DUEL, signified originally a trial by battle resorted to by two persons as a means of determining the guilt or inno cence of a person charged with a crime, or of adjudicating, a disputed right ; but in inure modern times it is used to signify a hostile meeting between two persons, arising from an affront given by one to the other, sant for the purpose (as is said) of affording satiafactiun to the person at fronted. The practice of the duel, as a private mode, recognized only by custom, of deciding private differences, seems to be of comparatively recent date, and de scends by no very direct transmission from the ancient appeal to the judicial combat as a final judgment in legal dis putes. That it originated with the feu dal system is abundantly clear, if it were only from the 'act that in Russia, where that system was never known, the cus tom of the duel was unheard of, until introduced by foreign officers, even within the memory of the present generation.
But it is certain that many antiquarian writers have confused together two very different institutions; the appeal to arms, as an alternative fur the trial by ordeal or by compurgators, appointed by tra ditionary usage from the earliest periods of Germanic history; and the voluntary challenge or defiance, resorted to for the purpose of clearing disputes involving the honor of gentlemen. This last custom was first elevated to the dignity of an es tablished institution by Philip le Bel of France, whose edict regulating the public combat between nobles bears the date of 1308: the best, comment on which may lie found in the spirited and accurate rep resentation, by Shakspeare, of the quar rel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke.