Quentin Durward, Tenth of the Waverley Novels

The scene of this romance is laid in the fifteenth century when the feudal system which had been the sinews and nerves of national defence and the spirit of chivalry by which as by a vivifying soul that system was animated began to be innovated upon and abandoned by those grosser characters who centred their sum of happiness in procuring the personal objects on which they had fixed their own exclusive attachment.