The combination of qualities and motives which we are accustomed to express in the general term of chivalry was the mediaeval ideal of virtue, and as such was in practice inevitably subject to imperfection and inconsistency.  The Roman virtus was simply courage.  Chivalry meant courage and skill in arms, united to gentle birth, to courtesy, to gallantry, and to a faithful observance of the laws of combat; the whole inspired by military glory, religious enthusiasm, or devotion to women.  We should admire the greatness and nobility of this ideal, standing out as it does against a background of lawlessness and ignorance, rather than complain that in practice its valor often degenerated into ferocity, its Christianity into narrow bigotry, its worship of women into license and brutality.  Chivalry, supplying a standard of excellence adapted by its nature to excite the admiration of men, did much to refine and civilize the rude age in which it arose; and this result is not belittled by the fact that that standard was pitched above the possibility of human attainment.  Chivalry was the spontaneous expression of what was best in the time, and gave sentiment and charm to lives otherwise hard and barren.  Its very exaggerations and grotesqueness illustrate the eagerness with which it was received, and the greatness of the want which it supplied.  This was an ideal, too, separate and distinct from any that had been known before, possessing enduring characteristics of greatness and beauty which have never ceased to command sympathy and admiration.  Though changed in outward form, and appearing under different manifestations, the chivalry of the Middle Ages is essentially the chivalry of to-day, but it now exerts a moral and intellectual, instead of a physical force.

The new dignity which woman assumed in connection with the growth of chivalry was owing considerably to a cause separate from the Northern sentiment concerning them, and as the position of women is an important part of the social condition we are now examining, a glance at this other cause will not be without value or interest.  It is indeed remarkable that in the Middle Ages woman should for the first time have attained her true rank, and that the highest conception of the female character which the world had yet known should have been developed in so rude and ferocious a time.  The estimation in which women were held among Eastern nations was little lower than their position among the Jews.  Where polygamy exists, and where purchase-money is paid to the father of the bride, women never attain to high appreciation or respect.  Beauty rather than virtue was the ideal of Greece.  The women of that country, living in continual seclusion, deprived alike of opportunities for attaining culture or exerting influence, became narrowed in thought and intelligence, and passed their lives in obscurity under the control of their husbands or sons.[8] Roman history gives us examples of female excellence and