ing to the Albigeois no quarter, he half justifies the most atrocious deeds of their sanguinary persecutor, Simon de Montfort. All those doctrines and practices of the Romish Church which go to enslave the people, and to lead the mind away from "the truth as it is in Christ Jesus;" all those designs of the popes which had for their end the concentration in the papacy of all temporal as well as spiritual power; all the attempts they made to aggrandize the Romish see at the expense of justice, truth, and religion, are in his eyes merely the outgrowth of a fervid and pious zeal for the interests of the Gospel; the results of righteous efforts to make the influence of Christianity bear on all the departments and institutions of society. But notwithstanding this drawback, Michaud had many qualifications which peculiarly fitted him for the task he had undertaken. His heart was in the subject, and the unremitted toil of twenty years was to him a labor of love. He examined carefully all the original sources; the Christian annalists of the Crusades; the ballads of olden times; the epics of the Persian poets; the Arabic chronicles; in a word, every thing that could illustrate and perfect his narrative. He gathered up every crumb of information, that nothing might be lost. His industry was eminently successful; it unearthed and brought to light many important documents that were before unknown to the world; and it is, perhaps, to this very industry that one of the chief faults of his work may be tracedepisodical diffuseness. The abundance of his materials caused him to overload his narrative with much that had little or no bearing on the course of events he was recording.

Michaud was a poet, and he looked upon his subject with a poet's eye. He was no philosopher; at least, not a philosopher of the modern utilitarian school. Had he belonged to this school, he would never have been the historian of the Crusades; for no events in history are more strongly marked by an utter disregard of the maxims of worldly policy than they. An enterprise which, in its inception, was of an unworldly character; which was conducted by men whose governing motives were a burning fanaticism and a passion for military glory, which amounted almost to monomania; which had for its end the recovery of relics and hallowed places, before

which the devotees of a superstitious Church might kindle the fires of a devotion that could be warmed into life only by objects of sense; which in its progress was marked by deeds of heroic valor, and by self-sacrifices out of all proportion with the objects to be attained; such an enterprise needed a poetic historian, and it found one in Michaud. His feelings are all enlisted on the side of the Crusaders; his heart sympathizes with their devotion. Their contempt of danger, their chivalrous daring, and their exploits on the battle-field kindle his imagination, and his pen gives a graphic sketch of the fields on which they toiled, and bled, and died. In the whole course of his narrative you never find him pausing, and asking the question, Cui bono? His philosophy is as unworldly as that of his heroes. In his estimation, glory far outweighs interest; the picturesque possesses greater charms than the useful. While pursuing his favorite theme, he seems to forget that the world has any other annals save those of the Crusades. His view of the march of events is confined to a single point, and his attention is so concentrated on it that he often overlooks or misrepresents the facts of cotemporary history. It must, however, be confessed that the great charm of his work is owing to this one idea-this engrossing interest in his subject. He has transported himself to the times in which the action of his history is laid, and completely identified himself with the men and opinions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The very language he uses is the language of the Crusaders. He lets them tell their exploits in their own words. He makes no attempt to recast the simple narratives of the old chroniclers, or to reproduce in modern forms the account they give of the events and ideas of the age in which they lived. His history, therefore, instead of being the cool and passionless production of an author, who, under the influence of modern ideas and modern philosophy, records events which happened centuries ago, has all the fervor and fidelity and interest which belong to a narrative written by an eye-witness. Such is Michaud as the historian of the Crusades. Though there is much in his history of which we do not approve, and much in his philosophy which is contradicted by fact, yet his work is by far the best that has been written

on the subject. He supplies a want that has been long felt by the student of history; and he who sits down to the perusal of it will soon find that, however diligent he hitherto may have been in studying the subject, the half has not been told

him.

The narrow limits prescribed us, will not admit of our giving a sketch of the Crusades which may claim the quality of completeness. But we shall avail ourselves of all the liberty that a forced parsimony leaves us, and present to our readers a few topics which may be interesting to them.

The Crusades were the most prominent event of the middle ages. When we consider these facts-that the enterprise was one which occupied the attention of Christendom for two hundred years that the blood and treasures of a continent were expended on it-that millions, leaving home and country, went into distant lands, not knowing what would befal them there, or rather foreboding that their doom would be suffering and death-that the mightiest kings of the west descended from their thrones, princes and nobles sold all that they possessed, knights and warriors gathered their retainers around them, and followed the standard of the cross to the burning sands of Syria, or the pestilential valley of the Nile-that, though one army after another was destroyed and the plains of Syria became, like the valley which the prophet saw in a vision, "full of bones," "very many and very dry," yet it was only necessary to raise the war-cry of the Crusades to gather a fresh host of warriors to supply the place of the slain-we may well pause and ask, what was the cause that produced these astonishing results?

