There are the mats and the carpet that lie under; and there are the state and the canopy that hangs over the greatest sons of men. Even those bodies that were the temples of the Holy Ghost come to this dilapidation, to ruin, to rubbish, to dust: even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself, had no other specification, no other denomination but that, Vermis Jacob (Thou worm Jacob). Truly, the consideration of this posthume death, this death after burial, that after God, with whom are the issues of death, hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me in the grave, I must die again, in an incineration of this flesh, and in a dispersion of that dust; that all that monarch that spread over many nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead, and there but so long as the lead will last: and that private and retired man, that thought himself his own forever, and never came forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the revolutions of graves) be mingled in his dust with the dust of every highway, and of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond; this is the most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider. God seems to have carried the declaration of his power to a great height when he sets the prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, "Son of man, can these bones live?" as though it had been impossible; and yet they did; the Lord laid sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them, and they did live. But in that case there were bones to be seen; something visible, of which it might be said, Can this, this live? but in this death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we can call that man's. If we say, Can this dust live? perchance it cannot. It may be the mere dust of the earth which never did live, nor shall; it may be the dust of that man's worms which did live, but shall no more; it may be the dust of another man that concerns not him of whom it is asked. This death of incineration and dispersion is to natural reason the most irrevocable death of all; and yet Domini Dei sunt exitus mortis (Unto God the Lord belong the issues of death), and by recompacting this dust into the same body, and reanimating the same body with the same soul, he shall in a blessed and glorious resurrection give me such an issue from this death as shall never pass into any other death, but establish me in a life that shall last as long as the Lord of life himself.

From Donne's last sermon.

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. He 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."

THE

SOME REALITIES OF CHIVALRY

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

From "Knights and Their Days."

IV-91

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."

D

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