Noble Traits of Kingly Men  

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Noble Traits of Kingly Men (1860) is a book by anonymous.

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The First Picture.

In his notes to Thucydides and elsewhere, the late Dr Arnold has very industriously developed the parallel between the life of individual man and that of society. Society is born, grows up to manhood, grows old, just as man does. History is simply the biography of society. Take any nation. It has its birth, its boyhood, its time for sowing wild oats, its daring manhood, its wise middle life, its senility, and death. tions : it is the same. Take any family of naThe body of life, if one may use such a phrase, is larger, but it goes through all the periods. In these pictures, we purpose to give some illustrations of the progress of European life (understanding by Europe only the Europe of the west, of the Romanic and Germanic races ; in other words, Europe, minus Russia, Hungary, and Turkey.) Do not expect what would claim to be a history of Europe. Even the faintest outline of such a history we do not engage to indicate. A growth, a rising out of chaos, an advancing towards order, will be indicated, we trust, throughout ; but it will have to be by single chapters-- 6 THE FIRST PICTURE. single leaves, even-taken here and there, out of the great book of European history. Let us at the outset endeavour to fix in our minds the characteristic features of the social life of Western Europe as we find it in and round about us. One is very apt to conclude that it is simply life in Europe, that it is connection with the soil, which gives its name to European life. It is not so. At this moment, European life is stirring at the heart of India, at the gates of China, at the Cape of Good Hope. North America is full of it. Australia and the islands of the Pacific are becoming accustomed to its hum. Not every nation which has taken root in Europe was a development of European life. This is a thing by itself a social development, differing from all previous, from all existing developments. There was a people, for example, whose history, as we shall see, has had a vast influence upon the character of European society-who themselves lived in Europe a full thousand years, and spread their influence over the richest half of it ; we refer to the Romans. If you recall the map of Europe to your mind, you will remember a natural line, formed by the Rhine and the Danube, which cuts Europe almost diagonally across. Of all the countries lying below this line, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, and, besides these, Britain, the Romans became masters. And yet the Romans were not a people of European development. It is supposable that this people, instead of extending their conquests into the east, as they did, had THE LIFE OF SOCIETY. 7 completed the conquest of geographical Europe. But even in that case, so little connection has the possession of the soil with the character of a people's life, their history would have continued to be Roman, and Europe would have answered to no name but " Rome." European society could not have arisen under their supremacy. They had no idea of such a development as we partake. They could not have understood it. Rome filled their thoughts ; their spread was the spread of Rome ; their progress was a monotonous repetition of steps, invariably military, and differing in this very quality from the free onward tread of European life. " In this very quality," in monotony of development, we mean-(Guizot has a masterly illustration of this fact, in his " Lectures on European Civilisation")-European life alone is not monotonous-not the result of development from a single principle. If you were to stand for a moment on the streets of Calcutta, and observe the natives as they passed, you would be pained by the signs of sameness, by the tokens of social monotony, which would meet your eye. The son repeats the father, in all castes, down to the latest posterity. An iron mould, like the shoe of the Chinese damsel, presses the young child from the first, and beyond its measure he cannot grow. Go back to ages, when they were not a conquered people, you encounter the same phenomenon. Over all Asia, under all denominations, in all ages, it is the same- monotony of social development. 8 THE FIRST PICTURE. Look even at the Bible Jews ; what an uniformity there is ! One principle lives at the centre of their politics, of their lives-one only. A single principle, doubtless a far-reaching one, but one only-the principle of the Theocracy. A perfect Jew, that is, a Jew who has reached the height of his development, is, cannot but be, simply a Theocrat. Come to historical Greece. Here, in a land, on all shores indented by the sea, and overshadowed by precipitous hills, man received a development into which variety was necessarily forced. But there was a monotony in the very variety. If we examine their remains, one ever-recurring principle meets us at every step. In their sculptures, their eloquence, their poetry, in their very language, it is beauty-everywhere beauty-the perception of beauty, the worship of beauty, the embodiment of beauty. A perfect Greek is simply an Artist. We pass to Rome-the Rome of the Romans. We are in a sphere entirely different. The eternal polishing of words and marbles which we found in Greece has given place to the stir of arms and political assemblies. We are made to feel that we are in the presence of Rome. In India you would have felt yourself in the presence of a temple ; in Greece, of beautiful objects ; but here, it is Rome -Rome, active, ambitious, restless, with a hand in everybody's concerns, with a lust for the dominion of the whole world. Surely here there is variety ? There is the entirest absence of it. It is Rome at the centre ; it is Rome out to the extremities ; it THE JEW, THE GREEK, AND THE ROMAN. 9 is a Roman who sits in the senate ; it is a Roman who goes forth to fight ; it is a Roman who owns wife and child. The Roman principle, the principle of Rome's supremacy, comes out over the entire life, public and private. A perfect man, under this dominion, is simply a perfect Roman. Man, properly so called, has not an existence here. In a far deeper sense than we can well imagine, the ability to say " I am a Roman, ” was felt to be a higher, prouder one, than the ability to say "I am a man. You remember the amazement of the centurion in Jerusalem to find a Roman citizen in the Paul whom the Jewish crowd were chasing. "Thou a Roman ! With a great sum bought I this honour. " It was the expression of an universal homage. Romans themselves believed in the worth of Rome, and they taught such provincials as this centurion was, to count for the highest honour upon earth-the name of Roman. "" Turn now to a modern European. Take him in any land, at any work : felling woods in America, fighting Sikhs in the Punjaub, publishing newspapers in Paris, spinning cotton in Glasgow. You find a man who has escaped out of such limitations —who is no longer subject to monotony --who acknowledges no mould, no hindrance, no artificial standard ; whose life is determined beforehand into no fixed shape, but is free to grow and bear fruit up to the topmost reach of humanity. In other words, you find A MAN. Jews, Greeks, Romans-Theocrats, Artists, Soldiers-have passed away, and Men, beings sensible that they are B 10 THE FIRST PICTURE. above all other things human, have come upon the scene. This lies at the heart of European life, of European history. Monotony-development under the influence of one principle-has disappeared, and in its stead we have life gathering to itself all influences, and bringing out on every side what is highest and best in humanity. The result has been an endless variety of development, and a variety which manifests itself in nations, in individuals, in languages, in thoughts. It was a European who depicted the " Inferno "- a spiral descent sheer down from heaven through the nethermost abyss. Another European built Pandemonium—a region dim, immeasurable, vague, like the mists on northern hills. Take any European nation, our own, for example, and see how this variety manifests its presence. Our language is a perfect jungle-Gaelic, Saxon, French, Latin, Greek, technicalities, provincialisms, Yankeeisms-all mingled, compounded, twisted, intertwisted, with meaning upon meaning, each giving forth new branches, and each branch taking root for itself, and sending up new shoots. Look at our literature ; here a Shakspeare, there a Hume ; the one all life, the other all logic. Open the plays of Shakspeare-Lady Macbeth, Dame Quickly, Imogen ! Hamlet, Sir John Falstaff, Prospero ! Goto the works of Hume-scepticism, philosophy, history, wit ! In every mind, over all our literature, this element of variety. Turn to our politics. What a hubbub salutes your ear ! All principles, all passions, craving to be heard. Theocracy, THE MODERN EUROPEAN. 11 monarchy, oligarchy, democracy-Toryism, Whigism, Chartism-tearing, pulling at one another, apparently wishing to destroy each other, and yet in the end pulling all the same way. So with our ways of life. So with everything English. And yet the English character is not hindered by these things, but rather forwarded and developed. All these things are laid hold of, appropriated, turned to good account-the peculiar genius of our race rising above all, by means of all, submitting to none, saying to each, "Thou art here to forward me. " The same phenomenon would strike you if you had looked at any other nation, especially the nations of Germanic origin. You will see it if you compare nation with nation. No one is a repetition of the other. Each has a development, a character, a worth of its own. There is the practical sagacity of the English, the percipient sagacity of the French, the metaphysical sagacity of the Germans : Cromwell, Voltaire, Kant. It is this healthy variety, this commingling of all elements, which gives to European life its distinctive character. Every party has an opposition-every principle a representative. In passing from the societies of ancient history to those of modern Europe, we seem to be stepping from a scene where all is rigid formula to one where there is perpetual turmoil and yet perpetual progression. For the first time, that mighty combination of all powers in one, that manifoldness of purpose and outward shape, which strike us in material life, finds its complete counter-part and expression in 12 THE FIRST PICTURE. human history. Society is free, multiform, and yet harmonious. In travelling over the few fields of European history we propose to traverse, if we listen with wise heart, the soft breathing of spring influences, the rich fulness of harvest, the bleak severity of winter, the singing of little birds, the still awfulness of stars, and the melancholy laughter of the sea, will occur to our minds continually, as the befitting types and symbols of that perpetual variety which lives and works in the bosom. of European life. It will be convenient if we fix in our minds the seventh century as the birth-date of European life. Before that century there was no Europe. The elements which were to compose it existed, lived and wrought on its soil, but they lived separate, repelling each other. From that period they began to unite. The nations which now constitute Western Europe had either begun at that period to move towards their homes, or had actually taken their position. The last movement of the kind occurred in the middle of the eleventh century, when the Norman William took possession of England. The first may be dated at the close of the fourth century, when the barbarians crossed the Danube to smite at the Roman empire. Between these two periods the nations of Western Europe " were born," took root on the soil, began to develop and have a history. The interval is one of wild grandeur. A great power-the Roman empire-is passing from the earth. Town life is a succession of assaults and GIBBON'S PICTURE OF ROMAN DECAY. 13 pillage country life a wandering hither and thither of armed bands-chaos, confusion, darkness everywhere, and yet " Even now we hear, with inward strife, A motion toiling in the gloom, The spirit of the years to come, Yearning to mix himself with life." One other word demands to be said by way of prologue—a word concerning the clearing of the ground for this new development of social life. We are in the habit of hearing that Rome was destroyed by the barbarians. Our imagination has been taught to picture out hordes of savages, flowing, wave after wave, upon Roman civilisation, until it was submerged. An impression tantamount to this is left upon our minds in rising from so true a picture of the actual fact as we have in Gibbon's immortal work. Not that Gibbon ministers to it. Never for a single moment does that penetrative eye of his lose sight of the internal sources of decay. But the dramatic unity of the book-the splendour and fulness of the grouping and especially the mental confusion arising from confounding the time taken to peruse the history with the actual time in which the events were accomplished-combine to leave upon our minds the idea of mighty bands of rude men overcoming the empire by brute force. It is a false idea. Rome was smitten by the barbarians ; but this is not all the truth. It is the mere outside of the truth. It wants the impression of the inner fact, that it deserved to be smitten-that it had 14 THE FIRST PICTURE. not in itself any more continuance. Destruction does not so come upon nations. In God's world no society is the sport of circumstances. If they decay, there is a reason in themselves to explain it. Decay, dissolution, is a central fact. It is not the result of an external stroke ; it is the vital energy growing weak ; it is the sap, the soul, the inner life, departing. And then only, when this inner spiritual force is loosening its grasp, does the hour of dissolution prepare to strike. There was a soul of strength in the Roman state, or it would not have so grown as it did. From the most unpromising beginnings-from being a refuge for outlaws and robbers-Rome rose to power and wide empire ; surrounding cities were swallowed up by it ; surrounding peoples subdued ; "the weight of its shadow," as a Gaulish poet once said, fell upon the fairest parts of Europe, and they became its provinces. Distant countries paid tribute to it ; the Mediterranean sea was changed into a Roman lake. And by the force of this one fact in their history, we believe that Roman citizens had an aim, a purpose, which they reverenced, for which they sunk their individual wills, which they believed in-the purpose of having Rome supreme. We say, they believed in this purpose. The supremacy of the city was not a hope, it was a faith to them. They did verily believe that it was supreme. And the leading men well knew that the secret of their prosperity lay here. Note how careful they were to betray no fear of the state's ultimate triumph in ROMAN DEVOTION. 15 times of reverse. At Cannae they sustained a terrible defeat. Fifty thousand Romans were left dead upon the plain. The consul fled disgracefully to Venusia. The victorious Carthagenian was within eighty leagues of the city. Defeat had followed defeat. Not a murmur was heard in Rome. The women were forbid to bewail their husbands. The senate refused to redeem the prisoners. The wrecks of the defeated army were ordered to Sicily, to fight there. What is the death of fifty thousand ? what are prisoners ? what is an army to Rome ? The senate closed this mighty exhibition of confidence by carrying to the fugitive consul their thanks "for not having despaired of the Republic." The consul himself, however, and this will show you the same faith in an individual mind, would never after accept the command of an army. "Give your employment," he always said, when solicited, " to generals more fortunate than Varro." We, with our clearer notions, incline to characterise this devotion of the old Romans to Rome as idolatry, and wonder how greatness could ever spring from thence. But there was a time when it was not felt to be idolatry-when Romans believed that Rome deserved to be worshipped-that it was, as a town, divine. At the time to which we refer, Jupiter was supposed to have his dwelling on the Capitol ; by virtue of his presence, the city was divine. A divineness rested on the hills on whose sides the houses clustered. A divineness made sacred the gate-ways by which the troops 16 THE FIRST PICTURE. 1 went out to battle. A very harsh divineness !- without mercy, without nobleness, narrow, municipal ! But, so far as it went, was there not truth in it ? A very imperfect adumbration, we admit, but still an adumbration of, a pagan groping after. this truth, that " the Lord builds the city," that all city life has its roots in the divine. This was the sap of Roman life. A time came when it had ceased to be believed that Rome was divine, when intelligent Romans smiled at the notion of Jupiter living on the Capitol. But even then it was felt that the secret of Roman strength lay in this faith-that Rome ceased to be strong from the hour it was abandoned. Accordingly, the republic placed an emperor at its head, and decreed divine honours to him. At bottom, a government attempt to restore the old faith ! The emperor was a new Jupiter. The attributes of the dead god were transfered to the living sovereign. "Behold your god," the senators said to the people ; "our city is still divine ; a god resides in it." But no man believed the lie. The people ceased to worship Rome. Their life sundered from the source of its former strength. Each man sunk back into individual selfishness, into savagism. Rome was left to provincials, to freed slaves. Romans flocked to the provinces in search of plunder. Divineness perished from their ways of life. No man wrought with another for good. Lust and infidelity defiled the home. The city was full of lies. The poor were oppressed ; the rich rioted in swinish pleasures. The sap was ROME-SAPLESS AND PERISHING. 17 gone ; the soul was fled. "The weapons which subdued the world dropped from their feeble hands." The barbarian stept out from his woods, went up to the seat of this huge empire, tried the arm which had rolled out the half of Europe to construct a state map, and found that its strength was already gone. This share the barbarians had in the destruction of Rome ; no more. It is good to know this. To the outward eye it sometimes seems that the nations retrograde. Civilised states are often overborne by states less civilised than themselves. The Jewish kingdom is conquered by the Greeks-the Greeks are subdued by the Romans-the Romans by the barbarians. Athought presses into the mind. We, too, are the inheritors of a civilisation. Are we to understand that all civilisation tendeth to such destruction ? and that the history of the nations shall be the history of retrogressions ? What law is revealed to us in this connexion of physical force with decaying civilisations ? Why is there a barbarian present at the death-bed of nations ? In the fine fragment, " Hyperion, " which Keats bequeathed to us, this very question is proposed for solution. The poem turns on the overthrow of the earlier gods of Greece. Gods younger than they have displaced them. They are overwhelmed by their misfortune. The ocean god has seen his successor, has seen also that it was right the younger should reign, and comes into the company of his fallen compeers, to open up to them for C 18 THE FIRST PICTURE. their comfort the law of change. He reminds them of changes in which they rejoiced-of dark chaos giving place to them—and now he adds :--- "We fall by nature's law On our heels a fresh perfection treads : Apower more strong in beauty, born of us, And fated to excel us, as we pass In glory that old darkness Doth the dull soil Quarrel with the proud forests it hath fed, And feedeth still, more comely than itself ? Can it deny the chiefdom of green groves ? Or, shall the tree be envious of the dove Because it cooeth, and hath snowy wings To wander wherewithal and find its joys ? We are such forest trees. And our fair boughs Have bred, not pale and solitary doves, But eagles, golden feathered, who do tower Above us in their beauty, and must reign In right thereof ; for ' tis the eternal law, That first in beauty should be first in might. ” Without doubt, the poet has here opened the secret of all social change. However much appearances may make against the law, it is not brute-force but beauty which carries the day. Even of the brute force which does succeed, it always is discovered in the end that it was beauty at the core. It was not wholly savagism and civilisation which came into conflict at the birth of Europe. That civilisation concealed a nature corrupt, abominable, worthy of death : that savagism, as we shall see, was but the rude exterior of a humanity, fresh, buoyant, simple as a little child, and worthy to receive the talent taken from Rome. Let us not doubt that behind all barbarian attacks, all apparently retrogressive movements, there is substantial progress. Nations and indi- THE BARBARIAN A PIONEER. 