328 THE HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF [book m.

to recur to past proofs, and preceding rank waswaived. His converse with the choicest spirits ofChristendom, and to be accustomed to the besttastes and customs of the whole civilised world,soon put him quite at his ease with his companions.We are wrong in thinking there was no civilisationat that time,becausesonear to what are forsooth calledthe dark ages. There was, but restricted to a few.And who were those few, if not the highest-bredfamilies in Europe, of which Rhodes contained thechoice? Their aristocratic youth might surelylead the fashions, and practise whatever ofcivilisation existed. That they used table plate wehave seen, and very costly foreign furs and embel-lishments for their houses, horses, arms, armour;and two centuries earlier, we find their grandmaster sending a courier from Jerusalem to Bo-hemia, with the keys of one of their fortifiedcastles, to King Wratislau, in order that he andhis might rest in it as long as they pleased, for thatit stood on the road he had to pass from AsiaMinor into Syria. Now what more splendid hos-pitality? Would it not be a grand thing at pre-sent from England to France? But then it wasfrom south of Jordan to north of the Danube. Iftravelling enlighten the mind (as it does), whotravelled more than those knights? Why, they