Page:Tennyson - Walter Irving (1873).djvu/11

 huddled mass of rubbish is raised a superstructure of Grecian design, which is to weather time.

Mr Tennyson we know is, and we say deservedly, a great favourite with young ladies of that age when love begins to shoot its arrows at their susceptible hearts. Florentina and Belvidera Ann think it so enchanting to be carried off by the naughty, satyr-dressed, king Mael: and then the bliss of being delivered by such a knight as Sir Galahad, without spot or blemish. But out of the tender regard we have for our fair readers, we must let them know that Mr Tennyson has been guilty of a parachronism, which flagrantly violates the perspective of history, and is calculated to jumble their views of the manners and customs of one age, with those of another. There were no tournaments, no Sir Gawaines and Sir Launcelots, in the days of king Arthur upon earth, for these brave displays of animal strength and love were not fashionable, at the earliest, before the middle of the eleventh century. And it was not until the latter part of the same century that the Franks delivered Constantinople from the power of the Turks, as they swept onward, in their first crusade, to the Holy City. Chivalry, at this date, did not wear the same complexion which it assumed, like a faded beauty, at a more advanced stage of its existence. Now it had nothing to hide; it had the pure glow of a healthy impulse colouring its fair front. For it was towards Jerusalem, Jerusalem with its endless fond remembrances of human sympathy, compassion, suffering, and an elder brother's love, that the eager glances of those bright eyes and hopeful hearts were directed. But in the weather glass of human institutions, the mercury of time fluctuates between change and decay. Ere the twelfth century was completed, a change had set in upon the fair aspect of chivalry, which was