We shall endeavor to answer this question, and point out the momentum which, in the words of Alexis' daughter, "tore the west from its foundations, in order to precipitate it upon Asia."

The two dominant passions of the middle ages were, the love of arms and a fervid religious enthusiasm-passions which at first sight do not seem to belong to the same family, or entitled only to a distant relationship, but which by some inexplicable means became blended together and gave to each an intenser energy. It was the fusion of these two principles that

originated the Holy War. But as the explanation of the Crusades mainly turns on this point, we shall enter more at large upon it. In doing so we shall first notice a custom which gave a tone and direction to the religious feeling of the age-that of making pilgrimages to the Holy Land. Christians from the times of the apostles loved to go to Jerusalem and visit the scenes of our Lord's sufferings and death. Nazareth, Bethlehem, Mount Olivet, Gethsemane, and Calvary, were to them holy ground. Judea, to the faithful, was still the land of promise. They loved to stand on the very spot made memorable by some striking event in the history of Christ, and meditate on what he there did or suffered for them. After the conversion of Constantine, the number of pilgrims increased to a vast multitude. The emperor himself was the patron of pilgrimages, and he celebrated the third lustrum of his reign by the consecration of "The Church of the Resurrection," at Jerusalem. But their greatest patron was Helena, the mother of the emperor. This princess in her old age visited Jerusalem for the purpose of identifying the Holy Places; and, if we are to believe the accounts that have come down to us, her researches were crowned with such success, that she was able to fix on the precise spot which witnessed each event in the history of Christ. It must, however, be admitted, that modern travellers have rendered the claims of many of the places more than problematical; but, like the pilgrims of yore, the members of the Greek and Roman Churches of the present day have a strong and unshaken faith in their identity, and it is hardly worth our while to dispute the matter with them. They answer every purpose as far as the association of the visible with the spiritual tends to strengthen our faith and warm our devotion. Viewing them as reminiscences of the verities of our belief, they are sacred in our eyes, and we do not envy the man who can treat them with irreverence, or who can look unmoved on the tomb where it is said "the body of Christ was laid."

We have said that from this time the number of the pilgrims was largely increased. A pilgrimage to the Holy Land was now regarded as the panacea for every crime-the safety-valve through which every emotion could find vent. Those who had

recovered from some sickness that seemed unto death, or who had escaped from some imminent danger, or who had gained some signal triumph over their foes, hastened to express their gratitude for the mercies they had received by a visit to the Holy Land. Men, who had committed atrocious crimes, and flagrant deeds of violence, and whose fears had been aroused into intense activity by the consciousness of guilt, set out on their pious journey under the firm belief, that there was no wickedness so great as to be beyond the saving efficacy of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and acts of devotion at the tomb of Christ.

This passion for pilgrimages was the great moral feature of the age; and every facility was furnished for the indulgence of it. Minute instructions were given to guide the pilgrim on his journey.* Hospitals were erected at different stages of his route, to refresh the weary and to minister to the wants of the sick. As time moved on, pilgrimages received a scientific arrangement. The pilgrim was duly prepared for his journey. There was prescribed to him whatever he must do, and how he must feel at the several places he visited. Nothing was left to the impulses of the moment, or the spontaneous promptings of his own mind. There was a beaten track, and all he had to do was to pursue it, as others had done before him.

This unreasoning belief in the efficacy of a pilgrimage, early attracted the attention of the Romish Church; and as that Church has ever been "wiser in her generation than the children of light," she was not slow to avail herself of the advantages to which this dominant idea might be turned. She commuted penances into pilgrimages, and by so doing, not only increased her wealth, but gave a prescription which agreed well with the restless character of many of the penitents she had to deal with; and, not satisfied with the offerings that came into her treasury from the Holy Places in Palestine, she

In an appendix to the volumes-which, by the way, contains many rare and curious documents-our author has published in extenso an itinerary which was drawn up as early as the fourth century, in which are noted down the route which the pilgrim is to pursue, the rivers he is to cross, the towns and cities which lie along his way, and the events for which every place through which he passes is rendered memorable. It bears a strong family likeness to the "guide-books" of the present day.