The casting-off of the chains of feudality was the labor of six centuries.

Of the reign of Stephen, Sir James Mackintosh has said, "It perhaps contains the most perfect condensation of all the ills of feudality to be found in history."

As a picture of "all the ills of feudality," this narrative is a picture of the entire social statethe monarchy, the Church, the aristocracy, the peopleand appears to us, therefore, to demand a more careful examination than if the historical interest were chiefly centred in the battles and adventures belonging to a disputed succession, and in the personal characters of a courageous princess and her knightly rival.

The reign of Stephen is not only "the most perfect condensation of all the ills of feudality," but affords a striking picture of the ills which befall a people when an ambitious hierarchy, swayed to and fro at the will of a foreign power, regards the supremacy of the Church as the one great object to be attained, at whatever expense of treachery and falsehood, of national degradation and general suffering.

The Church ever recognized, what feudality did not,the claims of man as man; and enabled peasants' sons, if they had abilities and virtues, to rise to proud positions,to be the patrons of the learned, the companions of princes, the ministers of kings.

But in all the rest of the Netherlands, excepting the provinces already mentioned, no form of government existed, but that fierce feudality which reduced the people into serfs, and turned the social state of man into a cheerless waste of bondage.

Thus once more feudality was defeated in a fresh struggle with civic freedom.

The peace which now reigned in Europe allowed the United Provinces to direct their whole efforts toward the reform of those internal abuses resulting from feudality and fanaticism.

In general the nobles of Auvergne, tho' great sticklers for feudality and for their privileges, and tho' they disliked the Revolution, had the good sense not to emigrate.

Surely it is very dull in us, out of our present enlightenment, to continue to distinguish the mediaeval times as the Dark Ages, as if they were glimmering and ghostly, and men groped about in them blindly, living in a sort of dusky romance of feudality.

In that day, paying rent in chickens, and wood, and work, was not fancied to be a remnant of feudality, but it was regarded as a favour conferred on him who had the privilege: and even now, nine countrymen in ten endeavour to pay their debts in everything they can, before they resort to the purse.

The schoolmaster need not have grumbled for the old time: feudality in the days of Warwick and of "The Daily Gazette" was not so widely different as he and Joel thought.