The Crusades.

. license of the bad , and averted from all the famine and the pestilence . In the highways , in public places , in the pulpits of churches , in the conclaves of princes , in the thronged assemblies of peasants , the orations of the first preaches of the crusades were listened to

with a truly magical result . The state of Jerusalem was vividly described , where the blood of Christians ii r as most lavishly shed , where the places most dear to Christians were most impiously profaned ; how the Rock of Calvary , the Hill of Zionthe Mount of Oliveswere by turns

, , invoked ; how , when language failed and utterance faltered , the Cross was lifted irp on high , an ag-ony of tears was shed , and the breast was beat till the blood gushed forth . The effect ivas electric . The people called upon God to look down on the beloved and most holy city . They volunteered

their supplications , their time , their riches , their very lives . Nor did the movement flag till , on the 10 th of June in the last year of the eleventh century , the crusaders gained the heights of Jerusalem . There Arnold de Rohes pointed out to them the Church of the Resurrection and the Rock of Calvary , and told them that Jerusalem was the place where God ivould pardon all their sins ancl bless all their victories .

When the city ivas gained , the crown was offered to Godfrey of Bouillon . He only , however , accepted the title of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre , 'declaring that he could not wear a crown of gold in the city where his Saviour had worn a crown of thorns .

The latest attempts to revive the crusaders are connected with the history of the Reformation . While funds were being slowly raised , though orthodox Catholics did not go so far as to maintain that the Pope ivas not the shepherd of his flock , they insinuated that the Holy Father sheared his

sheep in a most unmerciful manner . Inclulg-ences , it will be remembered , ivere first confined to pilgrims ; secondly , to those who contributed to the support of the crusaders ; and , later , had a still wider extension . Albert , Archbishop of Mayence , nominated the Dominician in preference to the Augustinian monks to preach the indulgences , ancl all the world knows how

" The solitary monlc that shook the world , " to quote a line of Mr . Robert Montgomery's , which has passed into universal use , preached against the indulgences . But , perhaps , it is not so generally known that , at this early stage of his progress , Luther laid down the proposition , in one

of his sermons , " It is a sin to resist the Turks , seeing that Providence makes use of that faithless nation to visit the sins of His people . " Luther afterwards saw reasons to modify his views , to the extent that the Turks might be resisted by means other than the crusades ; and thought that the

crusades might with just as much profit be turned against the Pope himself . Ancl as the Popes would have been entirely unable to resist the full

tide of the crusades , so when the day for them ivas past , they were altogether unable to renew them . Leo X . preached , and preached in vain , a new crusade , but was no more successful than was Petrarch , who addressed a most eloquent letter to the Doge of Venice . Among the pilgrims to the

Holy Land , before all thought of a further crusade was entirely abandoned , was just one man who might have infused vitality into an effete idea . Had the enthusiasm of Ignatius Loyola been turned in this direction , probably in him , certainly in him alone , the world might have had to recognise a second Peter the Hemit .

The perusal of the original Chronicles of the Crusades are , in the highest degree , interestingand amusing . They have preserved for us—and for this we shall always owe a debt of gratitude to these poor foolish chroniclers—the great works of the great minds of Rome . We ought never to

forget the deep debt of gratitude , although their decline was so deep that the earliest efforts of the infant literature of England were directed against them . There has always been a time when a bad institution has been a good institution . Because certain institutions are unnecessary in the England

of free Parliaments , of charitable institutions , of schools and colleges , of the Press , of societies for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge , of societies for the Protection of Women , it would be absurd to deny their utility in the England of five hundred years ago . The monks proved the great

colonisers of Europe . If the clergy of the Latin . Church have been charged with their enormous wealth , they may at least reply that , in a measure ,

that wealth had been obtained by their own exertions . Grants of larg-e tracts of land were originally made to the monasteries . With reference to these grants , the following facts have to be observed—that such tracts were thinly populated ; or unpopulated ; that they very often consisted of

heath , forest , or bog land ; that they could scarcely be compared in value to the allotments noiv made by colonial governors to settlers in Canada and JtsFeiv Zealand . The early monks dwelt in mud huts and log cabins . They sowed their own com aud reaped their OAVU harvests . They guided the

plough and planted the vine , in Avilds that had only knoivn the thistle and the thorn . The aged and the infirm , the widow and the orphan , were made Avelcome to their colonies , while the barons looked ivith disdain on their manual employments . While to the poor they showed nothing but

kindness , from the rich they received nothing but contempt . We conclude with a feiv extracts from the old chroniclers , on whom all accounts of the crusades must be substantially based .-

—" In the course of their long wanderings , the crusaders had now come near to the mountains that on every side stand round about Jerusalem . There their water failed them , and they sent on to Emmaus to procure some from the cisterns and fountains , and also some food for their cattle .