19 viduals attain a certain culture, and it spreads from them into the general life of humanity. Nothing which is noble is allowed to die. The Roman perished ; his civilisation remained. The Greek philosophy, too (the highest reach of the human intellect working in its own sphere, ) fell into the keeping of a generation of Greeks unworthy of it. At that juncture it passed into the Roman mind. A time arrived when there were no Ciceros to preserve it there, when Romans were no longer worthy of this mighty charge. The Roman empire in that very hour divided, and the philosophy of Greece found a refuge in the empire of the East. Here, for a thousand years, it was preserved, until Western Europe was educated for its reception, and at that term the Turks destroyed the eastern empire. The teachers of the Greek philosophy flocked back to Europe, and that epoch in European history began which is known as "the revival of letters"-the grey dawn of the Reformation. There is a meaning, a law, in facts like these. It is not to some new invasion the nations are moving on. The law is progress-progress of what is best. Contradictions, exceptions, are only so in appearance. In clearer light these will disappear. Towards a high destiny move all the nations-towards union, broad, universal-based no longer upon treaties indicating selfishness, but upon love. "Until this has been attained," writes the eloquent Fichte, "until the existing culture of every age has been diffused over the whole habitable carth, 20 THE FIRST PICTURE. and every people be capable of the most unlimited communication with the rest-must one nation after another be arrested in its course, and sacrifice to the great whole of which it is a member, its stationary, retrogressive age. When that first point shall have been attained-when thought and discovery shall fly from one end of the earth to the other, and become the property of all-then, without further interruption, halt, or regress, our race shall move onward, with united strength and equal step, to a perfection of culture for which thought and language fail. " The Second Picture. THE ORIGINAL ELEMENTS OF EUROPEAN LIFE. AN account of all the elements in European life, down the stretch of fourteen centuries, would be a rather formidable undertaking. There are elements of locality, of times, of religion, of politics, which branch out in endless detail, e. g. , our insular situation, and religious wars, in the formation of our own national character. Into elements such as these, affecting particular developments, even although these ultimately affect the whole, it is not intended to enter. A few of them will demand notice as we proceed. For the present, our study is limited to those main elements which, between the fifth and seventh centuries, conjoined to give birth to European life. We have, to begin with, what the Roman empire bequeathed to us ; next, what we have inherited from the Barbarians ; last of all, Christianity. We shall go over these, in the order named, and describe as simply as we can what the general life received from each, The Roman Element. We begin with the Roman element. It lies at the basis of European life, although it is not itself the basis. In the languages, literature, and laws 22 THE SECOND PICTURE. of Europe, with very little digging, we ever strike upon Rome. The languages of Spain, Italy, and France, which began to be formed while strong influences of the empire were at work, are almost simply modernised Latin. And even after these influences had decayed, there remained vitality enough in the Latin to give a very large proportion of words to the German nations, among which our own is included. Along with words came those things which words represent-Roman thought, Roman ways of life ; but that one thing which came most palpably from that quarter, which Rome pre- eminently contributed to European life, was municipal institutions-town life. It would be no exaggeration to say that Rome existed to prepare town life for Europe, and then, its task being ended, it passed from the earth. Indeed, its entire history has been characterised as nothing more than an account of the taking and the building of towns. The vast empire was simply an aggregate of towns. Its roads, stretching, in our own country, from Clyde to the Land's End-on the Continent, from the coasts of France and Spain to the walls of Jerusalem, merely connected towns. They were divided by mile-stones, they were travelled daily by posts ; but they existed for no other purpose than to convey soldiers and state messages from town to town. No roads led, like our parish roads, through country districts for the sake of these districts. Rome had no country life, or rather, for the statement is only different in form, its country work was managed by ANCIENT TOWN LIFE. 23 slaves . But by this very preference, it was enabled to perfect town life. Everything municipal -the government, adornment, and amusement of towns-came to a state of great finish under its domination. Baths for the citizens, aqueducts for the city, theatres, courts of law, lawyers, municipal law-everything, in short, that related to the rights and duties of citizens-the whole framework and management of municipal society, were prepared and delivered over, we might say, "in working order" to European life. Assuredly a great bequest ! Great by all the excess of difference which there is between the raw savage stalking through the woods, with his club in his hand, in search of food, and the rich burgher going unarmed along crowded streets to his house or his office-the representative of rights and duties, knit by interests, by inclinations, by habits, to the purveying, building, self-governing organisation of society, familiar to us by the name of "town." The Barbarian Element, "Town life," then, we name as the bequest of Rome. What did the Barbarian contribute ? HIMSELF, we answer ; above all other things this. He contributed laws, language, even institutions, as well as the Roman ; but this over and above, this which the Roman could not contribute, manhood, humanity, fresh, new blood, for the Europe that was about to be. It is sometimes attempted, by examining the primitive customs of the Barbarians, to state the pre- 24 THE SECOND PICTURE. cise institutions we owe to them. The war chief, for example, sharing the lands he has conquered among his followers, and by these lands binding them ever after to his service, is the germ of the more modern " baron" and the feudal system . Another deduction which is commonly made isas from the Romans we inherit the feelings proper to a citizen, the feelings, namely, of submission to enacted laws, of respect for the rights of our fellow-citizens, so, from the Barbarian, accustomed to roam through the forest, and swim the river, and fight for his future home, we derive the peculiar energies to which we give the names of "selfhelp” and “ independence." And, more palpable then either of these, is our debt of language. The northern languages of Western Europe, the Norwegian, Danish, German, and English, are principally derived from this source. But when we wish to know precisely what we have not have had if the Barbarian Element had not been drawn up into European life, the answer is, not laws, feelings, or language, but that which we have already given. Before European history could begin, a European man was wanted-a man fresh from the presence of nature-and the Barbarian of the North was that man. Roman life was corrupt-could be the beginning of nothing good. A race was needed which would redeem from its unworthy possessors whatever was worth preserving in Roman civilisation, and absorb it into the general life of humanity ; the Barbarians were that race. And for that mighty elewhich we would THE SOIL AND THE RACE. 25 ment which we have placed in our list for that mustard-seed, which to the eye of man was then of all seeds the smallest a soil was needed ; fresh, deep, expansive ; wide enough for its spreading roots, strong enough to bear the burden of branches which were to cover the whole earth ; and that soil came to us in the Barbarians. Who, then, were the Barbarians ? In books of history one is apt to be perplexed by the various names they receive. They appear now as Gauls, now as Celts, as Cimbri, Tuetones, Saxons, Goths, Burgundians, Franks, Normans. One name comprehends all. These different names distinguish merely different tribes or incursions of the great Germanic race. In relation to our subject, four members of this family of nations may be specially named, and this in the order of their appearance in history : 1. The Gauls or Celts, whom the Romans found in Spain, France, and Britain. 2. The Goths, who came down upon the empire from the north-east. 3. The Franks (literally the freemen, from whose own designation of their way of life we derive our modern word " franchise,") who lived in modern Germany and France. 4. The Normans (North-men,) who came into Normandy from Norway. And, for the sake of the history of our own country, might be included, as appearing between the Celts and the Normans, the AngloSaxons ; the people, say the etymologists, who used the sax or sœx, a short sword, and came to Britain from the angle formed by the jutting out of Holstein and Jutland from the German seaD 26 THE SECOND PICTURE. bord. Hence the Angles, Angle-land, England. Gibbon, and many others with him, have been at pains to trace the origin of these Germans to the east. In reading " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," one is never allowed to see the waves of the Barbarian invasion dashing against Rome without having his eye directed far east to the wall of China, where these waves receive their impulse. The ethnologists, comparing the European and Asiatic languages, have placed this eastern origin beyond a doubt. But it is not as easterns the Barbarians take their place in history. They come direct from the north, the north claims. them for its own. "The snows of winter are as pleasant to them as the flowers of spring," said an orator of them once ; and in Rome's earlier struggles with them, when they were the weaker side, they were seen by Roman soldiers " sporting almost naked in the midst of glaciers, and sliding on their shields from the summit of the Alps over precipices. Let us look at one of these northern savages. We stand in the presence of our common ancestor, the Adam of European life. He is blue- eyed, his cheeks are ruddy, his hair blond, his bones are the bones of a giant. In the depths of forests lies his home ; it is a hut built of a few branches, thatched with reeds. Town life is foreign to his habits. He would scorn to be confined by walls as townsmen are ; he must have room to breathe, to roam. He builds his rude dwelling on the banks of a river, on the slope of a hill, in the HOME-LONG AGO. 27 hollow of a marshy vale ; wherever his fancy prompts, if only it be under the shadow of trees. It is his genius to spread, to take possession of the earth, to rely upon the strength of his own right arm. Let us enter his home. The giant reclines upon skins of the reindeer, perhaps upon the bare ground, sluggish, inert, a man waiting his true vocation ; consuming the interval, it may be, in gambling and intemperance. But mark that big-boned partner of his life ; that mother, from whose breasts our milk of life has flowed. No sluggishness here ! She prepares the land for the seed ; she cares for the cattle ; she reaps the harvest ; and, in the dead of winter, she breaks the ice of the river for fish. In return for her labours, she is mistress in her sphere. The Roman's wife was a slave. The mother of German children is a wife. When a Roman bride went to her future home, she was lifted over the threshold, and allowed to drop into the arms of her husband, to signify that she was falling, literally falling into the hands of the man (in manum viri) as goods and chattels into the hands of a master. When a German savage went for his bride, he gave presents of oxen, arms, and war-horses, to her friends ; indicating, by gifts of those things he most loved himself, the value and the place he counted due to her ; and, from that time forward, in the rude household of the forest, she held a high place. The wife was the counsellor ; the healer of wounds. If need were, she fought in the battle. If the battle turned against 28 THE SECOND PICTURE. her husband, she knew how to preserve the purity of the family blood ; beside the corpse of their father she spilled the blood of her children and her own, counting it an everlasting reproach to await the humiliation of foreign slavery. The child of such a mother could not long be idle and worthless. Already, in war, he was swift, terrible, irresistible. It was his glory to die in battle. " Lift me up," said Siward the Strong, when he was attacked by disease, "lift me up, that I may die standing like a soldier, and not grovelling like a cow. Put on my coat of mail, cover my head with my helmet, put my buckler on my left arm, and my gilded axe in my right hand, that I may expire in arms." Even difficulties were yoked to their service. "The force of the storm," sang their poets, " is a help to the arms of our rowers ; the hurricane carries us the way we would go. " There has been preserved to us from the ninth century the death-song of a Danish Viking, the famous Regnar Lodbrog. He invaded Britain about the middle of that century, and fell alive into the hands of the Anglo-Saxons,. whose king, Ælla, shut him into a dungeon with vipers and serpents. Probably the song was not his own composition, although those old sea-kings did often cultivate the art of poetry ; but it is an expression of the mind of his people, was sung at a funeral ceremony in his honour, and passed from mouth to mouth across his native land, as an appeal for vengeance. The chorus is " We hewed with our swords ;" and each stanza places some THE VIKING'S PICTURE. 29 action of his daring life before the mind. As the narrative proceeds the dying Viking pauses ever and again to tell how the vipers were gnawing his flesh. Here are two stanzas, in such turgid, Ossianic translation as we can procure : — "We hewed with our swords ! "The warriors dropt their bucklers. Brands, the riflers of life, flew wrathful from their scabbards against the bosoms of the brave. At Scarpa Skeria cruelly hacked the trenchant battle-axe. Red were the borders of our moony shields, until King Rafn died. The tepid blood, spurting from the temples of the valiant, was drifted on their harness. "We hewed with our swords ! " In fifty and one battles ! Methinks no king has truer cause of glory. But now I find that men are the slaves of fate. A viper is tearing open my breast and piercing to my heart. I am vanquished. Let the javelins of my sons transpierce the ribs of Ella. I sing no more. Celestial virgins, sent from the hall of Odin, invite me home. I am going to drink beer with the gods in the highest seats. The hours of my life are ebbing. The viper has reached my heart. I am smiling under the hand of death." Some writers, including such masters in history as Robertson and Guizot, have fallen into the egregious blunder of depicting these grim Norlanders, who "hewed with their swords, and smiled under the hand of death," as mere copies of the modern savages of North America. In one chapter of the latter's " History of Civilisation in France," he places in parallel columns quotations from Tacitus, who has left us a Roman's view of the ancient Germans, and descriptions of the American tribes by modern travellers. Thus, the Germans disliked the confinement of towns : so did the Americans. The Germans left the work of the field to their women : so did the Americans. The Germans gave dowries for their brides : so did 30 -THE SECOND PICTURE. the Americans. And thus a specious picture is got up a resemblance is proved. But a resemblance of what ? Of savage life with savage life ! An incidental matter—a matter very much aside from the actual knowledge of the Germans which we require. Why, the entire conclusion is removed when we point to the fact, that the American races are passing out of the earth. Carry the Iriquois, the Blackfeet, the Snakes, the Mohicans, back into the German forests, when Rome is crumbling to the ground, will they put new blood into Europe ? No, we venture to say, they would melt away as the salted snail does, beneath the influence even of degenerate Rome. What is that perpetual sighing of theirs after the graves of their fathers—that vague groping towards the far away, after the great white spirit-that ferocity and low cunning which come out in all their actions, even before the white man spoiled their haunts ? Evidence, we think, of a development already superannuated and incapable of revival. There are no sighs for the far away or the past, no ferocity for its own sake, no vile treachery in the savage of the north. The present is his, and he rejoices in it. He walks to his purpose right on. If he fail, he can " smile under the hand of death." He is fresh, young-hearted, ready, although he knows it not, for new developments, when the hour shall come. Schlegel has noticed that the Germans are acquainted with the use of iron, and money, and an alphabet, when we first met with them, while the GERMAN BRAIN AND GERMAN BUOYANCY. 