I contend therefore that the Corporation in question is _beneficial_ to this town and county, inasmuch as it tends to protect it from the inundations of empirics and imposters, while it holds out no hindrance to the fair and honest dealer who has a mind to compete with its respectable tradesmen and settle amongst them. I am not in trade myself; but hope I shall always see my native town preserved from that sort of population which it has never yet been disgraced with.
I have the honour to be, Mr Editor, In technical language, A COMBROTHER OF THE GUILD.
[Sidenote: _Characteristic features of the Middle Ages._]
A strange glamour hangs around the Middle Ages. We know so little of man's actual life in those years,--and what little we do know seems to partake so largely of the mysterious and the picturesque--all, his modes of life and manners of thought are so far removed from our own,--that mediæval history would easily resolve itself into an enchanting pageant bright with its colour and bewildering with its contradictions. It is perhaps in the strange contrasts which are presented to us that its chief wonder is found. In those years we find lust and rapine, and sacrilege and tyranny, side by side with the fairest forms of chivalry[178], the most devoted readiness to champion the cause of religion, the firmest attachment to the forms of law[179]. We see only the prominent lights and the great shadows of the picture, but all that should go to make it human and comprehensible to us is hidden under the dust of centuries.
We have noticed the existence of something of this contradictory spirit in the view we have had of the early Gilds[180]. The elevated ideal which they set before their members must of course have been far above the level which was ever actually reached. We may smile at their vain attempts after the impossible, yet we cannot but allow that their perseverance betokens the widespread acceptance of a nobler conception of human life than is common in our own too merely practical age. To the men of those days there seemed no great incongruity in the lofty ideals of the Gild-compositions and the lower standard which the brethren actually attained. It added but another to the many striking contrasts which environed their daily life.