So it was in later centuries. One cannot read fairly the history of the
Middle Ages without seeing that the robber knight of Germany or of
France, who figures so much in modern novels, must have been the
exception, and not the rule: that an aristocracy which lived by the
saddle would have as little chance of perpetuating itself, as a
priesthood composed of hypocrites and profligates; that the mediaeval
Nobility has been as much slandered as the mediaeval Church; and the
exceptions taken--as more salient and exciting--for the average: that
side by side with ruffians like Gaston de Foix hundreds of honest
gentlemen were trying to do their duty to the best of their light, and
were raising, and not depressing, the masses below them--one very
important item in that duty being, the doing the whole fighting of the
country at their own expense, instead of leaving it to a standing army of
mercenaries, at the beck and call of a despot; and that, as M. de
Tocqueville says: "In feudal times, the Nobility were regarded pretty
much as the government is regarded in our own; the burdens they imposed
were endured in consequence of the security they afforded. The nobles
had many irksome privileges; they possessed many onerous rights: but they
maintained public order, they administered justice, they caused the law
to be executed, they came to the relief of the weak, they conducted the
business of the community. In proportion as they ceased to do these
things, the burden of their privileges appeared more oppressive, and
their existence became an anomaly in proportion as they ceased to do
these things." And the Ancien Regime may be defined as the period in
which they ceased to do these things--in which they began to play the
idlers, and expected to take their old wages without doing their old
work.

But in any case, government by a ruling caste, whether of the patriarchal
or of the feudal kind, is no ideal or permanent state of society. So far