FRENCH CHIVALRY IN THE SOUTHWEST. COMMERCE was a late birth of Tine. Its infancy dates from the Portuguese discoveries of the fifteenth century. Its growth was a rapid one; and even in the season of its youth, such was its Titanic strength of muscle and grasp, that, as with a volatile glee, it shook the world out of its long slumber in the dormitory of superstition. The mind of the world, in a sort of nightmare, had been engrossed for ages with abstract opinions. Loyalty to the central principle of authority had bound men with slavish manacles. Religion-such religion as they had-was the pivot of all national, social, domestic and individual movement. Under the plea of its requisition, Europe armed itself against the infidel; and the Catholic empires fitted out exterminating expeditions against the inoffensive Albigenses. With its sanction Ferdinand the Catholic summoned his steel-clad warriors to battle against the Moors of Granada; and the pious Isabella inaugurated the ferocious horrors of the Inquisition. The journeys which men undertook were chiefly pilgrimages to holy shrines. All forms of industry, all types of genius, were subordinated to the sway of credulity. The sword was unsheathed and continents were deluged in blood in behalf of the speculations of sophists. Princes ruled in virtue of divine right; and in their eyes the people were as the fine dust of the summer threshing-floor. The religious wars begun by Constantine, were continued through the sixteenth century. During a night of nearly fourteen hundred years great forces were engaged in fearful struggles; but human rights greater than the forces, lay in a deep unbroken slumber. The strength of the knight, and the craft of the priest, the one wielding sharp-edged iron, the other, book, bell and candle, fought with or against each othe The one asserted the supremacy of brute force; the other of intellectual power. Both were alike intent upon the establishment of despotism. Feudalism and Romanism-the throne and the churchequally sought their continuance by the sacrifice of the rights of the many, to the advantage of the few. The crown and the altar were to be perpetuated at the expense of humanity. Their rapacious lust for gold sealed the act of their discomfiture. Navigation unlocked the treasures of new worlds; the priest and the soldier hastened to possess themselves of the spoil; but in due time the citizen came to laugh at |