JOHN DORAN

(1807-1878)

S AN essayist Doran belongs to the school of D'Israeli. His «Knights and Their Days" and "Table Traits" are always entertaining, and they are often made instructive by curious detail, which even the widest reading may not have included. was born in London about 1807, and died there January 25th, 1878. In addition to the works mentioned above, he wrote a "History of Court Fools" and "New Pictures in Old Panels.”

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SOME REALITIES OF CHIVALRY

HERE was a knight who was known by the title of "The

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White Knight," whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a contemporary of Edward the Black Prince, and who is supposed to have fought at Poitiers. He is, however, best known, or at least equally well known, as the author of a work entitled "Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay." This book was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable idea of the young ladies who could bear such instruction as is here imparted. The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and easy fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated as "two priests and two clerks," whose task it was to procure for him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes, apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all sources, sacred and profane -from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or historical, that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically together, adding such wise saws, moral counsel, or sentiment, as he deemed the case most especially required, with a sprinkling of stories of his own collecting. A critic in the Athenæum, commenting upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it affords good materials for an examination into the morals and

manners of the times. "Nothing," says the reviewer, "is urged for adoption upon the sensible grounds of right or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted moral standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some superstition which outrages common sense."

In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier recommends a strict observation of the "Meagre Days," upon the ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday's fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoyed upon much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the practice thereof is placed by the great teacher not merely above Hope, but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to the poor, being on her deathbed was leaped upon by a couple of black dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as black as coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative argument. A burgher's wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist, which smashed her nose and felled her to the ground. "It is reason and right," says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, "that the husband should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her husband, whether right or wrong, and especially before other people." Publius Syrus says that a good wife commands by obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contem

plates. The knight places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined by the moralizing knight, namely, that L'obeissance aux volontes d'un chef absolu assimile l'homme a la brute. This with a verbal alteration may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight's teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts that the most intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus agreed with a heathen poet-particularly as it was in Christian times that the maxim was first published, which says, Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut!

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From "Knights and Their Days."

RENÉ DOUMIC

(1860-)

ENÉ DOUMIC, one of the most brilliant of the contemporary essayists of France, was born in Paris in 1860, and educated at the Collège Condorcet, where, it is said, "he carried off the most brilliant scholastic honors." For ten years he held the chair of Rhetoric in the Collège Stanislas in Paris; but in 1884 he began the career of a journalist, which has drawn him from academic work and given him a celebrity he might not have otherwise attained. He has been one of the leading contributors to the Revue des Deux Mondes and to the Journal des Debats, and several volumes of his essays on literature and the drama have been collected and published in permanent form. His admirer M. Theodore Bentzon writes that "M. Doumic is a Christian, a somewhat austere one both as to faith and morals," and adds that "he acknowledges it frankly."

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WOMEN DURING THE RENAISSANCE

URING the Middle Ages woman had no personal identity whatever. She existed merely as the member of a family, where it was her place to administer the household and perpetuate the race. She was married when scarcely more than a child, and soon learned to look upon her husband as a master possessed of unlimited power, including the right to beat her, and who often had a heavy hand. Her children were taken from her at an early age; and neither as a young girl nor as a matron had she any life in the sense in which we understand the word to-day.

Did she realize the emptiness of her lot and repine at it? Probably not; for ennui is one of the maladies of a sophisticated period; nor is it likely that she indulged in many dreams; for it is we who people with our own melancholy yearnings those castles of the olden time, where the pressure of practical duties was severe enough to exclude chimeras. Did she suffer? Our worst sufferings are the residue of vanished hopes and disappointed

fancies; and if—as we must suppose, she was occasionally very unhappy, at least she did not complain of being misunderstood. She was extremely busy. She had to rise with the dawn, oversee the pages and the maids, regulate the household expenditure for town or country; and she passed a large part of her time at church. She was married to a coarse husband, but, being little more ethereal than he, she did not consider herself a martyr on that account. She did not mind deceiving her lord, being as susceptible as another to the pleasures of sense; but there was no malice in her little diversions, and she was not vain of her conquests. Her place in society was distinctly that of an inferior. Certain poems and romances were beginning to inculcate reverence for women, but all this was mere poetry and romance. The epic, whether heroic or familiar, the chanson de geste and the fabliau all alike betray the prevailing sentiment-that of the subordination of women. We detect it even in those writers of the sixteenth century whose views are broadest. We should have no doubt about Rabelais's estimate of woman, even if he had not expressed himself clearly upon this point. "When I say woman, I allude to a sex so fragile, so variable, so inconstant and imperfect, that Nature seems to me (speaking with all due reverence), to have departed somewhat from her usual good sense when she made the feminine creature. I have pondered this point hundreds and hundreds of times, and can come to no other conclusion than this: that Nature, in devising woman, had regard to the social delectation of man, and the propagation of the species, rather than to the perfection of muliebrity in the individual." Montaigne is quite of the same mind, though he takes pains to express himself a little less crudely. He does not think that " our women should be maintained in idleness by the sweat of our toil"; but, on the other hand, while Mlle. de Montaigne keeps the accounts, oversees the farm and directs the masons, he moralizes, perorates, travels, and amuses himself generally; not merely without a shadow of compunction, but in the full assurance that he is neither exceeding the privileges of his sex, nor transgressing its rights. The bourgeois of Molière conceive the rôle of woman after an identical fashion; and a good many of the bourgeois of our own day agree with Molière's. It is a matter of tradition.

The ideas which were destined to modify, for a time, the condition of woman, had their origin in Italy, being, in fact, an essential part of the spirit of the Renaissance. One of these was