31 Americans are not. Whatever force may be in this fact, between the two races there is this constitutional, enormous difference, which the physiologists point out, that the German has a brain of Caucasian mould, the American not. In this German brain there is growth, manhood, refinement. It will become Dantean, Shaksperian, Newtonian. It is the brain of Luther, and Bacon, and Goethe undeveloped ; whereas the highest reach of the American brain is a development terminating in sentimental, puling girlhood. The Germans are strong from the very first. They have all the buoyancy and freshness of growing youth about them. A frank openness, a broad boyish humour, come out in their whole deportment. Take these two glimpses of them, illustrative of this : It is the close of the ninth century. A German race has long dwelt in France. A band of Norwegians (Germans also, of course,) driven from their own land, seek a home in this territory of their fortunate predecessors. News of their ravages having reached the court, ambassadors are sent to them. The Norwegians are encamped by the brink of a river. With wise precaution, the ambassadors keep on the other side. " Hillo, brave warriors," they shouted across, " what is the name of your lord ?" "We have no lord," replied. the warriors. "And wherefore have ye come here ?" "To make this our country." " But our king will give you lands and honours if you settle peaceably, and be subject to him. " " Go back and tell your king," was the answer, " that we will be 32 THE SECOND PICTURE. subject to no one, and that all we can conquer shall belong to ourselves, without reserve. " Twelve years after, the influence of the higher civilisation which they found in France having softened their manners, these same soldiers agreed to settle down and become feudal men to the king. At the ceremony of agreement, they were ordered, in token of submission, to kiss the king's foot. "Never !" said their principal man, Rollo. The French lords insisted. The Norwegian beckoned one of his followers forward, and gave him, by a peculiar sign, the necessary instructions for the offensive service. The man stooped, but, without bending his knee, took the offered foot of the monarch in his hands, and lifted it up towards his lips -higher ! higher ! still higher ! The Norwegians burst into open laughter at the issue the king was fallen backwards to the ground. Such were the men, frank, daring, young- hearted, and full of rough humour, who were the growing bones in the womb of destiny, of the European man. We should rather have said, " Such was the outside of the men," for we have yet to speak of that in them out of which their peculiar freshness flowed. The Third Picture. THE CHRISTIAN ELEMENT. The Religion of the Ancient Germans. REFERENCE has already been made to a connection between these Germans and Christianity. We shall be wholly unable to understand this connection-the connection between good soil and good seed-unless we enter somewhat into the character of their religion. The savage Druidism, with which the earlier chapters of our national history have made us familiar, must be put out of view. This, with its human sacrifices and horrible incantations, was undoubtedly a natural development of the general Germanic faith ; but it was a development confined to the Gael or Celt, a race comparatively exhausted, without the power and freshness of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman branches, when we first encounter them . Everywhere the Celt is conquered. He is driven into the Highlands of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France. Astronger German, i.e., a German with a younger faith, takes his place. The faith of the Norwegian Viking, of the German proper, was essentially Druidism, but Druidism in its elements. And at this stage, there was that in this religion which wrought together with the general healthiness of the Germanic physical con33 E 31 THE THIRD PICTURE. stitution to beget a fitness, a receptiveness for Christianity, possessed by no other people to the same degree. The impression first received in studying this old religion is one of something huge, dim, far-stretching, like that left upon the mind by endless depths of forest. The Greek had a beautiful temple, a beautiful statue, for his worship. So that it were beautiful, his religious craving was satisfied. German worship could not abide so much restraint. It struggled outwards, upwards, out of all confinement, as if it panted for breath. Its temples were the tops of mountains, the sky for their roof. There, or amid the sombre shadows of woods, where the everlasting twilight and the far- receding avenues of trees gave a character of illimitableness to the scene, the German chose to worship. The same groping after the illimitable is apparent in the objects of their worship. Giants, gigantic gods, fill their universe-beings good and evil, who bulk out immeasurably before the imagination. The observation, often made, that these beings are representatives of natural phenomena, carries us a good way into the character of the old Germanic faith. Their giants, their giant deities, are all realities, real existences, to these simple worshippers. Not a giant amongst them all who does not present himself to their mind in some phenomenon of the actual world in which they live. Fire, frost, light, darkness, the visible workings of all nature, assume the forms of giants, and take their place in that old mythology. Thunder THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD RELIGION. 35 is Thor (from whom our Thursday, Thor's-day, is named) ; Sunlight is Balder ; Fire is Loke ; Frost is Thrym, Hrym (or Rime, as it is even yet called) . The head of all is Odin, a deified man, who had been bard and warrior. Our Wednesday, Woden's or Odin's-day, owes its name to him. The whole earth is simply a giant slain and distributed over different quarters. The sea is his blood, the land his flesh, the rocks his bones, the sky his skull, the clouds his brains ; and the gods themselves dwell in Asgard, the shadow of his eyebrows. Very stupid all this, Carlyle exclaims, when one looks only from without ! But not at all so stupid, when we perceive that we also live amid giant forces, although we name them differently. (The reader will find a translation of an Icelandic poem, in which the above cosmogony is detailed, in the appendix to Henderson's " Visit to Iceland," published many years ago under the superintendence of one of our Bible societies. He will enjoy the fine summary of the details, in the lecture on Odin in "Hero-Worship, " better after reading it. The worship which daily contemplated these forces, even when so disguised, was not an unhealthy worship. It was imperfect, limited, earthy enough, but, so far as it went, healthy. It brought the mind of the worshipper into daily contact with nature, in this very thing preparing that mind for the reception of a higher life. The Romans noticed, or at least fancied, that the Germans offered sacrifice to the earth, " the goddess Hertha " it was 36 THE THIRD PICTURE. 66 supposed to be called, and that "they looked upon themselves as descended from Mannus." From Man ? Or, still more probably, from the man, Odin ? Revolve these hints in your minds. Vastness-huge vagueness-giants toiling in all directions-Hertha the object of worship-Mannus the first parent ! Are we not carried a step further than the theory that that old mythology was a mere embodiment of the visible forces in nature ? ' It is easy to say, These giants only express the struggles and throes of nature, cultivation contending with barrenness, spring succeeding winter. But why," asks the distinguished thinker we are now quoting, Mr Maurice (in his " Religions of the World and the Religion of Christ "), " why are they giants ? Why do they take this personal form ? Why, if winter and spring were chiefly in their minds, did they not speak of winter and spring ?" We believe that this thinker has here opened a new deep into that old religion. Germans believed themselves to be the descendants of Mannus. They felt that Man is the appointed inhabitant and subduer of the earth. They reverence Hertha because it is the home of man, the scene of his life-toils. Out of Hertha come their corn and pasture, their bread and water. And spring warring with winter, light with darkness, heat with cold, they recognise as so many forms of the great battle which man has to wage on the bosom ofthe earth. The From the first there has been a strong consciousness of humanity in the German mind. (Eg, WHY ARE THEY GIANTS ? 37 Baron from Bairn, the war-chief retaining in his very name a testimony to his being, whatever else, a man.) Their religion is an expression of this consciousness. Odin the man has risen into Asgard. Man the worshipper is encompassed by giant forces, of which Odin is lord. It is the human instinct groping upward towards the primal home of our spirit-reaching outward over our dominion. Those mighty forces of visible nature, the flash of lightning, the eruption of the burning mountain, the hard grasp of winter, frost binding the flood in chains, have their hour. Another hour is coming, when the descendant of Mannus, the Odin in Humanity, lays his strong hand upon them, and rises above them into Asgard, into Valhalla, the dwelling- place of the gods ! Already they are in possession of symbols, rude, vague, unshapely, but veritable symbols of that One whom the Christian missionaries were soon to proclaim in the very presences of their Odin-trees ! Third Element, Christianity. Of this third element we proceed to speak with the conviction that a description of its essential character would be, to our readers, a very needless occupation of time. We feel that we must also shut ourselves out from speaking of the manifold conflicts into which Christianity was obliged to enter on its first appearance ; the conflict, for example, with the Stoic, the man of austere dogmas, who held that he was the subject of an iron necessity, which it was wisdom to recognise and submit 38 THE THIRD PICTURE. • to the conflict with the Platonist, the spiritual thinker of these times, who looked upon his outer form as only the symbol of an inner and more real one, the word or logos of the Creator, and upon his whole existence as a stream out of the fulness of the divine life, into which, at death, it would be absorbed again : the conflict with the Epicurean, the man of refined sensations, who held it to be the highest good to enjoy the present as we most wished. All this would be very interesting, but it belongs to the history of Christianity rather than to that of European life. We have to satisfy ourselves with stating the fact, that Christianity did encounter such men, and men in all possible conditions of thought and life. It brought to each thinker the true interpretation of his thought, it led thoughtful men in all directions towards the one rest. Biographies of such men have come down to us from that period. They were the victims of unrest. Questioning all nature and the soul within them, they received no answer. 'Whence am I? Whither do I tend ? Wherefore am I here ? What is that force which binds me on every side, which brought me into being, which stirs my soul with perplexed imaginings, which dismisses me into the grave ? Have I any connection with it but that of a slave ? Am I brother to rocks, and trees, and insensate things ? And shall I sleep with the worm ? Or do these stars shine for me, beckoning my spirit upwards to a better sphere ?" When men, exercised with such perplexities, turned to the religions and THE CHRISTIAN DAWN. 39 schools of philosophy around them, they found no relief. There all was hollowness, word splitting, idolatry. When they turned to the governments, to the condition of society, signs of decay, of approaching dissolution, met their eyes. The whole world seemed to be falling to pieces, to be grasping at dead traditions, to be decrepid, ready to die. The clamminess of the grave was about it, like a Nessus shirt. But in the midst of this decrepitude, the roads which had been laid down for Roman armies, and the places of resort in towns, began to be used by the Christian missionaries. To distracted hearts were proclaimed the glad tidings of a "rest prepared " for such : to worshippers of the Nameless, these words " The God whom ye ignorantly worship declare we unto you. "

Of what is usually styled " the rapid diffusion of Christianity in the early ages, " we have this to say, that it was not in Europe-the Europe of European life-it was so diffused. Christians spread with great rapidity ; so did Christian preaching but so did not Christianity. It was the eleventh century before all Europe became Christian. (Even so late as the fourteenth century, the worship of the serpent existed in some nooks of geographical Europe.) The work of conversion was slow, difficult, like the growth of oaks and beech-trees. Only consider. Christianity had the intellects of the thoughtful to satisfy. It had the interests of existing governments to confront. It had the Jew coming up behind its back, from its own 40 THE THIRD PICTURE. birthplace, and saying, " Thou art a lie. " And it had the savage hearts of Roman citizens-hearts buried in lust, finding their highest excitement in the conflicts of human beings with wild beasts— hearts impure into their deepest centre and brutal, to win over and change. We blame such men as Nero for putting hindrances in the way of Christianity. But every Roman was a Nero. They hated Christianity. It stood up against their entire life, and proclaimed it to be rottenness in the face of God. It said to the mistress of the world, that she was living in pleasure, but dead while she lived. And the worshippers of this mistress, the Roman citizens, replied by demanding the Christians for the wild beasts. Even if persecution had not arisen, there was that in the condition of the public mind, when Christianity first encountered it, which made rapid progress an impossibility. One of the very commonest challenges thrown out to the Christian preacher was an illustration of this condition. It was said to them, "Show us your Gods ; you are preaching about a Being we cannot see." And any one who has ever tried to demonstrate a hidden fact-the fact of the earth's motion, for example, upon its axis-to a mind accustomed to believe only what the outward eye can see, will know what a mighty work had to be achieved by Christianity, and how necessarily slow its progress must have been, before the sensualised mind of Rome could look into "the things which are not seen.' "" We lately heard a very intelligent missionary, A PICTURE OF CREDIT. " 41 who has returned from the East Indies, stating that, on his arrival in this country, he was most of all struck by the existence of "credit, " of trust reposed in each other, which he found amongst us. "A man gave me a cheque, " he said, "and it was instantly cashed at the bank. If I went into a shop for anything, it was placed before me on the counter before I even showed my purse. In India, among the natives, such things do not happen. Each man believes his neighbour to be dishonest. There is no trustfulness, no credit." And the missionary gave this as one of the reasons why Christianity made so little progress in the district where he had been labouring. And he was right. There must be a good soil as well as good seed ; and the Christian faith had to wait seven hundred years for this. We all know how Christianity turned away from the Jew. It will be remembered how little receptivity there was in those Greeks who listened to Paul on Mar's Hill. And that apostle must have been thinking of a similar flippancy in the Roman mind, when he wrote, "I am not ashamed to preach the Gospel to you who are at Rome also. " To us there is something very solemn in this fact. The Jew, the Greek, the Roman-the minds of highest culture in the world at the time -putting away the new faith from them. Deep calleth unto deep. The Jewish mind, with all its recollections of holy times, was not receptive ; neither was the Grecian, with all its subtle appreciation of beauty ; neither was the Roman, F 42 THE THIRD PICTURE. with all its sense of binding law and social order. In these minds there was not depth, there was not honesty enough. For long centuries, Christianity, the word of the new creation, had to brood over the wrecks and chaos of past culture before it found a mind fitted to receive it. Not that it waited in idleness. There were individual conversions without number; there was leavening of human thought ; there was the acquirement of outward respect (from hollow Constantines and such like) ; above all, there was the absorbing into itself whatever was good in ancient civilisation. It abode in Judea until it had identified itself with Moses and the Prophets ; it lingered in beautiful Greece, in those churches of Ephesus, and Corinth, and Philippi, until the aroma of Greek wisdom was inhaled ; it hid in Roman charnel-houses until all that was worth in Roman institutions had passed into its grasp, studying all the thought of that half-castern world, and all its ways of life ; and then, with its mighty burden of life, old and new, it was led up from the wilderness towards the north, to meet those men who had been preparing to receive it, and were even now coming down. It found in these Germans a freshness, a child-like openness―" honesty of heart," in fact. It found them in possession of a faith which did not contradict Christianity, but only sought from it its true interpretation. It found in them a nature inured to hardship, uncorrupt, and the German people "received it gladly. " Let one illustration serve for all. When Paulinus the Christian missionary invited THE WARRIOR'S THOUGHTS ON LIFE. 43 our Anglo- Saxon fathers to embrace his faith, an old warrior rose up in the national assembly, and argued thus before the king : " On some dark night, O king, when the storm was abroad, and rain and snow were falling without, when thou and thy captains were seated by the warm fire in the lighted hall, thou mayest have seen a sparrow flying in from the darkness and flitting across the hall, and passing out into the darkness again. Even so, O king, appears to me the life of men upon the earth. We come out of the darkness, we shoot across the lighted hall of life, and then go out into the darkness again. If this new doctrine can tell us aught of this darkness, and of the sonl of man which passes into it, let it be received with joy." Thus met these two elements of European lifeChristianity and the German nature. First came the Roman element-municipal institutions-town- life. This was the laying down of European roads, of social ways of life. Then came the Barbarian element, the strong nature, the fresh humanity, which was to use these roads. And, last of all, not in time but in effect, came Christianity, with affinities for all that is worth preserving, with the power of leavening, of combining, of elevating. It seized what was Roman—it conveyed the German towards it. It gave the German a new faith, a principle of continuance. And European life arose. It is one of the disadvantages of taking up a subject like our present, that the actual condition 44 THE THIRD PICTURE. of society cannot always be kept before the mind. Having to deal with. elements, we are apt to lose sight of what may be called the flesh and blood of history, the workings of every-day life. Before we close at present, therefore, with the view of correcting whatever of this evil may have accompanied this treatment of the subject, we shall endeavour to convey some notion of the condition of society in Western Europe from the fifth to the tenth centuries during the period, that is, that the elements of European life were flowing together. The description will not hold true of Eastern Europe. There, so many of the old influences were still at work as to give a distinct character to the condition of society in that direction. On that side the empire had been invaded by the Goths. These Goths entered into alliance with the Romans at a very early period. And thus, if they came sooner than the Germans of the North under the influence of Christianity, they came alsɔ sooner under the influence of Roman manners. In fact, they became very much Romanised, and had consequently only a secondary part to play in the shaping out of Europe. Their strength melted away under the eastern effeminacy of life which prevailed in the empire ; and, to give them still less weight, the Christianity they had was Arian. In France, Germany, and Britain, it was different. A stranger would have been struck especially with the presence of a mixed population. He would have seen that there was no hearty blend- "THE SWORD WAS KING ! " 45 ing of fortunes amongst those who lived together ; that, on the contrary, there were classes living painfully separate, and cherishing the worst passions towards each other. In country districts he would encounter a class, as the traveller in "Ivanhoe" encounters Gurth, the swine-herd, engaged in the lowest drudgery, the born thralls of the possessors of the soil. These thralls are the possessors of the land, and generally Celts. If he entered the rude homestead of the possessor of the soil, the stranger would be confronted by a representative of the highest class, the descendant of the tribe which last ravaged and conquered the land. Between these two extremes (both of Germanic origin) , some schoolmaster, a priest, or travelling merchant, would turn up to represent the old Romanic population. The next thing that our stranger would have noticed, would be, that this tesselated pavement of human beings lived in the continual expectation and exercise of war. Inroads were frequent. New descents from more northerly countries, things of constant dread. Property was held by no securer tenure than the sword. By the sword it had been bought ; by the sword it might be lost. It was the same with personal freedom. The sword was king. Physical force presided over European society. Perhaps, while our stranger is completing his examination, the shouts of war may ring through the land, and homesteads which were gained a hundred years before have to be defended against a new incursion from the North. 