Widnes Examiner. — 1909-01-16 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

CROSS-COUNTRY RUNNING.  RYTANDS v. WARRINGTON Wr3LETAN3. The above race took place from the headquarters of the first-named club on Saturday. Great interest was centred in tho fixture as this was regarded as the tip bit of the season and both clubs were well represented. Trial waslail by seven. of the wirework's team, over about CI miles of heavy country. A muster of 50 runners compisinz 27 Rylands and 23 Wesleyans, faced the starter and a great race for supremacy ensued. From the start .T. Massey, of the visitors, went to the front with a groat sprint, but was not allowed to keep this position long for Thorniley of the Wesleyans Hackett, Wilding, Skelland and Harding of the Wirepullers came to the front and made most of the running to within about three miles from home, when C. A. Harding of the home team, shot to the front and gradually increasing his lead ran out on easy winner. He was warmly greeted by a large conconre of spectators who • had assembled to witness the finish of the race. The order of the finish was as follows :—Rylands, C. A. Harding 1 E. Sklland 3. T. Wilding 4, A. Whitmore 7 T. Warburton 11, total 23 points ; Wesleyans, W. Thorniley 2, S. l‘lillett 5, 11. Gill (1, J. Battersby 8, J. Massey 9, total, 30 points. The Wireworks team thus gained- a victory by 4 points. To-day the Wirepullers are at home fora Cross Country Handicap.  " Aspects of Chivalry In English Literature." . The above was the title of a th iiightful and very interesting paper given before the rueinb?:rs cf the Literary and Philosophical Society on Monday evening by Miss Waring, of Latchford. Mr. A. J. Jolley (president) occupied the chair. The essayist started at the beginning of English literature and traced the development of chivalry to women down to to-day. In Anglo-Saxon times, she said, there was practically nothing in the way of chivalry. There was no English literature to speak of until rifer the Conquest, because the English were so oppressed ; but 'in the meantime the literature of chivalry was going up in France under the Trouveres and Troubadours. The ideals of chivalry, so voluminously, vet so vaguely defined in much middle English literature, were siunmed up clearly and tersely in a passage of Uorte d'Arthur." This was what Arthur's knights swore :—" Never to do outrage, nor murder, and always to flee treason. Also by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damsels, and gentlewomen succour upon pain of death." The chivalrous ideals of the Middle Ages were revived in Henry ATM's reign. They reached their height again in the reign of Elizabeth. It was the greatest age of chivalry both in though and action. Chivalrous ideals died away during the reign of the Stuarts. In the reign of Queen Anne they again had in literature types of courtly gentlemen such as Sir Roger de Coverley, and soon after Richardson gave to the world the recognized pattern. of gallantry and courtesy, Sir Charles Grandison. In Fielding and &millet there was no exalted picture of womanhood. In Goldsmith woman was treated as an amiable absurdity. Towards the end of the century, howet-er, there were unmistakable signs of the dawning of a happier era for women. On the whole there was no theme so insistently brought forward in the 19th century as the chivalry that ought to be and was not shown to womanhood. The fundamental difference between the chivalry of the Middle Ages and that of the present day was that the past demanded honour for woman of noble birth, and the present demanded it for all.—A vote of thanks was accorded to Miss Waring at the close.