The Crusades.

saders , aud ei ^ en those who have defended them , have shown a strange ignorance of the genius of the eleventh century . Assuredly , it is not the men of the eighteenth century , that are to sit in judgment upon that era . These writers of cold hearts and narrow minds , with their want of faith ,

of earnestness , and of charity , are neither competent judges nor upright jurors . The great and wise Neander has a profound and beautiful remark —which may well be applied to such men as Gibbon , Voltaire , Hume , and Berington—in his life of the heroic Abbot ivho preached the crusade

of the king and the emperor . " Lowest in the scale of excellence , and false in the highest degree to the primitive nobility of man , stands he who , in coldness of intellect , looks down upon these times in a spirit of affected compassion , that proceeds not from the overpowering- influence of

genuine reality on the mind ; but from the circumstance of his assuming that only to be the real , which is in truth the very lowest degree of seeming , and thus regarding as a delusion what is here the beautiful , the labouring , and the venturing for an object which exists , and is of value , in the heart alone . " These crusaders of whom we

Avrite , were indeed without part or lot m all that enormous information and material prosperity Avhich floods our land . They were of large heart and simple faith ; they looked with reverence on the invisible and the awful ; but they believed the simple objective truths of Revelation , and we

ivould fain believe acted up to what of light was theirs . To them their course was a matter not of calculation , but of feeling . A developed civilisation had not brought its accompaniments of indifference and scoffing . The world then exhibited the phenomena of national disinterestedness

mingled with a national sensibility , of which the chain of modern circumstances may never allow the exhibition of a counterpart . A fairer estimate would , indeed , have been arrived at if these authors had drawn a distinction

between accidentals and essentials , if they had been at the pains of separating from the good that evil with which good is ever co-mingled , and had investigated what portion of the evils they deplore was really due to the crusaders , what to the adverse force of circumstances , and what to

those who'have been lightly and carelessly reckoned in their ranks , though in reality they possessed nothing of their virtues , and knew nothing of the spirit that animated them , who distained their piety and serenity , and were distinctly repudiated by them in return . History shows us clear lines

of demarcation between the proper genuine crusaders , aud the impure laivless hordes that gathered round them , ivhich most historians have culpably neglected . The idea ot a crusade first occurred in an epistle of Sylvester I ., in the year A . D . 999 . The next mention was by Hildebrancl , in 1074 . Twelve years later , in 1086 , by Victor III . ; and in 1095 ,

Urban II . publicly brought the matter before Christendom at the instigation of Peter the Hermit . By some , Peter the Hermit has been represented as a mere creature of the Pope ' s , acting in the Papal interest to secure his own . This is contradicted by the dry logic of the facts . It is

quite irreconcileable with such a supposition , that Peter should at once have started off through Hungary without waiting for the formation of any regular expedition , reaping no kind of reward , and exposing himself to every kind of peril . By others he has been -represented as a blind enthusiast .

But we find great difficulty in believing this . According to William of Tyre , than whom ive could not have a more trustworthy historian , he was a very prudent man , and full of experience in the things of the world . We certainly do not feel ourselves called on to believe that to Peter was vouchsafed a Divine revelation , but we feel bound

to credit his account of his dream , and to believe that to his own consciousness that dream appeared iu the light of a revelation . It ivas at the village of Clermont that the first memorable council Avas held . Though on French territory , the unhappy King of France was then

shut up in his own palace , at this very place , under sentence of excommunication . Thither came the ambassadors from Constantinople , with their melancholy tale of misery and peril . The assembly were strongly moved with their story , and the ambassadors were dismissed with assurances of

succour . How the Emperor treated them when they arrived at the shores of the Bosphorus , is well known . He exhibited the grossest cruelty and ingratitude towards those who had extended the limits of his empire and sheltered him from the attacks of his foes . Odo , the chronicler , refuses to write the name of Comnenus , because he is sure that that name was not written in the

Book of Life . And here one of the beautiful pictures of which we get an occasional glimpse in the crusades , breaks in upon us . The Council of Clermont enacted , under all those awful consequences attached to the term " excommunication" that after sunset on the Wednesday till

, sunrise on the Friday , the truce of God should be preserved . " When a monarch was attacked by a hostile force—when he was at variance ivith his nobles—when his nobles were at variance with

each other—when the vassals were oppressed by their lords—when the lords were robbed by banditti—vriien the turbulent were trying to create disorder—when the rapacious abducted and imprisoned for the sake of ransoms—when men were hourly in peril of their lives , in peril of their

fortunes , to have three days in the week ivherein to garner in the harvest and the vintage , wherein they could eat the bread of quietness , and sleep ivithout fear and Avithout danger ; this was the mighty boon which the great council of the crusaders presented in times past , which protected the feeble , curbed the rage of the infuriated , the