"I envy not the moralist who could treat disdainfully of Chivalry. It was a marvellous principle, that which could make of plighted faith a law to the most lawless, of protection to weakness a pride to the most ferocious. While the Church taught that personal duty consisted in scourgings and fastings, and social duty in the slaughter of Moslems and burning of Jews, Chivalry roused up a man to reverence himself through his own courage and truth, and to treat the weakest of his fellow-creatures with generosity and courtesy.... Recurring to its true character, the Law of Honor, when duly enlarged and rectified, becomes highly valuable. We perceive, that, amid all its imperfections and aberrations, it has been the truest voice of intuition, amid the lamentations of the believer in 'total depravity,' and the bargaining of the expediency-seeking experimentalist. While the one represented Virtue as a Nun and the other as a Shop-woman, the Law of Honor drew her as a Queen,--faulty, perhaps, but free-born and royal. Much service has this law done to the world; it has made popular modes of thinking and acting far nobler than those inculcated from many a pulpit; and the result is patent, that many a 'publican and sinner,' many an opera-frequenting, betting, gambling man of the world, is a far safer person with whom to transact business than the Pharisee who talks most feelingly of the 'frailties of our fallen nature.'"--pp. 267-270.
The learning shown in the book, though not astonishing, like Sir William Hamilton's, is sufficient and always at the author's service. The text throughout, and especially the notes on Causation, Predestination, Original Sin, and Necessary Truths, will amply support our opinion. But better than either learning or logic is that noble and devout spirit pervading every page, and convincing the reader, that, whether the system advanced be true or false, it is the result of a genuine experience, and the guide of a pure and generous life.
The volume is neatly printed, but lacks an index sadly, and shows some errors resulting from the distance between the author and the proof-reader. Such is the misuse of the words "woof" and "warp" on page 56; evidently a slip of the pen, since the same terms are correctly used elsewhere in the volume.