CHIVALRY.
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thing previously evolved, and that is a deep respect for woman, a partial recognition of woman's sphere—a recognition yet far from complete.
The ancients, with all their lore and fine philosophical distinctions, found no place in their thoughts for poor woman. They regarded her as their legitimate underling rather than their helpmate. They accorded her no field in the civil or literary world, thereby unkindly intimating that she was an unreasonable creature. They showed her no social courtesy whatever, even assigning her to the upper tiers in their theatres. With them, woman had no social life; she was nothing more than a mental and physical serf, capable of nothing but obedience to her lords and the performance of domestic duties for which she did not even receive thanks. She was a real nonentity.
It is, therefore, with no little surprise that we turn to a time rife with barbarities, whose literary darkness can never be surpassed; when the veil of ignorance almost parted it from civilization itself, and in our survey of this fossil field we discover in its rugged wastes the sparkling gem unknown to the classic world-courtesy to woman as well as to man, for the lack of which ancient civilization seems crude indeed, and without which our civilization could never attain the highest eminence as a respecter of the weak.
We cannot extol too highly this virtue developed in the dark ages. Look where you will; search all the pages of forgotten history; study man's finer nature in whatsoever ancient nation, no matter to what degree of civilization it had attained, and you cannot find in all the categories of virtues handed down to us, that virtue the practice of which enjoins upon us courtesy to woman. No, it is to the dark ages that we must render our praise for the first recognition of the rights of woman. Chivalry may have been blunt in
its perception of other moral virtues, but it first swore to defend the rights of woman.
It is, perhaps, true that the first reaction from the lowest extreme attained a height comparatively unwarranted; that the knights made woman almost the complete governess of the world; that they exalted her to a station far above her contemporary lords, for at a woman's bidding every true knight was ready to lay down his life; that they made her not the social equal of man, but his mistress. As, however, a balance moves slowly up and down before coming to its final rest, so must time adjust this matter, and we must not consider it too great a fault in chivalry that it yielded larger power to woman than it retained itself, for woman's influence seems to be the great civilizer. It may be that the balance in its oscillation again brought woman, at a later time, below her true plane, but that she is gradually rising to her proper level no one can deny, when he considers that greater courtesy is being shown her every day, especially in our own country—that the gates of new fields are continually opening, and that everywhere she is coming to be considered man's equal, equal in ability, equal in rights, and superior as to her finer nature.
The barriers which have hitherto divided the sexes are slowly crumbling away. Woman may enter into business. Nearly all the professions are now open to them, and popular opinion ought to extend them the courtesy of protection therein.
It is an acknowledged fact that in many vocations women have proven themselves the peers of men. As teachers they are as efficient, yet no woman can command the wages due her. In clerkships she performs her duty as well as her male fellow,yet what a disparity of wages. And right here has grown up an evil in denouncing which popular opinion cannot be too severe.In