46 THE THIRD PICTURE. Thus, in our own land, the Roman subdued the Celt, the Saxon put out the Roman, the Norman overcame the Saxon. It was the condition of all Europe for more than six hundred years. Roman Europe was to the men of the North what America is to us. It was their new world and future home. From the region of icebergs and perpetual snow, the confined populations pressed, band after band, during all these centuries, toward the sunnier south. Europe was in continual motion. Here, a Roman population wasting out ; there, a German migration arriving to fill its place. Here, the Germans of an earlier incursion growing effeminate ; there, a new band presenting their greater strength, as a title of right, to dispossess them. No man nor people was at rest. No nation knew its own limits. No nation, properly so called, existed. All was flow and reflow : tides beaten back by the wind. Attempts to escape fromthis unsettled existence were made from the beginning, some of these consciously, some unconsciously. Quite consciously wrought Christianity. Its voice was lifted up for order. In many ways its influence was exerted. Even at the early period at which the foregoing picture is taken, Christianity is leavening European life, elevating it, delivering it from savageness ; but its effects are hidden, and will continue so for centuries to come. Consciously also wrought Roman civilisation . From this came the written laws which the forming nations began to adopt. From this, although German laws blended with Roman in the same CHARLEMAGNE APPEARS. 4.7 code, for the Germans learned from the Empire to commit their laws to writing. Unconsciously wrought the Barbarian element. But the relation between the chief and his men was a germ of order, and began to exhibit fruit in the feudal system. 肃 In the eighth century appeared a man who gathered into himself, in a wonderful manner, all these elements of order-as to race a German, by faith a Christian, by his coronation a Roman emperor-into whose mind entered the vast conception, that the tides of violence around him might be arrested, and Europe bound into a mightywhole. This man was Charlemagne. The history of his reign is the history of an endeavour to realise this conception. France, Spain, Italy, Germany, even as far as Hungary, yielded to his sway. At the head of his brave Franks he repressed disorder on all sides. The necessity of his reign was order. His reign was a protest and appeal against confusion. Victorious abroad, at home, in his beautiful Rhineland, this great king established schools, encouraged literature, committed laws to writing. He invited the learned of all countries to his court. He fostered religion and watched over the churches. He met with the bishops, chastised indolent pastors, rewarded faithful ones. His capacious soul took in at one glance the Europe which ought to be, and the minutest details of local interest. He bequeathed to European life a grand ideal of European unity. In our own England the same attempt on a 48 THE THIRD PICTURE. narrower scale was made by Alfred. While these men lived, the strong hand of authority bound the masses into something like a whole. At their death, these masses escaped from the bond. Migratory habits prevailed once more. Europe again resounded with the wars of race and tribe. But influences were already at work by which new and surer ties were to be formed, The Fourth Picture. THE CRUSADES. RECALL the parallel drawn between the life of individual man and that of society. Both lives have their natural periods. Each period has its separate peculiarities, of taste, of receptivity, of capability. The boy follows other ends than the grown-up man -is differently affected, expresses himself differently. What would be foolish in an old man may be beautiful in the boy. What would pall an old man's appetite may be the cause of growth in a boy. What even a young man might esteem as common, to a boy will seem a very opening into heaven. Take this familiar illustration :-When we pass what Dante calls the keystone of life, and begin to travel on the descending curve of the arch, we pucker up our lips as people who should know better, and smile at the fondness of young lovers. "That foolish time ! " we exclaim, winking to our peers. But this does not alter the fact which encompasses our two lovers. They cannot afford to smile at it. It is not on the authority of novel makers, but of the Maker of us all-a life and death business for them. The beautiful, the lovely, have gathered all their rays into one focus ; and each of these two sees the other in the heart of 49 G 50 THE FOURTH PICTURE. that. If the boy walk across the green, we will not see a difference in him from other boys ; if you point out the girl, we may not be overwhelmed with any surpassing beauty in her. But, to their own eyes, each is bathed in beauty, and circles for ever on in it, as the morning star does. It is the time of love. Influences which would not touch them at other periods find receptivity in them at this ; and they go through a business-taken in detail, made up of trifles-which, at a later date in life, they will speak of as a waste of time. This will help us to understand the present portion of our subject. Crusades-wars of the Cross-wars for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre from the keeping of Mahommedans, would not succeed with Europe now. Even in the fifteenth century they could succeed. The same means which roused Europe in the eleventh were resorted to ; but Europe went on its way unheeding. Europe had outgrown them-had left them behind in the magic pastand was now girding itself for the sterner tasks of Reformation and Revolution. Before entering on the history of these wars of the Cross, then, we shall endeavour to fix the proper life-date of Europe at the time. We do not mean the particular year in which the wars commenced. As to this, they began at the close of the eleventh century, and lasted almost precisely two hundred years. We refer to the time of life in which the Crusades occured ; was Europe man or boy? Note, in passing, that some nations LIFE AT THE TIME OF THE CRUSADES. 51 were later than others in being affected with the Crusade- spirit. Our own, for example. The Franks were first. In our country, therefore, that period in which Crusades were gone into as a perfectly serious business was later of arriving than in France. This being preluded, we open the inquiry-At what period has European life arrived at the close of this eleventh century ? Of the Europe described in our former papers we might say-It was Europe in embryo, Europe in the cradle, Europe making efforts to walk. Individually considered, we had many strong men before us ; but the collective life of these men was simply what we have just now called it. We shall go back to the beginning of the period surveyed in the last paper for one glimpse of this life. A second can be obtained through the feudal system. The Crusades themselves will yield a third. In each of these, you will see distinctly impressed the features of different periods, and each rising naturally out of the other. 1. The baptism of the first Frank king took place during the Christmas of 496. The history of his conversion is as follows :-He had married a Christian wife, In the fall of the Roman empire he beheld a proof that his wife's God was feeble ; in the success of the Franks, that their God was strong. So like a child did he reason ! His own oldest child died. "A powerful God," he said to his wife, " would not have suffered a child baptised into his name to die." A battle 52 THE FOURTH PICTURE. was going against him ; he called on his own god, Odin. The foe still prevailed, In his distress he bethought himself of his wife's God, and called on him the battle at that moment turned in his favour. So like a child did he act ! A bishop assured him that the battle was a miracle : Clovis believed him. The bishop went on to instruct him in the Christian faith, and, amongst other things, drew a touching picture of the sufferings of the Lord upon the cross. "Ha," interrupted our European child, "if I and my brave Franks had been there, how we would have chastised these rascal Jews !" The baptism was performed at Rheims. "The streets," says Thierry, " were adorned with tapestries ; hangings of various colours, stretching from roof to roof, intercepted the heat and glare of the sun. The pavement was strewn with flowers, and perfumes were burned to refresh the air. The bishop, dressed in embroidered garments, walked by the monarch's side. "Holy father," exclaimed the latter, astonished by all this magnificence, "is THIS the kingdom of heaven to which thou hast promised to conduct me?" What do you see behind this morsel of biography ? It is the story of the conversion of the foremost European soldier of his day—a man of thirty years of age, strong, practical, brave. You see a distinction of lives. The material life is mature ; but it conceals another-a life far from maturity. It is a child's life. Its thoughts, its acts, are childish. It is your own Walter or Willie making his first visit to the church. " Hush, my THE SOLDIER AND THE CHURCH. 53 boy, you are in the church." An awe comes down upon the boy's heart. But if you ask him what the church is, you will find it is the wood of the pulpit, and the fine dresses of the people, and himself. European life was at this stage when Clovis was baptised. 2. Let us come down four hundred years. The boy is beginning to be respected in the house. Home life is about him, and penetrates him. Outwardly, there is confusion enough. The empire of Charlemagne has gone down in darkness. The migrations have broken out afresh. All Europe is in motion. There are no boundaries, no dykes : tides of people are rushing upon each other. In the midst of this weltering rises the feudal keep. It is the representative building of the period. The wrecks of old empires, of attempted kingdoms, are floating about. But nothing hurts that keep. The Noah of European life is there. The waves dash in vain against it ; it rides on the top. Do not look at these keeps through your modern politics. If there had not been need for them they would not have arisen. The German tribes brought from their woods respect for woman and the law of primogeniture. The feudal system was the sphere in which these were to be developed unto our modern family life. Accordingly, if you look closely at this system, you will find that its principal aim was, protection of the oldest son. There was in it protection of others—of serfs, fighting men, and kinsfolk. All the titles which have come down to us from these times are monuments 54 THE FOURTH PICTURE. of this. Earl, yarl-strong one, one able to protect ; lord, law-ward-protector of law ; lady, hlaf-dig loaf-giver, provider of bread to the protected. But all this points ultimately to the heir. For his sake the old baron protects the fighting men ; for his sake the lady gives bread to their families ; for him the walls of the keep are built massy and strong ; for him the baron lives in a confinement foreign to his ancestors. The whole current of feudal life runs towards the training and protecting of this boy. It fits into this view that the mother has a very large share of importance in the feudal system. If the father were slain before the heir was of age, the mother became regent. Even in the father's lifetime she had a fair portion of influence. In his absence on the hunting expedition she ruled. Children and domestics came thus to look up to her as their head. Her sphere, her character, were elevated. Napoleon once asked a lady what the French people stood most in need of. "Good mothers," replied the lady. During the feudal period, this instrumentality in the training of the life of Europe was developed. You remember the old ballad, " Black Agnes of Dunbar." In her husband's absence the castle was attacked by the English. She held out for nineteen weeks, and then compelled them to raise the siege : 66 Upon the castle wa' she stood, The Yirl o' March's sturdy Marrow ! " Montague tempts her with dress and English state: THE MOTHER'S PLACE AND INFLUENCE, 55 "And you sall be Dame Montague, And I'll gi'e you a weddin' ring. " She answers : "Your rings o' gold I carena by, Nor care I for your falcons free ; I carena for your horse and hounds, Nor for your pages twenty-three. An' ye may tak' your lordlings brave, An' deck them wi' your claith o' gold ; For while my ain gude lord's awa', My yetts fast lock'd I mean to hold." Montague, in wrath, brings up his war-engines : "The mangonels play'd fast and free, Brocht down big stanes frae aff the wa' : Black Agnes, with her napkin fine, Leuch loud and dicht the stour awa !" This happened in the fourteenth century. But Scotland, during that century, presented a very fair picture of the feudal times of European states earlier in developing. We have quoted the ballad to illustrate the functions and spirit of the European mother at that period. A system which afforded scope for conduct like that of Lady March's could not be otherwise than promotive of the family bond. And, in fact, it was so. What do we gather from this ? We gather that European life had not yet passed out of the home-spherethat the European man, if the bull might be excused, was still a boy. The history of the institution of knighthood would still farther illustrate this fact. Great attention began to be paid to boys. Your boy is sent to my house ; mine to yours, to learn obedience to learn to be a miles, to serve-militare, 56 THE FOURTH PICTURE. to be a knight. The great event in our families is the introduction of these boys into the rank of knights ; and when they have become knights, their business of life is the very soft one of defending women. 3. Something was wanted to lift European life out of the home-something which could appeal to the natural poetry and spirituality in the human heart, and be a quickening into manhood for all Europe. At this crisis, the Crusades were preached. The immediate occasion of these Crusades was this. Towards the close of the ninth century, an expectation began to be entertained in Europe that the Lord would return to the earth when the thousand years after his ascension were expired. This time was at hand. It was generally believed that the scene of his birth would be that of his second advent ; and European Christians, men and women, went to Jerusalem " to meet their Lord." The expected hour went past ; but a pilgrimage to Jerusalem had become a European habit ; and during the eleventh century, the Holy City continued to be visited by pilgrims who had left the extreme bounds of Europe and toiled thither on foot. Unhappily for them, the Holy City had long been in the hands of Mahommedans. The arrival of pilgrims was a source of revenue too palpable to be neglected. A piece of gold was charged for entrance. The pilgrims-poor, many of them, when they set out from their homes-still poorer when they had traversed unsettled Europe, BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSEUM BORDERS The Man who spoke " to the Hearts of Fighting Men. " See page 57. THE MAN WHO ROUSED EUROPE. 57 had to return often from the very gates of that Jerusalem they had come thousands of miles to see, because they were unable to pay toll. Sick and weary with fatigue and disappointment, they filled Europe with their murmurs. As they passed on to their homes, they left their tale of oppression and persecution in the castles which gave them shelter for the night. The fierce baron listened to their stories when the hunt or the raid was over. He, too, was stirred with indignation . Let the word once be spoken, and the European boy will fly to arms. Among the pilgrims who returned was one who had been successively soldier, priest, and hermit— Peter of Amiens. Simple, abstemious in his food, in appearance mean, it was given to his humble instrument to speak the word. He was a little man, with flashing, peculiar eyes. "While out of doors, he wore ordinarily a woollen tunic, with a brown mantle, which fell down to his heels, " leaving his arms and feet bare. "We saw him," says the eye witness quoted above, "passing through towns and villages, preaching, everywhere, the people surrounding him in crowds, " plucking, for relics of so esteemed a man, the very hairs from his mule's hide. He was no great orator, as to style : he was rude and illiterate rather, as most people then were. But we could speak to the hearts of fighting men; and all Europe answered as he beckoned his skinny arm. The church took up the cause. At Clermont, in one of the great squares-no house being able H 58 THE FOURTH PICTURE. to contain them-priests, princes, fighting men, scholars, ladies, people of all ranks, are gathered at the close of the eleventh century. The pope of that time, Urban II. , was a very eloquent man. He spoke to them of the land of their Saviour's birth of their eastern fellow- Christians oppressed therein of the hardships encountered by holy pilgrims. "Jerusalem," he said, "has become the habitation of devils. The Saracens tyrannise over it ; the holy places are defiled ; the believers are overwhelmed with injuries ; the temple of the Most High is desecrated ; priests and deacons are slain ; women are grossly insulted in the very sanctuary ; and ye, Christian men of Europe, wasting your strength in idle quarrels. Arm ! To the rescue of your oppressed brethren ! Against the enemies of your faith turn the weapons you unjustly employ against each other. Pillage and burning are charged against you ; murder and robbery shut many of you from the kingdom of God. Arise ! Redeem by this service your ungodly lives ; the crimes of the soldier of the Cross are pardoned ; the dying Crusader goes up to heaven." From prince and peasant, from men and women, there rose a mighty shout. "God willeth it !" the whole assembly cried. The purpose of the speaker was secured. The baron rode back to his castle to arm his retainers. The speech of the pope was repeated from mouth to mouth. Europe was stirred unto its depths. So unanimous was the enthusiasm, so quickly did it spread, it came to be EFFECT OF THE POPE'S SPEECH. 59 a popular belief that the shout which greeted the close of the pope's appeal had been heard at the same moment in the remotest parts of Europe. We would convey a very false impression if we left the reader to suppose that the struggle in which Europe was about to engage was either accidental or temporary. From the very cradle of European life it has had to struggle against Mahommedan aggression. Even at the date of the first crusade, the struggle was far from being new. Exactly four hundred years before, it seemed to depend on the issue of a battle whether "the third element" of European life was to be Christianity or Mahommedanism. It was while the northern immigrations were still flowing down, before the conquerors were secure in their conquests, that they were confronted by armies of swart, black- eyed soldiers, the propagators of this new religion. From the African shore of the Mediterranean, at the Straits, they sent a small detachment across to Europe, under the command of a soldier named Tarik. He overturned the kingdom of the enervated Visigoths in Spain. Their king fled from the field of battle, and the victorious Arabs pursued their conquests until the Bay of Biscay stopped their march. It took more than seven hundred years to undo the work of that army. To this day we recall the name of its leader when we mention the rock on which he first landed, Gibraltar-Ghebel al Taric, the rock of Taric. From Spain, the Arabs pressed into France, at that time the centre of European civilisation ; but 60 THE FOURTH PICTURE. here they were checked. Young Europe, rude and untaught, was stronger than full-formed Mahommedanism. A Frank, who, on account of his heavy blows, received the surname of Martel or Hammer, defeated them near Poictiers. His successor, Charlemagne, still more effectually repressed their advances. Eventually, they were shut up into Spain. We may well turn aside to examine the character and genius of a power which appeared in the world at the very moment Europe was being filled with its future populations, and which ultimately left to the influence of Christianity only the western half of the Roman empire. An internal history of Mohammedanism itself would exhibit a creed laying hold of different tribes, nations, races, and elevating to power those of most warlike genius. It will be enough for our purpose if we can gather from the people in whom the faith first took root, one or two of the more prominent features of the life which it develops. We shall require to transfer ourselves to new scenes. shadows of deep forests, the mists of hills, by which the men of the north are environed, are behind us. We are now in the land of the palm-tree and the camel. Stripes of green pasture alternate with sand-wastes, at the base of grim mountains. Nothing has changed since the days of Job. There is the same nomade life, the same family feeling, the same incursions of robbers. You live in tents ; your wealth is in flocks and herds. In the evening, you see clouds of dust in the distance : before The THE ARAB- HIS HOME AND HIS FAITH. 