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 Middle Ages became a walled city, her provinces shrinking before the advancing hosts of Islam. Then quarrels within the walls supplied the test of manhood, and martyrs were found again, and wars in the sixteenth century became wars of religion. That evil was great, but with all the horror of it there was life: the name 'ironside' did not seem a strange description of religious men. But thereafter the fighting spirit in Christendom sank very low, perhaps because it had warred so long, and used the arm of the flesh. The wearied Church sank back into comfort, and was wellnigh fading away a hundred years ago.

Now, a wonderful substitute for war has been found on the physical side. Games as we know them are a quite modern invention, and their present almost universal extension in advanced Christian nations has largely been made possible by the discovery of rubber—therein lies the difference between the prince's game of tennis and the people's game of lawn-tennis. In old times men fought for exercise, and because there was nothing else for a gentleman to do: life in a mediaeval keep was intolerably boring, and the pleasures of the hunt did not suffice to relieve the tedium; so men forayed and fought, princes of innumerable lands quarrelled and plotted, and dragged their retainers into the fray with them. But now we have the mimic warfare of many games, extending, though