Spirit of Jefferson. [volume] (Charles Town, Va. [W. Va.]) 1844-1948, 1870-08-16

airy had exalted into the beautiful and chaste
types of the Marys and Marthas of the New
Testament, fell back whole centuries to the
standards of pagan depravity. An abandoned
female was sacrilegiously crowned with divine
honors in the temple of the Most High, while
thousands of her wretched sisters, clad in wild
fantastic garb and bearing deadly arms, or
waving torches of destruction, ran shrieking
through the streets of Paris like the ghosts of
lost souls, to worship the Goddess of Reason,
fraternity and the rights of man and to shout
hozannas of glory before the carnal idol
that was holding her hideous orgies in Notre
Dame.
Well might Burke exclaim, with his pro-
found knowledge of great causes and terrible
effects, that the days of chivalry were gone
forever: 1t was not the mere murder of the
queen, the delightful vision that had dazzled
orators heart that sublime lamentation 1t
was the prevalence of the disastrous principle
which eliminated in the regicide itself, which
her wisdom deplored, and his prophetic elo>
quence assailed. 1t was France robbed Of
her chivalry, because she had lost her Chris
tianity, which clouded the setting of his days,
and brought before his vision the dim Sangrail
of future generations of woe.
But, heaven be praised, chivalry is not dead,
but survives to grapple with the monster that
drove it out of Europe in the eighteenth CEN
tury. We sec and have seen the play of its
grand spirit in our own native South at tour
nament in peace, and at the caunon's mouth
in war. 1 shall not deal in the language Of
panegyric, nor touch in this connection upon
the domain of recent history. The thesis 1
maintain aud which cannot be successfully
challenged or impugned, is that chivalry is the
grace of manhood and the shield and protection
of woman. In some of the States of our great
American family Owe have changed so rapidly
and often of late that my political vocabulary
is at loss for proper name by which to call
them) but in some of them the people have
learned to contemn chivalry as belonging to
bygone age, and there arc those who con-
temptuously relegate it to the former "slave-
drivers" Of the South, and declare it to be the
threadbare hobby of old fogies. I am perverse
enough, Sir knights, to array myself against
this distainful sentiment, and to fall into ranks
with you, on the side of the old fogies. AS
long as find the principles of honor, courage,
self-sacritice and devotion to truth, for truths
sake, fourishing in full vigor in community
where chivalrOus practices and knightly re-
spect to woman are the characteristics of its
men, that long shall remain steadfast to my
faith in chivalry. And until am convinced
that the moral and social standards of those
other communities, in which boat-racing and
prize-fg ghting, footrunning and even trans
continental pedestrunism are the favorite
pastimes, shall have been elevated and i'm
proved by these muscular aud long winded in
stitutions. ] shall continue on my side to
consider that We have the best Of it on the
score of refinement, as we'll as OF sound public
morals.
Among tho people whom our neighbors de-
ride as the "chivalry," aud as old fogies who
arc behind the times, there arc wanting, I
confess, some of the qualities of which their
satirists enjoy the monopoly The knack of
driving hard bargains the faculty of failing
twenty times in trade and of rising after each
successive collapse with larger capital and
fuller stock the blind rage of money-get-
ting, whether in a helter-skclter scramble
among friends and neighbors, or on a more
gigantic scale like the S500,OOO,0 900 gold
swindle of September "a !; the talents to ac-
comPlish these things belong by prominence
to the progressive communities, and those
who practice sharpest and become rich quick>
est, are among the lions of the tribe of the
advance column of Puritan civilization.
Why, Sir Knights, the bevy of fair ladies
here to-day who have done so much to rem
der this tournament and festival the grand
success that they promise to be, and whose
bright eyes and approviog smiles are priced
so highly by you all, that you would ask no
higher incentive to glory, even were you
charging like the six hundred at Balaklava-
these ladies of the South are daily abused and
ridiculed by the strong minded women of our
progressive States as weak and deluded de-
pendants on the tyrant man, as unworthy of
woman's glorious mission, which the strong>
minded are at present so busily engaged in
working out. They bid their sisters of the
South to enter upon the rough encounters of
the world, and to compete with men in every
department of philosophy and exploit, of
science and government, of politics and reli-
gion; to become lecturers, discoverers, poll
ticians and preachers, and, clothed with the
right of suffrage, to step forth into the worlds
amphitheatre the lofty and splendid creatures
of action which nature designed them to be-
come.
There is newspaper published in New
York, which is the recognized organ of the
morals and religion of New England. Among
its hundred thousand readers it passes as ora.
Gle of the law upon every subject within the
range of human or Divine government. This
paper The lndependent-the other day, in
an elaborate leader advocating Woman's Suf-
frage and Divorce, enunciated the following
views:
s'The great, indifferent public have no right to
say, either the basis OF any popular sentiment,or
the still deeper basis of any supposed Religious
tenet, that any two individuals, man and woman
shall live together husband and wife, against the
protest of thcirown individual souls Derived irsn
whatever source, based whatever foundation,
sanctioned by whatever tradition, such legaiized
tyranny is unworthy ofa Christian civilization"
Still more recently that distinguished cham
pion of Woman's Rights, Mrs Elizabeth Ca
dy Stanton, made speech before the New
York Sorosis. The dear old creature dis
coursed as follows:
Another demand that the women of this State
should make of Legislature is entire revision
of our laws marriage and divorce, making man
and woman, in all respects, equal partners. and