61 an hour has gone past, the well where you are resting is surrounded with tents, and flocks, and shepherds armed. From that land how many of our most familiar stories have come ! Our schooltime favourite, the " Arabian Nights," was the product of a later age, and of somewhat different circumstances ; but the faculty of poetry and storytelling which it exhibits is native to the child of the east. Eastern travellers describe the Bedouins of the present, grouped around the fire of their bivouac, listening with attentive ears, their necks stretched out, their fiery eyes fixed upon some com panion reciting passages of their or telling some story of his own. was with them. national poetry, So in all ages it Before the birth of Mahomet, Ishmael was the great man of the Arabs. For them, he, not Isaac, was the true son of promise. They held him in esteem as the martyr, the one wronged man in human history. All other men received rich lands at the general distribution of portions. He, with his mother, had to go out into the desert. Notwithstanding this, Abraham is their father. They have many things in common with the Jews -annual pilgrimages to a holy place, for example, and prayer with their faces turned thither. " In the times of their ignorance," as they call the days before Mahomet, they prayed towards Jerusalem. Since his day, their Kebla-direction of prayeris Mecca, his birth- place. Here, according to tradition, still bubbles up the well of Hagar, and here their great mosque or temple is built. · 62 THE FOURTH PICTURE. Although the men who tried to spread this worship in Europe came from the east, they were strangers to the luxury we associate with eastern climates. There is a healthy freshness and homeliness about them which almost rival the characteristics of the northern tribes. The prophet Mahomet mended his own shoes, and he was a man of wealth. The Caliph Omar, his second successor, and his chief men, supped rice-porridge together every morning out of a wooden platter which dangled at his camel's side, when he and they were on a journey. To this same Omar complaint was once made that the governor he had sent to Hems would not grant an audience before sunrise, nor attend to petitions during night-time, and that he was invisible one whole day in every month. "O Omar !" said the accused governor, I keep no servant, and must therefore before sunrise bake my bread. After sunset, I pray and read the Koran until sleep overtake me ; and one whole day every month, because I possess but a single shirt, I am employed in washing and drying it !" Sometimes this simplicity of manners took quite a different turn from the ridiculous. At the close of an engagement, a Greek general seated himself on a throne in the grand style of the Roman east, to receive some Arab soldiers about an exchange of prisoners. Cushioned seats were set for the Arabs, but they preferred to sit crosslegged on the ground. " You vulgar clowns," said the Greek, "who but yourselves would prefer to sit upon the filthy earth ?" "The seat which THE SOLDIER'S CREED. 63 God has prepared for us, ” replied the chief soldier, "cannot be filthy. The earth is of his making : your purest tapestry is not so pure.” But it is chiefly as a brave people, and a people whose bravery is the result of religion, that they come before us. They are the Puritans of the east. Fighting, to them, is life-work-work done under the eye of God. Their battle-cry, " Allah Acbar !" is a sort of appeal to God for victory. Their early history is full of illustrations. Derar is sent forward to reconnoitre the Christian army. Thirty Christians are detached to capture him. He feigns to fly. The thirty straggle after him. He turns about upon them, and one by one unhorses seventeen. " Did I not warn thee not to put thyself in danger ? " said his general. " Well, Kaled [ this was the defence] , they came out to take me, and I was afraid God should see me turn my back to the enemy." Every battle these men fought was linked in their eyes to eternity. " Oh, general," said this same Derar to Kaled, who had returned from a single-handed encounter with one of the enemy for a fresh horse, "you have already thrown away too much strength fighting with that dog ; rest here, and I will go in stead." "Rest ! " your exclaimed Kaled, by no means the finest specimen of Arab-warrior, " we shall rest in the world to come." (Some of our readers will recall the fine words of the Port-Royalist, hundreds of years later "We shall have all eternity to rest in. ") The conviction that their fighting was not vanity -not something which they might do or leave 1 61 THE FOURTH PICTURE. undone at their pleasure, was very strong in them. They felt that their condition in eternity depended on their conduct in the battle. Kaled would sometimes tell his men that " Paradise lay beneath the shadow of swords." And when Mahomet proclaimed war against the Romans of the east, and the Arabs murmured, " We are worn out ; the harvest is coming on ; the weather is hot," the prophet's reproof was, " Ay, but hell is hotter." Indeed, religious fighting is the proper development of Mahommedan life. Up to this it carries men, and no further. When Mahommedans leave the battlefield and try to live in towns, they go to decay. They prosper as robbers-as fighters, not otherwise. Their life-purpose is to spread their faith by the sword. One of the first converts Mahomet made, after his wife, a boy at the time, professed his faith in this style : " I, for one, will be thy vizier (lit. , helper). Whoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, " &c. So, practically, did every true Mahommedan profess. The conqueror of Morocco was checked in his progress by the waves of the Atlantic. He spurred his horse into the sea, and raised his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, "Great Allah, if my course were not stopped by these waves, I would still go on to the unknown kingdoms of the west, preaching the unity of thy name, and putting rebellious nations to the sword. ” In almost all cases, the perfect Mahommedanis nothing more than an armed propagator of his creed. THE MERCHANT- PROPHET'S TEACHING. 65 At first sight, nothing can be more astonishing than the spread of Mahommedan power. In the beginning of the seventh century, Mahomet, at that time a merchant in Mecca, and about forty years of age, rises up after dinner, and informs his kinsmen present, that God has commissioned him to convert them from idol-worship to the faith that there is one God, whose will we are bound to obey. By all his guests, except the boy Ali, referred to above, this intimation was received with laughter. Before a full hundred years were ended, Arabia, Syria, Persia, Egypt, and part of the east and west coasts of Africa, had received his faith. "From the confines of Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, " there were souls and nations who believed that Mahomet was a prophet. With the power thus founded and wide-spread, European youth was now to contend, and that on ground sacred to the Mahommedan and himself. The Fifth Picture. THE SECRET OF MAHOMMEDAN CONQUEST. BEFORE saying the little we mean to say of the grapple of European and Mahommedan life in the crusades, it may be allowed us to put the following question : How, when Christianity was in the world, within a stonecast, one might say, did Mahommedanisma younger faith-a mere echo of itself caught up at the fairs of Syria, succeed in seizing the whole Eastern world, and confining for many ages European life to Europe ? Not by imposture, not by quackery, we freely answer, quoting Thomas Carlyle. But neither by " Hero Worship, " as is virtually maintained by him. * In the hearty appreciation of the Arabian prophet which we find in the second lecture on "Hero Worship, " the old notions about Mahomet are satisfactorily brushed away. "He did not

• Readers of Carlyle must bear in mind that his book on

Heroes, full of genius, as everything he has done, is, besides being an exposition and vindication of his besetting faith, also an exhibition of his philosophy of European history. He works out his theory with European materials. Odin represents the Ger- man element, Dante the Roman-Ecclesiastical, Shakspere is the Feudal system evolved to music, Luther the Reformation, &c. &c. The lecture on Mahomet finds place as Carlyle's word, on the early struggle of European and Mahommedan life. This being the case, it follows that the philosophy of European history is "Hero Worship. " German strength was the worship of Odin- Mahommedan prowess, the worship of Mahomet. 66 THE PROPHET'S CHARACTER. 67 found a sensual religion ; only curtailed the sensuality he found existing. " Neither was he himself a sensual man. He had faults-faults of the kind David had, "but we shall err widely if we consider him a common voluptuary." In his frugal household " his common fare was bread and water. Sometimes, for months together, not a fire was lighted in his hearth." "Not a bad man " either, or these wild Arabs would not have reverenced him so. "He stood face to face with them ; bare, not enshrined in any mystery-visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes, fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them. They must have seen what kind of man he was. No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three and twenty years of rough actual trial ! I find something of a veritable hero necessary for that. " And so there was. The man Mahomet must have been a better, truer man than any Arab of his day, or he would not have obtained the influence and homage he did. But we have not the secret of his religious success in this. No doubt it carries us a good way. All men are incarnations either of good or evil ; the "hero," the incarnation of good, is the highest figure upon earth while he is present. But, after all, it is not the " hero "-the incarnation-which is the working power in social influences, but that which makes him heroic-the truth of which he is the incarnation. Mahomet himself was still an object of hatred to Omar when that kinsman and 68 THE FIFTH PICTURE. future caliph was converted by a verse of the Koran. He was dead, and a mere name, when Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Africa, received his faith. We shall look, therefore, not into the man, but into the faith which the man had, for the secret of its brilliant success ; and concerning this success there are three things to be said. The first is, that Mahommedanism displaced nothing better than itself. This is abundantly plain with respect to the religions which it superseded in Egypt and Persia, for they were at the time decrepit, worn out, and ready to die. In the prophet's own country, where his religion had its first and sorest battle to fight, it displaced sheer idol worship. At Mecca the old mosque was full of idols ; and, standing without, there was an idol for every day in the year-an army which Mahomet in his old age threw down and broke to pieces. In the Koran, he protests again and again against idol worship. We have been much struck with one chapter ; he is dealing with the Sabeans, or star worshippers. What can your star-god do for you ? he asks. Behold him, he rises, he sets ; a true god does not set. Remember Abraham, he continues, star-worship did not suffice for him, neither did the clay idols in the house of his father ; O father, he said, these images are not gods ; so he went out on the approach of evening ; the heavens rose over him, piercing far upwards into eternity ; and the young man cried for God. A star came out and stood on the breast of the sky. My Lord ! my Lord ! cried Abraham the · THE PARABLES OF THE KORAN. 69 heavens drew the star back into its darkness. Then rose the moon, beautiful, two-horned, like a living face in the liquid deep. My Lord ! my Lord ! again cried the adoring youth. The moon also set. High over the summits of far receding hills came the tints of morning. Flaming into daylight rose up the sun. Myvery God, at length ! said Abraham, and he bowed down to worship. In the evening this god, too, departed, and it was night once more. No! exclaimed the worshipper, nor sun, nor moon, nor star, shall be god to me ; my soul seeketh after one who never sets.-In parables such as these, Mahomet preached that there was no God but one, and he no idol dumb and dead, no creature-star, but the living Maker of heaven and earth. With parables such as these he displaced, not better, but worse than he gave. It is said that one sect among the Arabians had some notion of a hereafter before this time. When one of this sect died, his camel was tied to his grave, and allowed to starve, that it might follow its master into the other world, and serve him there. Mahomet put the Koran in the place of the famishing and solitary camel. Most decidedly a better way of proclaiming a hereafter ! A better way, we would also add, of setting forth the character of God than by stars and blocks of wood and clay ! And in itself, moreover, a proof of Mahomet's practical worth as a prophet. For, with a very scant education himself, he yet saw so truly into its necessity as to make it a part of religion • 70 THE FIFTH PICTURE. to study a book-to have cultivation and learning enough, at least, for that. The great difficulty, with respect to the proposition we have advanced, is Christianity ; but this difficulty decreases the moment we remember that the Christianity with which we are acquainted did not exist in that age. Recall the extent of the Roman empire to your minds. At the death of Constantine it broke into two parts-Rome the centre of the one, Constantinople the centre of the other. Around Rome gathered the Roman Church ; the Greek Church, with a patriarch or pope ofits own, took its rise in Constantinople. A word or two on the state of religion in these churches will show you that Mahommedanism displaced nothing better than itself. In the Western, or Roman Church, Christianity was still striving to lay hold of Germanic life, was working its slow way almost imperceptibly through pagan thought and feudal lawlessness into the human principle beneath. It had hardly obtained more than an acknowledgment of external ordinances when the Arabs appeared in Europe. Its inner meaning at that moment was misunderstood ; it was not felt that it had an inner meaning. "Holy Father, is this the kingdom of heaven?" we heard Clovis asking in bedecked Rheims. And yet, feeble though this hold was, external though it was, in Western Europe Christianity could say to Mahommedanism, " Depart, I am stronger than thou." In the Eastern, or Greek Church, again—the CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE. 71 church which had the main battle ground of the crusades under its jurisdiction-Christianity had degenerated into superstition and idolatry. The places of worship were full of pictures and images ; actually, there was the adoration of dead images. The Greek Astarte had become the Virgin Mary, and was paganly prayed unto. In true, simple statement, Christianity did not exist here. And do not wonder at this. Remember what was said in a previous paper about the " honest" or receptive heart. There was no such heart in the East ; Christianity found only voluptuousness and luxury refusing to be leavened. Even the ascetics, the monks who at that time were seeking in desert places, away from the bustle of city life, the peace which passeth understanding-what were they? Voluptuaries too ! Men too luxurious to take their part in the battle of life, and help to turn confusion into order. Then the bishops of the Greek Church, the men who were to be ensamples to the flock ? If you open a church history and turn to the chapters which pourtray their pastorate, you will not know which to loathe most -the unblushing avarice and lust of power they displayed, even to the length of arming their partisans in their cause, or the trifles and worse than inane nostrums which were the staple of their preaching. Mahommedanism did displace all this. Constantinople is at this moment full of mosques instead of churches ; but anything short of actual irreligion-and Mahommedanism is very far short of that-deserved to displace the 72 THE FIFTH PICTURE. sort of Christianity which the propagators of Islam found there. The second thing we have to say will require less space to say it in. Some of our readers know the meaning of the word heresy—literally, a choosing, a choice ; theologically, the choice of a particular doctrine. It is not necessarily the choice of a false doctrine ; but only, as Coleridge suggests, a false choosing—a choosing of one truth, out from the organic whole to which it belongs, and cleaving to it in its separated, isolate state. As we all know, heresies do not usually die in birth. They step into the world with certain signs of robust perseverance, which make them always formidable to the orthodox. They have vitality, and root, and spreading ; their progress is brilliant, rapid, extensive ; and, by virtue of this obvious quality, that they do not demand so much-do not appeal to so much of our mind as the truth does. Truth covers our entire being ; heresy appeals mostly to the understanding, always to a mere portion of our faculties. We receive it with greater ease, and submit to it more readily, than is possible with the truth. The natural development of beresy is sectarianism. Every sect represents some half-truth-some doctrine wrenched from its place and lifted into undue prominence. The doctrine believed in is a truth ; in most cases, undeniably so. Attention is directed to it. It is clear, simple, easy of apprehension, credible. The sect is formed and goes on spreading, just so long as its members continue ignorant that they have THE SECRET STRENGTH OF MAHOMMEDANISM. 73 left the universal temple to find shelter under one of its stones. We give this as the secret of the rapid spread of Mahommedanism. It was not falsehood. It was heresy a religion built upon a single doctrine. There is a will above man's will, above nature's one will the will of God. This is Islam, the doctrine on which Mahommedanism stands. Taken by itself, it is true-a virtual portion of all truth. It is the Arabian way of saying, " The Lord reigneth." There are other things in the Koran ; but this is the kernel of it, Islam-submission to God's will, practical recognition of " Not my will, but thine." Who submits to this will is a true Moslem, or Mussulman ; who does not is an infidel, and has denied the faith. For we are not free to act as we choose. This will has a lord's place over us. It streams through all nature ; it is supreme ; it is God. The will has no moral character. It is not, as the Bible puts it, a father's will-a will of love and mercy ; it is simply will. -a Now nothing but my understanding is appealed to by this doctrine. My moral life is hardly touched. I am to remain a wild soldierrobber, if I please provided I rob those only who do not yield to this will. The controversy which Christianity had with the military life cannot be understood by Mahommedanism. Military life is its highest, freest development. My conversion to this faith is a sort of external enlisting ; is not, cannot be, inwardly a difficult process. What I K 74 THE FIF TH PICTURE. am asked to do-to submit to a will higher than my own--is not a wrong thing. What I amasked to believe is truth, unequivocal truth. Islam ? My intellect receives it without protest, welcomes it even as actual light, and is not lowered, but exalted, by possessing it. It is in the nature of things, therefore, that Mahommedanism should have spread more rapidly than Christianity. The third thing we have to say grows out of this second and is part of it. It did not humble a man to become a Mussulman-did not require him to make large spiritual sacrifices. Mr Carlyle finds great fault with Prideaux and others for describing Mahommedanism as " an easy religion. " He speaks of its " fasts, lavations, strict, complex formulas, prayers five times a- day, abstinence from wine;" but we wonder that he, of all others, should fix on these things as proofs of its being a difficult religion he who has so pilloried the rotatorycalabash species of worship. External things are always easy. At one time it was counted easier to build the Tower of Babel, than lead the life which God required. Fasts, lavations, formulas ! If these had been ten times as numerous, the religion which prescribes them might nevertheless be an easy one. It is within the sphere of the moral conduct alone, you can determine whether a religion is easy or not. What does religion require of the man there ? How much submission ? Submission of my whole being-of my feelings wishes, thoughts-of my very self, as in Christi- ISLAM OR DEATH ! 