CHAPTER I


Of ancient deeds so long forgot;
Of feuds whose memory was not;
Of forests now laid waste and bare;
Of towers which harbor now the hare;
Of manners long since changed and gone;
Of chiefs who under their gray stone
So long had slept, that fickle fame
Hath blotted from her rolls their name.

SCOTT.


Reader! if your mind, harassed with the cares of a utilitarian age,
require an hour of recreation; if a legend of a far different and far
distant day have aught that can claim your sympathy or awaken your
attention; if the "Dark Ages" be to you Ages of Faith, or even lit with
the gray morning-light of civilization, come wander back with me beyond
the experimental revolution of the sixteenth century, to the time when
the Gothic temples of the living God were new.

It was the eleventh century: the sun shone as brightly then as now; ay,
and virtue too, though sympathy for a lustful tyrant has stamped the age
with infamy. Through an extensive forest in Suabia, as the old chronicle
from which I copy relates, a gallant youth was urging on, with voice and