THE VOYAGE.
167
MR. MAC QUEDY.
But how do you mean that he has misrepresented the twelfth century? By exhibiting some of its knights and ladies in the colors of refinement and virtue, seeing that they were all no better than ruffians, and something else that shall be nameless?
MR. CHAINMAIL.
By no means. By depicting them as much worse than they were, not, as you suppose, much better. No one would infer from his pictures, that theirs was a much better state of society than this which we live in.
MR. MAC QUEDY.
No, nor was it. It was a period of brutality, ignorance, fanaticism, and tyranny; when the land was covered with castles, and every castle contained a gang of banditti, headed by a titled robber, who levied contri-