75 anity. This is difficult. Less than this is less difficult. Read Oakley's " History of the Saracens," a veracious history, we venture to affirm, by internal evidence alone. It is a history of conversions. The greatest number of the conversions take place on the field of battle, and one is the description of all. There was but one alternative. " Islam and paradise, or death ?" "Wilt thou become a Mussulman -yea or nay ?" " Yea. " "Arise, be a sharer of our spoil." "Nay :" the sabre glances through the neck. One of the texts which Mahomet quotes with precision fromthe Bible is that word in the thirty-seventh psalm : " The meek shall inherit the earth." The Mahommedan exposition was that "the meek" were the children of Ishmael, and the inheritance of the earth was conquest. And everything else in their history chimes in with this. There was a perpetual pandering to the external, the sensual, in them. When the report came to the Caliph Omar that Antioch was taken, and that the army was removed to a distance because the men wished to possess themselves of the Greek women of that place, the caliph, with true Mahommedan instinct, lamented that his general had been so hard upon the Mussulmans, and ever after remembered to direct his generals differently. " Be kind to the Mussulmans," he would say ; "God does not forbid to them the good things of this life. ”—It is said these are the faults, not the realities of that faith. We do not doubt but they are. We are at present 76 THE FIFTH PICTURE. showing how this religion succeeded ; and we give this as the compliment of our second reason, that it did not rebuke, but tolerate and sanctify these faults. In maintaining this much of the old theory, however, we have no wish to continue the notion that the man Mahomet proposed those easy methods to himself as a means of his own getting on in the world. His sincerity need not be called in question. To him undoubtedly, Islam was all truth-was the centre and ground of life. There is a great deal in what Carlyle says, that he did not invent the sensuality of his religion, but only limited what of this he found existing. Neither is there any need to deny that he was a prophet. In so far as he was a speaker of truth he deserved the name ; and truth to some extent he did speak, as we have seen. Moreover, he seriously believed himself that he had a divine commission. After the banquet in Mecca, his kinsmen sent Abu Taleb, his uncle, to remonstrate with him. They were keepers of the old mosque ; his preaching would hurt the family interest. " Our craft will be destroyed." " No," said the prophet ; if the sun should stand on that side and the moon on this, and bid me cease, I would not obey them." They resolved to assassinate him. Each kinsman was to give one stab, so the guilt would be diffused, and fasten upon no one. When they burst into his bed-chamber for this purpose he was fled . His nephew Ali, his brave young vizier, had taken his place. In his flight the prophet was accom- TRAITS OF THE PROPHET. 77 panied by Abubeker. Among other adventures, they lay three days in a cave. The pursuers came seeking them into its neighbourhood. “ We are but two," said the timid Abubeker. "Three," answered the prophet ; " you are forgetting God." The assassins stood at the very entrance. In the interval a pigeon had laid two eggs on the " step," and a spider had woven a web across the mouth. " They are not here," they said, " or they would have broken these in going in." Mahomet was right. There were three in the cave. In the battlefield he reminds one of our own Cromwell. He preached to his soldiers as well as fought ; and he knew how to make use of passing occurrences as tokens of the will of Providence. More than enough has been said about his numerous wives. It should be remembered that he lived in the east, and was not a Christian. Moreover, these eleven wives were married when he was turned of fifty. Up till this age he was the husband of one wife, a wife older than himself. When he was twenty-five, his mistress, the widow of a rich merchant, offered to marry him for his faithful management of her business ; and he was true to her while she lived-a rare virtue in his day and generation. He never was ashamed of his old wife, never disowned his love for her. She was his first convert. The young Ayesha, his favourite among the eleven who succeeded, said once to him, " Your first was old and ugly ; you have younger, more beautiful, better wives now ! " -" Younger, more beautiful, indeed, " said Maho- 78 THE FIFTH PICTURE. met, "but not better-by Allah, not betterthere never was a better. She became my friend when I was friendless, and she believed in me when no other did." A few days before his death he went up to the pulpit and said, " If I have wronged any man let him now speak ; if I owe aught let it nowbe told ; better now than at the judgment." A man cried out that he owed him three drachms. They were paid, and with thanks. The angel of death found him reclining on the ground. Mahomet lifted his eyes to heaven, and, as a man truly hoping after his own paradise, uttered, in broken sentences, these words and fell asleep : "Oh, Allah ! -pardon my sins-yes-I come-among my fellow citizens on high." So died the man, whose word, embodied in Mahommedan soldiery, four hundred years thereafter, was to confront European life on the slopes of Calvary. And now a brief word on the struggle. The Sixth Picture. THE INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES. WE shall not fatigue our readers with a narrative of the wars in Palestine. Of all histories which have been written, the history of the Crusades is the least satisfactory. It would be a difficult history to write. The historian has to deal with people who to a certain extent are all heroic, who yet produce no thorough hero. The aim they proposed to themselves is grand, only when we examine it in relation to the faith of those who sought it. In itself it is a rather paltry aim. In the attempt to accomplish it, too, the Crusaders fairly break down ; on the very threshold of the business the leaders sputter into quarrelling about precedence. At one moment in Asia, these leaders would have returned to Europe and abandoned their enterprise, if the common people had not protested ; in their entire conduct they acted like headstrong youths, which, socially, as we have seen, they still were. We must forget names and contemplate the movement in mass in order to be interested. Up to precisely such a movement the religion that was in the European mind could carry the people. It was like fighting for the grave of one's mother ; it actually was that. Had not Mary-the ideal 79 80 THE SIXTH PICTURE. mother, lived in Bethlehem ? wherever her foot, and the foot of her Son, had trod-Bethlehem, Jerusalem, all Palestine-was holy ground. To us it would not be religion ; to them it was. "The way of God " was supposed by them to lead towards the material Zion. "The Mahommedan shall not be allowed to defile the sanctuary of God," they said. The rich become poor that they might join the solders of the cross. The poor became rich, finding that they had lives to give to the cause. Each man hastened to wind up his own affairs that he might devote himself to the blessed work. All Europe was stirred by it. It was the first great Event in the life of Europe ; the first time that its different peoples and classes had wrought together towards one aim. 66 Howthe excitement searched into the chambers of European life ! Not a district where it failed. to find soldiers to fight, and priests to pray for them, ready to set out ! In our newspapers and electric telegraph days, when news is tossed from one land to another with almost the speed of light, we have seen excitements spreading, and did not wonder. The advertisement of a share list, " a few years ago, drew ventures from all classes and countries. The other day, New York and London simultaneously sents ships to California. But when every morsel of intelligence had to be carried from mouth to mouth, through woods infested with banditti, by horsemen who had no roads, or by pilgrims on foot, the enthusiasm which gave birth to the Crusades, and the ideas which • THE CROWD AND ITS SPIRIT. 81 nourished it, overspread all Europe, and took possession of the hearts of all ranks. At length the movement gathers to a head. An eye witness shall place it before our minds :- ' The greater part of those who had not determined upon the journey joked and laughed at such as had ; prophesied that their voyage would be miserable and their return worse. Such was ever the language one day ; but the nextsuddenly seized with the same desire as the rest -those who had been most forward to mock abandoned everything for a few crowns, and set out with those whom they had laughed at but a day or two before. Who shall tell the children and the infirm that, animated with the same spirit, hastened to the war? Who shall count the old men and the young maids who hurried forward to the fight ?—not with the hope of aiding, but for the crown of martyrdom which was to be won amid the swords of the infidels. " You warriors," they cried, " you shall vanquish by the spear and brand, but let us at least conquer by our sufferings." At that same time one might see a thousand things, springing from the same spirit, which were both astonishing and laughable. The poor shoeing their oxen as we shoe horses, and harnessing them to two-wheeled carts, in which they placed their scanty provisions and their young children, and proceeding onward, while the habes, at each town or castle that they saw, demanded eagerly whether that was Jerusalem." Under the leadership of Peter the Hermit, of L 82 THE SIXTH PICTURE. Walter the Penniless, of Godfrey, of anybody who would take the lead, these masses of human beings, old and young, capable and incapable, undisciplined, unfurnished, began to move towards the Holy Land. The issue was most disastrous. If we could credit the numbers we find in the old chronicles, more than a quarter of a million perished through sheer misguidance, without reaching their destidestination. They had carried the loose notions of the times about property along with them. They ate when they were hungry, without asking leave. Farmers who offered opposition were put to the sword ; towns which did not provision them for the next stage were sacked. The religion which carried them through toils and dangers to fight with Mahommedans left room within them for open pillage and murder. The first bands passed through Hungary. The Hungarians would not tolerate their extortions and freebootery. Carloman the king, being the head of a Christian people, would give these pilgrims free passage, but not free license. The Crusaders would not hearken to reason ; and the first of the holy wars had to be fought between Christians. It was said that "the waters of the Danube ran red for days together with Crusaders' blood." And yet, in 1097, only two years after the Council at Clermont, seven hundred thousand Europeans, soldiers and pilgrims, met in the vicinity of Constantinople to prosecute the enterprise of the recovery of Jerusalem from Mahommedans. THE DREAM AND THE REALITY. 83 The great bulk of these were to perish by the way. By thousands and tens of thousands they sank exhausted on the burning soil of Asia. Then women, children, horses, dogs, and falcons began to die daily for want of water. Still the survivors move on to Jerusalem ; through storms of Mahommedan valour, through obstacles material and spiritual, through long sieges and hard fought battles, they continue to advance. At length, on a summer morning, Jerusalem is in view. The dream is a reality ! The golden city rises before them there, precipitous, crowned with the hateful crescent. They are on holy ground. The air resounded with their mingled cries : " Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem," shouted some ; others had no words to utter ; many knelt down and prayed. The siege was terrible. But Christian Europe, wasted, weary, decimated by famine, was stronger than Mahommedan Asia. A brave knight plants the banner of the cross on Olivet ; the walls are breached in a hundred places ; the Crusaders pour in through the breaches, and Jerusalem is won ! A Christian kingdom was set up in Jerusalem, which lasted some ninety years : a beggarly affair. At the end of that time the city fell back into the hands of Saladin, and the crescent once more displaced the cross, and managed to maintain its place from that time forth. We have only referred to the first Crusade. There was a second, a third, a fourth ; some count as many as eight. One is the picture of all the others. Brave lives sacrificed for what seemed 84 THE SIXTH PICTURE. religious ends ; brave shocks of arms disturbing the silence of the desert : this is the recurring story. In the discipline of the contest, Mahommedan life, on the one side, flowered up into the noble Saladin ; European life, on the other, matching him, into the lion-hearted Richard. At length Europe leaves the fleld ; not vanquished, but wiser. The youth has become a man. Forethought and experience have supplanted enthusiasm. European princes discover, while they are fighting in Palestine, that their own countries are lying waste. Philip of France pretends sickness, and abandons the third Crusade. Richard of England, who had vowed to continue while he had the flesh of a war-horse to eat, turned back in the vicinity of Jerusalem . At a distance he tried to obtain a glimpse of the Holy City ; choking with emotion he hid his face behind his shield ; but nevertheless, he broke his vow. The blunder was discovered. The holy land of home is revisited. And the efforts of European chivalry are henceforth given to redeem that from foes worse and more deadly than bands of Saracens in the East. All the glory attending Crusades can never bring them back. In the fifteenth century, when the Turks took Constantinople, the Pope preached a new Crusade. He tottered down to the harbour of Ancona to bless the mariners who should set sail. He would embark himself, if needful. The mariners did not lift their anchors. The time of Crusades was past. THE FRUIT OF ENTHUSIASM. 85 We propose, in the sequel, to point out the influence which these wars exerted in the development of the life of Europe. And here we require to distinguish between material effects, by which we mean, effects traceable to the material facts of the Crusades, and effects of a spiritual kind, effects which flowed out of the very character of the movements, which these movements and no other could produce. We have seen it gravely set forth as an effect of the Crusades, that they drew away hundreds of thousands of fanatics out of Europe and consumed them in Palestine ; that they were, in other words, a sort of religion- safety-valve for the foul gas which had been gendered in Europe ! On very different and far surer ground go those historians who give us statistics of the extension of commerce, which the wars operated. Our readers can easily understand how this would take place. The European armies would require provisioning ; commissaries would discover that supplies need not be taxed with the expenses and hazards of carriage from Europe. Corn as good was growing in the East. Some agent would start up to be a go-between. Merchants may make money although princes are wasting it. And thus trade would be opened between the buyers and sellers of the west and the east. When the wars were ended, the trade would still run in its old channels. Returned Crusaders would like to taste in their own countries the dainties to which they had been used abroad ; and merchants would find their pro- 86 THE SIXTH PICTURE. fit in continuing relations with their old acquaintances. In political writers, again, the result which is insisted on is the change in the organisation of European society. Before the Crusades, Europe was covered with castles ; the family was the most real organisation manifest. After the Crusades, the family organisation, or, what is the same thing, feudal life, is absorbed into national life, and, instead of castles and barons, kingdoms and. monarchs meet our view. Of material results, we look upon this as beyond comparison the most important. Feudalism was only the stepping onwards. It could not be a resting-place. We have, in the fourth picture, endeavoured to show how, by shutting up the baron, with his wife and children, in the castle-by giving scope and opportunity to the maternal functions-family-life was developed. But we require now to add, that, as an organisation of European society, feudalism was a very inadequate affair. In fact, it was not European at all. It was local, unsatisfactory, partial. The atoms of society were larger ; but society was still a congeries of atoms. If I could maintain myself in my castle-well ; if not- not well. Nothing bound me and my neighbours together. We did not belong to each other ; we did not love cach other. There was no common aim in which we were yoke-fellows ; each stood separate and alone. We can still see this for ourselves. The walls of the old castles are standing at the present day. What does their architecture tell us of the A FEUDAL PICTURE. 87 social life of their inhabitants ? The most of them are built on steep, inaccessible rock, and command a wide view. They are all surrounded by water, naturally or artificially. Try to restore one of these old ruins. Here is the picture of an actual one, built when the feudal ages were passing away, and, in consequence, when architecture was beginning to put on the features of a softer time. It is a high pile ; it rises from a rock furrowed with ravines and precipices. A river winds around the base. " The door presents itself, all covered with heads of boars or wolves” —actual ones ?—“flanked with turrets and crowned with a high guard-house. Enter, there are three enclosures, three moats, three drawbridges to pass. You find yourself in a large square court, where there are cisterns, stables, hen-houses. Below, there are cellars, vaults, and prisons ; above are the dwelling apartments. Above these are the magazine and larders. All the roofs are bordered with machicolations, parapets, guard- walks, and sentry-boxes. Inthe middle of the court is the donjon, which contains the archives and treasures. It is moated all round, and can only be entered by a bridge, almost always raised. Although the walls, like those of the castle, are six feet thick, it is surrounded up to half its height, with a chemise, or second wall, of large cut stones." Wherefore these double walls, this triple girdle of moats, these guardwalks, and sentry-boxes ? Protection ? Defence ? Rapacious neighbours ? Good. But the rapacious neighbours are themselves within moat and draw- 88 THE SIXTH PICTURE. bridge, and six-feet walls. Each man has rapacious neighbours ; each man is a rapacious neighbour. There is no concealing the uncomely fact. Neighbourliness is a thing unknown to feudalism. The baron has got no further than freebooting. He defends his family-he protects his retainers. So far, no further, extends his worth. In relation to European society, he is simply an Armstrong, a Rob Roy, a Robin Hood ; in plain English, a considerable blackguard. The men of large chief places ; their You can understand, this being the case, what a mighty help it was to Europe, when a power higher than the baron arose. And the Crusades did help us to such a power. They altered the baron's notions about his own importance. In his own castle he was a king ; in Palestine, he could be this no more. One man must lead, or the enterprise would go to wreck. territorial property got the immediate neighbours had to follow them. How naturally these relationships, formed in the East, would rise up to memory whenthe parties returned ! "Tancred was my dux." "Boemond was mine." "For years, in Palestine, we said captain, duke, lord, to these men. For years we fought under their banners. It is not easy to abandon old habits ; one does not readily cease from saying lord to them still." But if I were to do so if I were to meet Tancred in Europe, and call him only Tancred, how very naturally, on his side, will he bring old things to my remembrance ? How, almost as a matter of course, will he step in and WHAT IS THE GOOD ? 