Price.] OQ2 [January. 



were held in respect and honor ; and that they should be so held, 

 there were the concurring causes of marriage to one wife, the in- 

 herited reverence for the sex, and the power of the Christian faith. 

 This sentiment of loyalty to woman was the light and the life of the 

 nations through the dark ages; and when ignorant and brutal men, 

 in the security of their feudal castles, became the tyrants and op- 

 pressors of men and women, that sentiment was relumed with yet 

 greater brightness, and produced the ages of chivalry. Then brave 

 and thoughtful and humane men counted it their highest happiness 

 and honor to relieve oppressed innocence in the championship of the 

 honored sex. An enthusiastic sentiment, kindred to religious devo- 

 tion, filled the breasts of the orders of knighthood; and woman was 

 loved not only for what she was, but in the highest ideal that the 

 enkindled imaginations of men could form of her excellence; and 

 men and women were alike elevated in purity and character, as they 

 truly cherished these exalted sentiments. The transition was easy 

 and natural, and the chivalry of Europe became the crusaders of the 

 East ; then rejoicing both in a devotion to the ideal of woman's excel- 

 lence and to the Cross of Christ. The Council of Clermont, which 

 in 1095 authorized the first Crusade, formally recognized chivalry 

 by declaring, "that every person of noble birth, on attaining twelve 

 years of age, should take a solemn oath before the bishop of his dio- 

 cese, to defend to the uttern)ost the oppressed, the widows and 

 orphans; that women of noble birth, both married and single, should 

 enjoy his special care ; and that nothing should be wanting in him 

 to render travelling safe, and to destroy the evils of tyranny." Thus 

 did the church and religion lend their holy sanction to the high sen- 

 timent of humanity that gave life to chivalry. Yet observe, that 

 oath was limited in its special application to " women of noble birth !" 

 Better this than none; yet how narrow it seems in this age, and in 

 a Christian republic. 



How much better the sentiment I once heard from a Swedish 

 artisan, who gave up his seat in the coach to take one on the top in 

 the rain, to accommodate a plain woman who applied for a passage: 

 "I always remember that my mother was a woman I" 



Hallara, who thoroughly surveyed the history of the Middle Ages, 

 says, " I am not sure that we could trace very minutely the condition 

 of women for the period between the subversion of the lloman Empire 

 and the first Crusade; but apparently man did not grossly abuse his 

 superiority; and in point of civil rights, and even as to the inheri- 



