the reward of all toil, but, so far as any choice is open, or any
question difficult of decision, the DIRECTION of all toil. That
chivalry, to the abuse and dishonour of which are attributable
primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and
ignoble in domestic relations; and to the original purity and power
of which we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love;
that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of honourable
life, assumes the subjection of the young knight to the command--
should it even be the command in caprice--of his lady. It assumes
this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary impulse
of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of blind service to
its lady: that where that true faith and captivity are not, all
wayward and wicked passion must be; and that in this rapturous
obedience to the single love of his youth, is the sanctification of
all man's strength, and the continuance of all his purposes. And
this, not because such obedience would be safe, or honourable, were
it ever rendered to the unworthy; but because it ought to be
impossible for every noble youth--it IS impossible for every one
rightly trained--to love any one whose gentle counsel he cannot
trust, or whose prayerful command he can hesitate to obey.

I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I think it
should commend itself at once to your knowledge of what has been and
to your feeling of what should be. You cannot think that the
buckling on of the knight's armour by his lady's hand was a mere
caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of an eternal truth--
that the soul's armour is never well set to the heart unless a
woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she braces it
loosely that the honour of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely
lines--I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of England:-