89 assert a lord's place over me : and if I should fall in the battle, or the hunt, or die prematurely, take my boy to his own house, and my estate to himself ? In point of fact, these very results came out. Small estates began to merge into large onesbarons to be fief-holders of kings-kingdoms stretched out-nations arose—-kings grew into new importance-the war-cries of the Holy Land were repeated in the battlefields of Europe—and feudalism, from that hour, began to be impossible. This result showed itself, by a very simple token, even before the Crusaders returned to Europe. In the first Crusade, the badge of the war-the cross upon the soldier's shoulder-was invariably red. Europe went forth as one mass to the work. In the third Crusade, only the French had retained the red ; the Flemings had green, the English white crosses. Europe was developing into nationalities, and the colour of the crosses was their visible sign. But we find ourselves moving on the mere surface when enumerating results like these. Kingdoms would have arisen, commerce spread, fanatics died out, without Crusades. We want to know what we have which we would not have had unless there had been Crusades-what has flowed out to us from the character of these wars -what from their occurrence at the particular stage of development which the European mind had reached ? We believe that we gather into one statement the entire result when we sav, that there M 90 THE SIXTH PICTURE. was accomplished by these wars the union between European valour and European faith. At a later period of development this union could only have taken place in a indirect way, if at all. The faith of Europe repudiates the sword—says plainly to men, " He who takes the sword shall perish by the sword." Not one word of countenance did the horrid reprisals of the Crusaders in Palestine find in Christianity proper. But Christianity proper was not known to these men : only its scenery was. The Holy Sepulchre was their Jesus ; the Virgin-Mother their creed. The thing which they did believe with all their heart, which was wrought in through their whole being, which they had brought out with them from the German forests, was the worth of brute-valour-of wielding well the battleaxe and the sword. This was bravery, worth, manliness in their eyes. while European men believed that the serious business of human life lay on the battlefield, a religious direction was given to their lives. Mark how this consummated the union we have referred to. The European man was living within his sixfeet walls, in the habitual exercise of his warweapons. He was training up his boy to the same material life. Of all things, he believed this the most heartily, that his sword was his own-his to strike, his to let rust, his for whatever purpose his soul lusted after. And he was led out from this falsehood. A cause that seemed holy to him beckoned him towards the East. Beyondthe sphere of his immediate selfishness there was occasion And at this point, THE UNION OF VALOUR AND FAITH. 91 and work for his sword. The word came into his heart that it was God's will he should so use it ; and he was by this means, and for ever after, lifted into a new and better faith, the faith that his sword was God's. Everything connected with the Crusades served to purify and deepen this faith. Individual Crusaders, on leaving home, partook the sacrament and mingled their farewells with religious ceremonies. Bands of them were publicly blessed by the Church. Many of the armies even turned aside to Italy, that they might pass through Rome, and so obtain this benediction from the pope himself ; and in the actual shock of battle, the presence of priests and the daily recurrence of priestly ceremonies, still farther leavened with the religious element the life of the European warrior. It The institution, as our readers all know, by which this new fact in the life of Europe was both expressed and nourished, was knighthood. would be incorrect to say that this institution had not come under the influences of religion before the Crusades. To some extent, in some places, it had ; but not until the Crusades began was the influence universal. The very flower of all knighthood, the Normans, were accustomed in the eleventh century-the century of the first Crusade to flout at the knight whose sword had been girded on by a priest. We hear nothing of this contempt for religious services after they entered into the Holy Wars. To the Normans and all German tribes alike, to all European soldiers, the admission of a young man into the rank of 92 THE SIXTH PICTURE. knighthood was no more than a military ceremony before these wars. Afterwards we find it accompanied by church offices. "The candidates," says Walter Scott in his " Essay on Chivalry,” “ watched their arms all night in a church or chapel, and prepared for the honour to be conferred on them by vigil, fast, and prayer. They were solemnly divested of the brown frock, which was the appropriate dress of the squire, and having been bathed, as a symbol of purification of heart, they were attired in the richer garb appropriated to knighthood. They were then solemnly invested with the appropriate arms of a knight ; and it was not unusual to call the attention of the novice to a mystical or allegorical explanation of each piece of armour as it was put on. The novice being accountred in his knightly armour, but without helmet, sword, or spurs, a rich mantle was flung over him, and he was conducted in solemn procession to the church or chapel in which the ceremony was to be performed, supported by his godfathers, and attended with as much pomp as circumstances admitted. High mass was then said, and the novice, advancing to the altar, received from the sovereign the accolade, or stroke which conferred the honour. The churchman present of highest dignity often belted on his sword, which for that purpose had been previously deposited on the altar, and the spurs were sometimes fastened on by ladies of quality. The oath of chivalry was lastly taken, to be loyal to God, the king, and the ladies." THE OATHS AND CEREMONIES OF KNIGHTHOOD. 93 Knighthood had its peculiar laws and morality. The vows of the young knight were religious. He engaged to speak the truth, to act with honour, to lead a pure and manly life, and generally to use the armour with which he was invested for the service of the church and the ladies. The description which Paul gives of the Christian warrior in Ephesians, served to remind him why sword and helmet and breastplate had been bestowed upon him. In the expulsion of a knight from the order-a very serious affair indeed in those days -the same religious element appeared. His spurs were cut off close to his heels with a cook's cleaver. His arms were baffled and reversed by the common hangman. His belt was cut to pieces, and his sword broken." He was placed on a hurdle and covered with a pall, and amid the chanting of the funeral service and the tolling of the death-bell, he was sent either to his grave, or back into the herd of serfs as a man dead to knightly honour. In everything connected with the institution, the union we are pointing out revealed itself. 66 And even more strikingly than by these ceremonies did this union seek a garment and expression in the Holy Land. You have heard of the Kings of Malta ? They originated in Jerusalem, in the following way :-Afew wounded Crusaders, found by King Godfrey when visiting the Hospital of St John there, were endowed with an estate for their support. The poor brothers of the hospital, in gratitude, proposed to use this unexpected wealth for the relief of pilgrims and sick crusaders. 94 THE SIXTH PICTURE. They formed themselves into a religio-military order-had knights, clergy, and serving brothers -became fashionable, and wealthy, and numerous. Their order, known at first as the Order of the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St John, spread into Europe, and became powerful. (Their last refuge was Malta, from whence their more familiar name. ) Nowthe peculiarity of this order consisted in the union between the functions of a religious and military society. The knight hospitaller was both a monk and a soldier ; he renounced all worldly goods, bound himself to the sole service of his order, and became an instrument for ecclesiastical purposes. In different circumstances, but with a precisely similar union of war and religion, arose another very famous order of Knights, that known as the Order of the Red Cross or Knights Templars, devoted to the freeing of the highway of Palestine from robbers, that pilgrims might have safe access to the Holy Sepulchre. We have referred to the peculiar character of these orders, and detailed the ceremonies which accompanied the entrance into knighthood and the expulsion from its rank, that our readers might be able to discern for themselves the presence in European life of the new fact, the union between faith and valour, which we have named as the grand result of the Crusades. That is never an imaginative or unsubstantial result which possesses emphasis and energy enough to express itself in institutions. f ་ U: BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSEUM SALADIN RICHARD.1 EDWARD.1 BORDERS Chivalry of the Black Prince. GASTON DEFOIX. See page 95. COURTESY OF THE BLACK PRINCE. 95 . We will not presume to estimate the precise influence which this union itself had on European life. Like everything else which is spiritual, its influence is incalculable. But we will submit to our readers a few details by means of which glimpses of its fruit can be obtained. In the death- song of Regnar Lodbrog, given in our second picture, the singer was represented as shut up in a pit with vipers and serpents. Thus, before valour was joined to religion, did the European man deal with a prisoner of war. How, afterwards ?—With courtesy and gentleness. It was an English King who shut up Lodbrog with vipers. Another English King, of a later age, Edward the Black Prince, fought hand to hand with a French Knight under the walls of Calais and vanquished him. The vanquished Frenchman was entertained as a guest ; and when supper was ended, Edward took the chaplet of pearls from his own brow and placed it on his adversary's, saying ; -"Well hast thou fought, Sir Eustace ! Wear this for my sake ; and accept your freedom as a token of my good will.” In general manners and personal bearing the change was no less striking. Tacitus has introduced us to the German in his original home. It is a man you see- but a man rough hewn. To leap upon a horse, to hunt the boar, to wield the sword, are his highest employments. In leisure hours he gathers his fighting men about him, and the ox, or the stag, roughly roasted, is as roughly eaten, by men to whom quantity is of more value 96 THE SIXTH PICTURE. than quality. If you take the same man on the eve of the Crusades, when he has submitted to the constraints of a castle, he is still rude ; all the rough edges remain ; he lives among inferiors ; he is accustomed to rule ; his heart is full of pride. Now look at this same man in the middle ages. Froissart, to whom we owe so many of the traits of chivalry, gives us in his " Chronicles " an actual portrait. It is that of the Earl of Foix :-" I have in my time seen many knights, kings, princes, and others, but never one like him. He loved that which ought to be loved, and hated that which ought to be hated. He was a wise knight of high enterprise and of good counsayle ; he never had miscreant with him. . . . He said many orisons every day ; he gave five florins in small monies at his gate to poor folks for the love of God ; he was large and courteous in gifts ; he could right well take where it parteyned to him, and deliver again where he ought. . . . He was of good, easy acquaintance with every man, and amorously would speak to them ; he was short in counsayle and answers. He loved hunting but not folly ; took regular account of his revenues ; had four secretaries at his hand every morning. . . . And at midnight, when he came out of his chamber into the hall to supper, he had ever before him twelve torches burning, borne by twelve varlettes standing before his table. . . . The hall was ever full of knights and squires, and many other tables were dressed to sup who would. There was none should speak to him at his table but if he was called. .. A PICTURE OF GASTON DE FOIX. 97 His meat was lyghtly wilde fowle, the legs and wings alone ; and in the day he did but little eat and drink. He had great pleasure in harmony of instruments ; he could do it right well himselfe ; he would have songs sung before him ; he would gladly see concerts and fantasies at his table." During the twelve weeks that Froissart lived with this earl, he had himself to read songs and ballads after supper to his host. "And while I read there was none durst speak anything to interrupt me, so much did the earl delight in listening." At heart this is the same man described by Tacitus. We mean, there is not less of manhood, of valour, in him ; but otherwise, how different ! Goethe says : " Being is ever a glorious birth into higher being." Behold the proof in this earl. The European man has become gentle, courteous, wise ; a beautiful spirituality enfolds him, shines forth from him ; his life is higher, nobler, truer ; there is greater breadth, greater worth, greater harmony in it. With men like these society will progress faster. The strength which loved to show itself in feats of individual prowess, in giving and accepting challenges to battle-in self-will, and outer hardihood-is now used to draw in the rough excrescences, and to polish and beautify the life. In the old time society was a cart of broken metal ; it would move only when the cart was upturned. Now, it finds its likeness in the invisible globules of the river ; the individual life is rounded and softened ; the whole moves onward, by the law of nature, on slight declivities . We trace this N 98 THE SIXTH PICTURE. change to the spiritual influences of the Crusades. The poets of the middle ages appeared to be awake to the same fact. In their poems, the courtesy of Charlemagne was tried to be accounted for by the fable that he, too, had been at the Holy Sepulchre. It may be that some strong youth is reading these lines for whom these facts have pointed meaning. We set such an one before our minds. Ayoung man of strong mind, of strong body, with courage to announce his strength. He believes it to be manly to make his individuality felt, to let every person in the company understand that he specially is present ; he turns with ineffable disgust from a young man who should put his pride in dress. If you speak to him of Lord Chesterfield's letters, he cannot express himself for scorn. Our closing word, in connection with the Crusades, shall be addressed to this youth. Others as well as you are far from placing Chesterfield on the same shelf with the Bible. Very few people in the world thoroughly like the young man given to dress. But what is that dressiness, that excessive politeness, symbolic of? People did not all at once resolve to be dressy and polite ; there is an aim, a groping after something in this. Our tailor once said to us, " A man's worth is known, sir, by the make of his coat." What did this tailor virtually mean when he said this ? What is the ideal which unconsciously possesses the mind of the dressy youth ? What true thing is it which gives to these letters of Chesterfield the continuance VALOUR AND GENTLENESS. 99 they have ? This, that humanity has not given us its highest expression when a man stands before that this man is but the trunk of better things ; that out of him, if you take care, you may produce the gentleman. us ; A brave thing to be a man ; a base thing to be unmanly ! But if this rough manhood, this block from nature's quarry, has a manhood within its manhood, a purer form, a statue waiting to be brought out to light, will you still prefer your roughness ? Is it a wrong thing for a brave youth like you to be a gentleman? to bring out of your manly valour (what you name " independence") gentleness, the fruit of faith ? There was valour in that heart which said- " The rank is but the guinea stamp : A man's a man for a' that. " But it was that same heart that turned the plough aside lest the "wee mousie " should be destroyed. We have had few men in whom manly valour found so energetic an expression as Samuel Johnson. It was the manliest act of English life at the time to refuse the patronage of Lord Chesterfield for his dictionary. "Seven years, my Lord, have now past, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door. The notice which you have (now) been pleased to take of my labours, had it been earlier, would have been kind ; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it-till I am solitary and cannot impart it-till I am known, and do not want it." Yet it was this same Johnson who 100 THE SIXTH PICTURE. filled his house in Bolt Court with miserable people picked up on the streets ; who, when his means were counted by shillings, gave pence to houseless children whom he found sitting on stairs by night ; on whose coming out the poor waited, certain to be assisted. A man, rough, rough as a bear-but with all his roughness a gentle-man ! No ; you will not turn aside to bad courses by striving to be gentlemen. It is not needful that your coat be black or red ; that you be of the order of the Bath or the Garter to attain it. Since our fathers fought in Palestine we are all born knights. Disorder, ignorance, lust, are our Saracens. Life is our Holy Land. Let us do our task with manly vigour, but with free-working, noble gentleness, no less. For gentleness is just the world's word for " love one another. " And therefore we shall commend this aim ; we shall ask you to educate your valour up to gentleness. Our daily life is not without examples to urge you on. In steamboats, in omnibuses, in the bustle of market places, from the common acts of plain men, by forbearances, by timely and unsought kindnesses, by the helping of the feeble, and the sympathy with the sorrowing . -there flash forth upon you gleams of a quality which puts vulgarity aside. It is the genius of European life announcing the wealth below. It is the aboriginal pity of the Germanic nature, sanctified by Christianity, coming up out of its fountain for the service of daily life. When such instances occur to you, perhaps you will remember how our ancestors had to buy their secret with their life's THE VEIN OF TRUE REFINEMENT. 101 blood at the gates of Jerusalem. And you will cherish in your heart no thought, and in your life no evil habit, that shall hinder the European man in you from ripening into the European gentleman. The Seventh Picture. EUROPE ECCLESIASTICAL-THE CHURCH OF ROME

