CHIVALRY CHLORINE. 



201 



knighthood liad become an established and well de- ' 

 fined institution ; but it was not till the fourteenth 

 that its honours were confined exclusively to the no- 

 bility (q. v.). The crusades gave a more religious 

 turn to the spirit of chivalry, and made the knights 

 of all Christian nations known to each other, so that 

 a great uniformity is thenceforward, to be perceived 

 among them throughout Europe. Then arose the re- 

 ligious orders of knights, the knights of St John, the 

 templars, the Teutonic knights, &c. The whole es- 

 tablishment of knighthood assumed continually a more 

 formal character, and, degenerating, like every hu- 

 man institution, sank at last into Quixotic extrava- 

 gances, or frittered away its spirit amid the forms and 

 punctilios springing from the pride and the distinc- 

 tions of the privileged orders of society. It merged, 

 in fact, among the abuses which it has been one of 

 the great labours of our age to overthrow. The de- 

 cline of chivalry might be traced through the differ- 

 ent forms which it assumed in different nations as 

 distinctly as its developement a task too extensive 

 for this work. 



The education of a knight was briefly as follows : 

 The young and noble stripling, generally about 

 his twelfth year, was sent to the court of some baron 

 or noble knight, where he spent his time chiefly in 

 attending on the ladies, and acquiring skill in the use 

 of arms, in riding, &c. This duty of waiting about 

 the persons of the ladies became, in the sequel, as 

 injurious to the morals of the page as it may have 

 been salutary in the beginning. When advancing 

 age and experience in the use of arms had qualified 

 the page for war, he became an cscuyer (esquire or 

 squire). This word is generally supposed to be de- 

 rived from escu or scudo (shield), because among other 

 offices, it was the squire's business to carry the shield 

 of the knight whom he served. The third and high- 

 est rank of chivalry was that of knighthood, which 

 was not conferred before the twenty-first year, except 

 in the case of distinguished birth or great achieve- 

 ments. The individual prepared himself by confess- 

 ing, fasting, &c. ; religious rites were performed ; 

 and then, after promising to be faithful, to protect 

 ladies and orphans, never to lie, nor utter slander, to 

 live in harmony with his equals, &c. (in France, there 

 were twenty vows of knighthood) he received the 

 accolade (q. v.), a slight blow on the neck with the 

 flat of the sword, from the person Avho dubbed him a 

 knight, who, at the same time, pronounced a formula 

 to this effect : " I dub thee knight, in the name of G od 

 and St Michael (or in the name of the Father, Son. 

 and Holy Ghost). Be faithful, bold, and fortunate. 

 This was often done on the eve of battle, to stimulate 

 the new knight to deeds of valour, or, after the com- 

 bat, to reward signal bravery. 



Though no man of any reflection would wish for 

 the return of the age of chivalry, yet we must re- 

 member that chivalry exercised, hi some respects, a 

 salutary influence at a time when governments were 

 unsettled and laws little regarded. Though chivalry 

 often carried the feelings of love and honour to a 

 fanatical excess, yet it did much good by elevating 

 them to the rank of deities ; for the reverence paid 

 to them principally prevented mankind, at this pe- 

 riod of barbarous violence, from relapsing into bar- 

 barism ; and, as the feudal system was unavoidable, 

 it is well that its evils were somewhat alleviated by 

 the spirit of chivalry. The influence which chiv- 

 alry had on poetry was very great. The trouba- 

 aours in the south of France, the trouveres in the 

 north of the same country, the minstrels in Britain, 

 the Minnesanger in Germany, sang the achievements 

 of the knights who received them hospitably. (See 

 Ballad). In Provence arose the cours d'amour (q. v.), 

 which decided the poetical contests of the knights. 



Amorous songs (chansons), duets (tensons), pastoral 

 songs (pastourelles), and poetical colloquies (sirventes) 

 were performed. In Germany, the chivalric spirit 

 produced one of the most splendid and sublime epics, 

 the Nibelungenlied (q. v.). By the intercourse with 

 the East, which grew up during the crusades, fames, 

 and all the wonders of enchantment, were introduced 

 into the romantic or chivalric poetry. It is proba- 

 ble, however, that there existed something of the 

 same kind before the influence of the East was felt ; 

 for instance, the stories of the enchanter Merlin. 

 Chivalric poetry, in our opinion, begins, as Schlegel 

 has shown, with the mythological cyclus of king 

 Arthur's round table. The second cyclus is that of 

 Charlemagne and his paladins, his twelve peers, 

 which remained the poetical foundation of chivalric 

 poetry for many centuries. The cyclus of Amadis 

 (q. v.), which belongs, perhaps, exclusively to Spain, 

 does not rest on any historical ground. For further 

 information, see the article Chivalry, in the supple- 

 ment to the Encyclopedia Britannica, written by Sir 

 Walter Scott, which contains many interesting facts, 

 though the writer does not investigate very deeply 

 the spirit of the institution. The article Chevalerie, 

 in the Encyclopedic Moderne, is full of valuable in- 

 formation. The preface to lord Byron's Childe 

 Harold should not be forgotten. See also Heeren's 

 Essay on the Influence of the Crusades, translated in- 

 to French from the German ; Busching's Vorlesungen 

 uber Ritterzeit und Rittenvesen, Leipsic, 1823, 2 vols.; 

 Memoires sur Vancienne Chevalerie, par Lacurne de 

 Sainte-Palaye, Paris, 1826, 2 vols., with engravings ; 

 and last, but not least, Don Quixote. See also the 

 article Tournament, and the other articles in this 

 work connected with this subject. 



CHLORIC ACID. See Chlorine. 



CHLORIDE OF NITROGEN. See Chlorine. 



CHLORINE. The discovery of this gas was made 

 in 1770, by Scheele, and named by its discoverer, de- 

 phlogisticated marine acid. The term dephlogisticated 

 had exactly the same import as that of oxygenated, 

 soon afterwards introduced by Lavoisier. From its 

 peculiar yellowish-green colour, the appellation of 

 chlorine (from ^Xa/jw, green) has been given to it. 

 Chlorine gas is obtained by the action of muriatic 

 acid on the peroxide of manganese. The most con- 

 venient method of preparing it is by mixing concen- 

 trated muriatic acid, contained in a glass flask, with 

 half its weight of finely-powdered peroxide of man- 

 ganese. On the application of a moderate heat, the 

 gas is evolved, and should be collected hi inverted 

 glass bottles, filled with warm water. In order to 

 comprehend the theory of this process, it must be 

 premised that muriatic acid consists of chlorine and 

 hydrogen. The peroxide of manganese is composed 

 of manganese and oxygen. When these compounds 

 react on one another, the peroxide of manganese 

 gives up a portion of its oxygen to the hydrogen of 

 the muriatic acid, in consequence of which water is 

 generated, and chlorine (the other ingredient in mu- 

 riatic acid) is liberated. The method which is em- 

 ployed in the arts, and which is the most economical, 

 is the following : Three parts of common salt (muri- 

 ate of soda) are intimately mingled with one of the 

 peroxide of manganese, and to this mixture two parts 

 of sulphuric acid, diluted with an equal weight of 

 water, are then added. By the action of sulphuric 

 acid on the muriate of soda, muriatic acid is disen- 

 gaged, which reacts as before explained upon the 

 peroxide of manganese ; so that, instead of adding 

 muriatic acid directly to the manganese, the materi- 

 als for forming it are employed. Chlorine is gaseous 

 under a common atmospheric pressure. It is twice 

 and a half heavier than atmospheric air, or its speci- 

 fic gravity is 2'5. The gas has a yellowish-green 



