to diminish war than to make it more civilized, showy, and glorious.  The armies of the Romans seem prosaic when we turn to the brilliant array of chivalry, to the ranks of steel-clad knights couching the lance to win fame, the smile of woman, or the reward of religious devotion;—­men to whom war seemed a grand tournament, in which each combatant, from the king to the poorest knight, was to seek distinction by his strength and valor.  It was through the senses, and especially through the eye, that the feudal imagination was moved.  Every heart was kindled at the sight of shining armor, horses with brilliant trappings, gorgeous dress, and martial show.  The magnificent Norman cathedrals struck the mind with devotional awe; the donjons and towers of the great baronial castles were suggestive of power and glory.  To the impressibility of the senses was added the romantic spirit of adventure, which kept the knighthood of Europe in a constant ferment, and for lack of war, burst forth in tournaments, in private feuds, or in the extravagances of knight-errantry.  The feudal system, growing up to meet the necessities of conquerors living on conquered territory, and founded on the principle of military service as a condition of land tenure, made of Europe a vast army.  The military profession was exalted to an importance which crushed all effort of a more useful or progressive nature; the military class, including all who possessed land, and did not labor upon it, became an aristocracy despising peaceful occupations, whose most powerful prejudice was pride of birth, whose ruling passion was love of war.  Under the influence of this military spirit, intellectual was subordinated to active life; a condition of ignorance and danger was sustained; an overwhelming reverence for the supernatural was produced, and there resulted that predominance of the imagination over the reason of man which forms the distinctive feature of Romantic Fiction.