CEREMONIAL CONTROL IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 87 



crushed. In India, and indeed throughout the East, there 

 exists a like connection between the pitiless tyranny of 

 rulers, the dread terrors of immemorial creeds, and the 

 rigid restraint of unchangeable customs : the caste regula- 

 tions continue still unalterable ; the fashions of clothes and 

 furniture have remained the same for ages ; suttees are so 

 ancient as to be mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus Siculus; 

 justice is still administered at the palace-gates as of old ; 

 in short, " every usage is a precept of religion and a maxim 

 of jurisprudence." 



A similar relationship of phenomena was exhibited in 

 Europe during the Middle Ages. While all its govern- 

 ments were autocratic, while feudalism held sway, while 

 the Church was unshorn of its power, while the criminal 

 code was full of horrors and the hell of the popular creed 

 full of terrors, the rules of behaviour were both more 

 numerous and more carefully conformed to than now. Dif- 

 ferences of dress marked divisions of rank. Men were 

 limited by law to a certain width of shoe-toes ; and no one 

 below a specified degree might wear a cloak less than so 

 many inches long. The symbols on banners and shields 

 were carefully attended to. Heraldry was an important 

 branch of knowledge. Precedence was strictly insisted on. 

 And those various salutes of which we now use the abridg- 

 ments were gone through in full. Even during our own 

 last century, with its corrupt House of Commons and little- 

 curbed monarchs, we may mark a correspondence of social 

 formalities. Gentlemen were still distinguished from lower 

 classes by dress ; people sacrificed themselves to inconven- 

 ient requirements — as powder, hooped petticoats, and tow- 

 ering head-dresses ; and children addressed their parents 

 as Sir and Madam. 



A further corollary naturally following this last, and 

 almost, indeed, forming part of it, is, that these several 

 kinds of government decrease in stringency at the same 



