The preparatory education of candidates for knighthood was long and arduous.

The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of verse.

The other classes of which society was composed were, first, freemen, owners of small portions of land, independent, though they sometimes voluntarily became the vassals of their more opulent neighbors, whose power was necessary for their protection.

Religion united its influence with those of loyalty and love, and the order of knighthood, endowed with all the sanctity and religious awe that attended the priesthood, became an object of ambition to the greatest sovereigns.

For Mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.

It was not till toward the end of the thirteenth century that the prose romances began to appear.

ON the decline of the Roman power, about five centuries after Christ, the countries of Northern Europe were left almost destitute of a national government.