OUTRAGES ON LADIES.

II

Abduction of

lantry was gross and capricious; but the general Ch. 14. prevalence of these sentiments mitigated the ferocity of military barbarism, and introduced that females. courtesy, benevolence, and self-respect, upon which the character of a gentleman is based. Frequently, indeed, it happened, notwithstanding the homage with which the sex were treated, that a woman of birth was carried by force to the castle of some baron, or was fain to fly to sanctuary from the rudeness and violence of a belted knight. Frequently, also, cavaliers were to be found, whose crimes and profligacy brought contempt on their pretensions to that quality which they claimed as the peculiar distinction of their order. But later times can furnish similar examples. Long after the order of chivalry was extinct, when the ascendancy of the laws was fully recognised, and the arts and usages of polished life extensively obtained, the abduction of females by men of rank and fashion was not a rare occurrence. Many of the best written novels of the earlier half of the eighteenth century contain some incident of this kind; the perpetrators of such outrages are represented as the finest gentlemen of the age, and are often at last rewarded by poetic justice with the lawful possession of beauty and virtue. The satirical pictures of a man of honour of the same period are equally numerous. Lord Chesterfield, who should have been well informed on such a point, describes him as a cheat, a bully, and a rake. Other authors who knew the world, though

a The World.

12

WAR OF THE ROSES.

Ch. 14. they surveyed it from different points of view, bear similar testimony. The privileges of this class are now reduced within a narrow compass; and there is little or nothing to distinguish a man of honour from a gentleman who observes the laws of common honesty and decorum. Violence to women, perjury, robbery, bullying, and swindling, are certainly no longer compatible with the character of a man of honour and a cavalier.

Results of

the War of the Roses.

The War of the Roses was the last of the wars which belonged to the mediæval period; and chivalry, which had long been declining, at length sank for ever on the field of Bosworth. The civil strife, which afterwards convulsed the realm, was no longer the struggle of rival pretensions to the crown, but the conflict of great religious and political principles. The first act of the awakened mind of Europe was to rebel against the spiritual bondage of Rome; and the impulse given to the human intellect by this momentous struggle between established authority and free inquiry on matters of eternal truth, was soon communicated to other questions of equal magnitude so far as temporal interests were concerned. Accordingly, civil and religious liberty advanced hand in hand, until within a century and a half, — a period comparatively brief, if we look back upon the ages of darkness which separated ancient from modern civilisation - a reformed and enlightened creed had, for the most part, supplanted the old superstition, and the noblest fabric of civil govern

THE REFORMATION.

ment which the world has ever witnessed had been reared from the foundation. During the same space, Science, unknown to ancient wisdom, had discovered many of the most important secrets of nature; the Arts had been illustrated by works of genius and taste, upon which the emulation of later times has been unable to improve; and, above all, a Literature had been created which rivalled that of Greece or Rome. Shakespeare, improving upon a series of predecessors and contemporaries, many of them poets of rare genius, had brought the Drama to perfection; Milton had compiled an Epic, which might compare with the master-pieces of antiquity; Bacon had founded a system of philosophy more complete and accurate than any which had been found in the famous schools of Athens; Locke had expounded the truths of moral and political science; Harvey, by a process of inductive reasoning, had arrived at that beautiful discovery upon which the knowledge of medicine has since been founded; and, lastly, Newton had illustrated those wonderful and sublime doctrines of natural philosophy, the inculcation of which is among the highest achievements of human sagacity and wisdom.

Ch. 14.

tion. Its

education.

13

The Reformation at once emancipated the hu- The Reformaman mind from the bonds of a gross superstition, influence on and dispelled the dense ignorance by which it had been oppressed. The policy of Rome has always discouraged education, and found in ignorance its most powerful ally. The very offices of her church

14

Ch. 14.

Intellectual

progress in the

tury.

PROGRESS OF LEARNING IN

The

are shrouded in the obscurity of a dead language.
Her symbols of salvation, her ceremonies, and even
her furniture, are called by names unintelligible
to the vulgar. Up to the time when Wickliff and
Luther proclaimed their mission, the learning still
extant was almost monopolised by the clergy.
The very term clerk,' which is still used to de-
signate a person in holy orders, merely implied
the knowledge of reading and writing.
Church of Rome, in the time of her ascendancy,
claimed for her ministers exemption from the
secular power; and it was considered sufficient
to entitle an offender against the laws to this pri-
vilege, which was called 'benefit of clergy,' that
he could read or write. This privilege was for
the first time limited in its application to the laity
by a statute passed in the reign of Henry the
Seventh.

The amazing intellectual progress of the sixsixteenth cen- teenth century would have been merely impossible under the spiritual domination of Rome. Her thunder would have been pointed at the spirit of free enquiry, which sought to establish standards of thought and action independent of her guidance and sanction. Milton would have been excommunicated, and Newton would have shared the fate of Galileo. A reformed religion was, therefore, necessary to the revival of the human mind; and the reaction was the more sudden and striking, from the pressure which had weighed down the springs of thought during ten centuries.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

It would be difficult to overstate the prodigious Ch. 14. and immediate effects of the Revolution of the sixteenth century, in comparison with which all other revolutions, of which History has preserved any record, are but local changes of more or less importance and duration. The event of 1648, which occupies so great a space in the history of this country, was but a supplement to the Reformation, as the event of 1688 was a supplement to that of 1648.

and Bacon.

The progress of the human mind, rapid and Shakespeare portentous as it was, could not keep pace with the transcendant exploits of the highest order of intellect. Shakespeare and Bacon were still in advance of their age. Several generations, indeed, elapsed before the author of Hamlet' and 'Lear' was recognised as the greatest master of human nature the world had yet seen; and the illustrious philosopher makes a touching allusion to the deficiency of the times, when he bequeaths the appreciation of his genius to a future age. Still this noble literature at once dispelled the grosser legends of the dark ages, and put to flight the giants and monsters of ro

mance.

15

In the higher classes, the change of manners The Tudors. was, of course, most conspicuous. Few of the great barons, who were summoned to the parliaments of the Plantagenets, could read or write; they subscribed legal documents either with a sign of the cross, or the heraldic cognisances of their