It cannot be doubted that these martial exercises--conducted with admirable tact and courtesy--contributed, in a very special degree, to foster a spirit for military enterprise; to inculcate a high and chivalrous sense of honour; to form the young soldier to habits of fortitude and endurance which procured him the respect of his comrades, and future distinction in the field. A knight, thoroughly trained according to the system of feudal times, was a being whom we are accustomed to regard as the beau-ideal of a soldier; whose high bearing, indomitable courage, inflexible faith, unsullied honour, and loyal devotion to his “ladye love,” are themes on which poets and historians of the middle ages have lavished many glowing panegyrics.
For the education and discipline of those military aspirants, the grand palæstra was the tilt-yard. For the feudal tournament--descriptions of which are handed down to us by contemporaneous authors--no substitute is left in these times. Nothing could have been more animated and dazzling, when celebrated with all those details of martial pomp and ceremony--indispensable to such exhibitions--than a pageant, in which all who aspired to distinction were required to evince, in action, the pure and elevating principles of love, loyalty, and religion. For these, and many other reasons, impartial taste, as Gibbon observes, must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic games of classic antiquity. Instead of the naked spectacles which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, the pompous decoration of the lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and highborn beauty, from whose fair hands the conqueror received the prize of his dexterity and courage.[298]--And with this flattering
contrast between the demoralizing festivals of Greece, and the high tone of refinement which characterised those of our Gothic forefathers, we pass on to such other points in the history of Raglan Castle as have been selected for illustration. In the woodcut introduced in the preceding page, the view is taken from the old
<g>Bowling-green</g>--erroneously supposed to have been the Tilt-yard. Directly opposite, in the centre, is the Donjon, or Tower of Gwent, so often described or otherwise referred to in these pages. On the left, where a massive gateway is seen, is the entrance to the <g>Fountain Court</g>, from which, as formerly noticed, a noble staircase conducts to the State apartments occupying the south side of the Castle. These are now in a state of utter dilapidation; but the framework itself affords abundant evidence--so far as architectural design and elaborate ornament can assist us in such a conclusion--of their original splendour.