OF Europe Ecclesiastical-literally so—not Europe receptive of certain doctrines, but Europe within the organisation of the church. We might name our subject, the Church-life of Europe. This life has manifested itself hitherto only in the Roman and Protestant Churches. Of these churches, then, we have now to speak. And first, since it was first in point of time, ofthe Church of Rome. Of this church, we do not hesitate to confess that it is difficult for Protestants to speak as it deserves. We do not belong to it ; generally speaking, we do not love it. What Bishop Thirlwall says of his treatment of Greek mythology, that, after all his pains, and just because he did not believe in it, it must be wanting in life and freshness, may well be repeated of our description of the Church of Rome. We are not believers in it. We see it only at that moment when corruption had crept over it, and reformation was needed. Before we begin our study of it, therefore, both for ourselves and our readers, we shall use the liberty of saying, that we are bound to approach it, at present, exclusively in the capacity of students of history. Elsewhere we might be free to approach 102 THE CHURCH-LIFE OF EUROPE. 103 it otherwise-as persons having certain convictions. on matters ecclesiastical-as Protestants ; here, this would be improper. It would be a very impertinent affectation of liberality on our part to ask our readers to forget, much more to forego, these convictions for a little ; but, without any offence, we may remind them, that in pages like the present these convictions have no call to express themselves. We will go still further, and say that they will not lose but gain by looking at the Roman Church in a purely historical spirit. We have hitherto looked at it mostly in a controversial spirit—in a spirit anxious to discover faults in it. To controversy, working its own sphere, be paid all the homage which it deserves. The function of the controversialist is destruction and proselytism. Ours is to apprehend honestly what actually occurred. Controversy can pick up many a little brickbat where history finds none. There is the fine story of the female pope, Joan, for instance, who began her reign in the year 855, and reigned until she became a mother-a Catholic story originally. Luther saw her statue as a pope when he went to Rome. How often even yet, on platforms and in the corners of newspapers, is this lady hurled at the head of the papacy ; and yet more than two hundred years have passed since David Blondel, a Protestant, completely exploded her. Here are private letters, he said, written in testifying that Benedict was pope. of Benedict's minted that year. that very year, Here is a coin Here, again, is 104 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. proof that it was not till three hundred years after, that Roman histories of the popes began to refer to her existence. And, last of all, here are satires on popes of the name of John, depicting them as effeminate and dissolute, from misconstructions of which the fable very probably originated-Joanna being read for Joannes. But the great sin of controversy is that it is content to deal with fragments of things-with bits of facts broken off from the whole to which they belong-with the corruptions and abuses of things ; and you all know, to present a fragment of the truth, under the name which expresses the whole, is to speak falsely of that whole. Take our Protestant conception of monks and monasteries. Generally speaking, this conception is formed upon observations made during the age which preceded the Reformation. We believe that Roman Catholics deplore as earnestly as any can the corruption which overspread the monasteries during that century. But how unfair a proceeding it is for a controversialist to describe an entire class, and its institution, having an existence spread over many centuries, by the evil conduct of individuals, or the condition of the institution at a particular period ! Is the actual monk of history before us when impure monks are ? Are monasteries, when those of a particular age are ? Assuredly not. We owe it mainly to monks, and, let us recollect it with pride, pre-eminently to English monks, that Europe is filled by Christian peoples. Laziness ? -superstition ? -celibacy ? It is easy to repeat THE REAL MONK. 105 these words ; but they convey no reproach against the European monk. For ourselves, we find no heroes to compare with him in the early centuries of European life. Put all connection with the eastern monk-with the man who retired into deserts, and stood upon pillars, and built his body into walls-out of your mind when you are looking at him of the west. Except the name, there was none. The monk of the west was an active, practical man. He proposed to himself for work the conversion of heathens-the taming of their fierce nature-the stopping of war-the cultivation of land-the building of churches-the setting free of slaves-and, by means of these things, the subduing of his own corrupt nature. We have listened to quite too much against his celibacy. One naturally asks, how, with a wife, the monk could have accomplished what he actually did ? Their life was spent amid morasses and in deep forests. They had to live now here, now there, amid the wild races (heath-ens, they who lived on the heath) they undertook to educate ; and we maintain it was wiser, it was more practical, for a man who had often to lie on the open field, with a fire to keep the wolf away at night- who to-day had to go up with an axe to the tree where Druids celebrated their rites, and smite it, to convince the poor Frieslanders that it was a tree, and to-morrow had to tell Burgundian Theoderics that adultery was inexcusable, even in kings-it was wiser, safer, nobler, we say, for men having such work to do, to deny themselves to marriage than to use it. 106 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. As to monasteries, again, we find nothing good in European life, if they were not. Agriculture owes its dignity in these lands to them. They became great landholders, and diffused a taste for agriculture. Until they arose, the land was tilled by slaves ; they removed the chain, granted the land on lease, and the serf became a husbandman. The site of the monastery was determined with a view to this end. The monks themselves taught the serf to use the plough ; and then the time came when they did not require to do manual work at all. This, too, was good. It was labour dividing itself, that all its parts may be well done. A new activity opened before the monasteries : untamed nature first-next, untamed humanity. They became the schools of Europe. Suspected at their origin by the church, they rose into such importance, that popes, and archbishops, and chancellors of kingdoms, were sought amongst those who had received a training within their walls ; and one noble trait in their history is, that they existed for no particular class. Self- supported by their lands, they could afford to receive whoever had an aptitude for instruction ; and hence it came to pass, that even in the first ages of European life, as in the last, the children of poor peasants had opened to them a path which led up to the highest dignities in Christendom. Hildebrand was the son of a carpenter in Tuscany ; Luther, a monk also, was the son of a Saxon miner. Now, in acquiring this knowledge of the monasteries, the student of history does not altogether THE CHURCH FORCING ITS WAY. 107 put away from him what the Protestant controversialist makes use of ; but he estimates it, finds it of very minor value-finds, in fact, that the controversialist is looking only at a house in ruins, while he takes in its entire existence, from the choosing of a site, upwards. And therefore it is that we ask our readers to come to the study of the Church of Rome, not as controversialists, but as students of history. From the beginning of the fifth, until the sixteenth century-1100 years-this church maintained its place. It had entered into union with the Roman empire. The empire fell, and it was left alone. Barbarian after barbarian traversed all Europe, yet this church maintained its place. In the eighth century, the hordes of the north were pressing in from the west ; the Arabs devastating Europe from the east ; both rushing on towards Rome ; both anxious to pillage the church -yet it maintained its place. Amidst a continual deluge of physical force, Paganism, Mahommedanism, it had to force its way. It surmounted all obstacles. It waved back the Arab to his east ; it converted the Norman from his idolatry ; it rose up to power, to large worth ; it softened and tamed down the fierce ways of savage tribes ; it watched over their settlement, superintended their growth, introduced humanity and religion into their laws, and ultimately gathered every European nation within its walls. It sent its priesthood into every land. Priests mingled with all ranks ; they were the leaven of society-the representatives of order 108 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. and humanity, when society was still rude and undisciplined. You would find a priest's influence in the hut and in the palace. For good or for evil, Europe was schooled by priests. The church which did all this could not be all rottenness and corruption, as we have too often been taught to suppose. There are many aspects in which it might be studied. We shall select two : 1. The Church of Rome in relation to the European state. 2. The Church of Rome in relation to the ideal of a Christian Church. 1. The Church of Rome in relation to the European state.-We must at once refer to the connection which subsisted between the bishops of Rome and the Frankish and Germanic sovereigns. Before the eleventh century, this connection assumed three aspects. 1st, The connection between two powers struggling into existence, and which required help from each other. The Bishop of Rome needed, in the general upbreaking of European society, the assistance of the strong arm of physical force, and Charles Martel gave that arm to him. The Germanic kings, on the other hand, living and trying to rule amid the weltering restlessness and lawlessness of the immigration period, needed the sanction ofthe church to their authority, and the pope gave them this sanction when he crowned them. In the middle of the eighth century, Pope Zachary thought that the man who possessed the power of king was king, and commanded Boniface (the martyr) to anoint Pepin, son of Charles Martel, king of the Franks. 2d, This connection CHURCH AND STATE-THREE ASPECTS. 109 It assumed a new aspect at the moment that the aged Charlemagne was crowned emperor at Rome. It is to the title of the extinct empire of the old Romans he succeeds. He represents a vast unity ; but the pope who crowned him now represents a unity as vast. The one is the political head, the other the ecclesiastical head, of Europe ; the one stands for the state, the other for the church. is the league of two established and independent powers. The emperor is defender of the republic of God. His wars are at once wars of aggrandisement and conversions. Not by any preconcerted plans, but so it happened that wherever the monks penetrated among heathen tribes, the emperor followed to acquire that territory. On the other hand, the pope is to back the emperor. The enemies of the one are to be the enemies of the other ; where the sword is too feeble, the excommunication is to reach. 3d, Let us not lose sight of the actual state of society in Europe whilst this connection exists. We are so accustomed to think of church and state as separate abstractions, as words representing distinct powers, that we are apt to transfer our notions into the past, and conceive of the church as free to develop in its legitimate way, and the state, again, in the way most proper to it. Unhappily, this was by no means the case. We saw in our last picture that nationalities first dawned upon European society under the walls of Jerusalem. In the tenth century, it is only by courtesy we speak of nations. They did not exist ; they could not exist. Their boundaries were not 110 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. marked ; their principal nobles were each for being a king. There was no law-nothing but the strong hand of the fighter ; and the chief who called himself king and emperor had to maintain his place invariably by arms. Around the walls of Rome-in Rome itself-things were in the same condition. The Roman nobles were full of rapacity. The resolved to seize the Papacy itself. A period of disaster followed. In the ninth and tenth centuries the papal power was assumed by Tuscan nobles. Popes were forced upon the apostolic throne by the sword, and by the sword removed. "Two were murdered, five were driven into exile, four were deposed, three resigned their hazardous dignity. Some of these were raised to that pre-eminence by arms, some by money. Two received it from the hands of princely courtezans ; one was self-appointed. " Aboy of twelve, a young lad of eighteen, were made popes. Things the most atrocious, deeds the most licentious, were wrought by ungodly Italians, who assumed the name of "Father of the Universal Church." What inevitably followed a state of things so wretched ? What were true members of the Roman Church, true bishops of the Christian Church in every land, likely to desire in such circumstances ? Unquestionably, the very thing which happened : the interference and supremacy of the power who helped the church in former troubles-the Germanic emperor. Otho was crowned emperor 2d February, 962, at Rome. He deposed the licentious pope who crowned him, HILDEBRAND APPEARS. 111 put an upright man in his place, and exacted from the clergy and people of Rome the promise that no pope would henceforth be elected without the consent of himself or his successors. In the first half of the following century, the emperor, Henry III. , also deposed intruders upon the papacy, and nominated and maintained in power four successive popes of the Germanic blood. But if there was good in this supremacy, there was also evil. The eleventh century dawned upon a church subordinate to the state. The papal dignity finds itself lower than the emperial. At this crisis Hildebrand appeared. A monka man of pure life—he had risen from the masses to be Abbot of Clugny. In his retirement, he had studied with a profound interest the characteristics and tendencies of his age. Around him rolled hither and thither the contradictory elements of society. Holy things were venal ; kings sold bishoprics to the highest bidders ; the people of the Roman streets claimed to elect, in conjunction with their clergy, the spiritual head of Europe ; emperors wrested this power from their grasp, but claimed it for themselves ; simony and licentiousness overspread the church. The heart of Hildebrand was sick ; there was no resting- place for his soul in the actual. A grand idea swelled up before his mind. The church is corrupt, because it is subordinate to the state, he said. Bishops are venal, because kings make bishops as they will. The church shall rise out of her thraldom ; nor king nor emperor shall vex her more ; high over all 112 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. powers the church shall sit ; the head of the church shall be head for all Europe ; European states will be hands and feet to him ; in him all shall be united ; from him all law shall flow ; he shall be God's vicar over kings and people ; and one sublime confederacy, theocratic in element, shall flow down over all Europe-over all the world, from the footstool of his throne. It was in 1048 he left Clugny for Rome. For five and twenty years after, he was, in subordinate station, the right hand, the soul of the papacy. Five popes, during that brief space, descended into the grave. At length, in 1073, while the corpse of Alexander was still stretched out in the Vatican, the shouts of the Roman populace proclaimed that Hildebrand should now be pope. He had worn no masked character before. While legate in France to the second of the five predecessors, he cited before him the French bishops, and charged them all with simony. One man protested his innocence. 66'Repeat the doxology," said Hildebrand. " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the". -But that name he had defiled by giving for his benefice could not be pronounced. The culprit fell before Hildebrand, and confessed his guilt. The stern man was loved by the people for his sternness. 'Here, at least. " said these poor hearts of theirs, " is one who loves us—who has an interest in our well- being-who does the work of a pastor over us, and not that of a wolf. " "" It seemed to him that much of the self- seeking BEGINNING AT HOME. 113 amongst the clergy arose from their family ties ; it seemed that the priests would be freer to minister to their flocks if these ties were broken. The fathers of the church had recommended it, the monks had long practised it. "So ever after shall the clergy," said Hildebrand (Gregory VII. now,) the moment he ascended the throne. " Not only is celibacy from this time forth recommended-not only enjoined ; but priests actually married shall put their wives away. " The law was passed ; the thing was done Legates went through all Europe enforcing the stern rule. Bishops and priests had to put their wives and families away. The people hooted and pelted with filth those who delayed to do so. And with this law, Hildebrand begins to work out his ideal. Note here the characteristic of greatness : he begins at home. The ultimate design is, church above state. But not yet ; not so long as the church is corrupt ; not while these venal and sensual bishops rule over it ; not until this bad leaven is purged away. And now it is done, and the struggle with the state begins. In all lands, kings had been asked to confirm the election of bishops. In Germany, especially, it formed a very principal privilege of royalty. The bishop whom the king favoured was pretty certain to favour the king. In times of war he was to assist him with troops and money. " It shall be so no more," said Hildebrand. "No bishop, no prelate, shall receive from a temporal prince his office-shall take no oath to him of allegiance-shall receive from me and my succesP 114 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. sors alone confirmation, and to us shall take henceforth the oath of allegiance. " The papal system was near completion . The church stood separate from the state, dignity rising above dignity, the pope supreme. Look down through all its ranks, no hand of king or emperor can be seen. The temporal power is shut out ; the ecclesiastical power is all. But what was all this, if the supreme head itself depended on the empire ? Hitherto the pope was either elected in Rome by Roman influence by the influence often of a Roman mob, the partisans of the nobility, or else by a German emperor. In either case, his election was under constraint. It was enacted by Hildebrand that the election should be confined to the College of Cardinals-originally the parish priests of Rome-and these cardinals were nominated by the pope. What more remains ? The church has withdrawn within her own management the election and discipline of the clergy. From the pope all sanction is to descend. The cardinals are to elect the pope. The system is complete : the church is separate from the state. But the ideal is not yet achieved. The German emperor of that day was Henry IV. His father was a brave man, and might have striven with Hildebrand successfully. He died at the moment the papacy was to assert its pre-eminence. His son was but six years of age at his father's death ; and between that and his majority how much had been achieved by Hildebrand ! Hildebrand himself was the second pope elected THE STRUGGLE WITH HENRY. 115 without consent of the empire. The bishops who had bought their office were deposed. When Henry assumed the sceptre, he found the best privileges of his crown absorbed into the papacy. All historians have been struck by this. Ideas which had been gathering to a head for centuries found at this moment a genius capacious enough to realise them-to convert them into institutions, and a minority in the empire to allow them to develop. Unfortunate Henry ! All things had gone wrong in his minority. First of all, he himself had gone wrong-had led a wild licentious youth, His Saxon subjects were revolted ; the bishops he had sold benefices to were excommunicated ; the privilege of confirming the choice of pope had passed from his hands ; his privy councillors were laid under the ban of the church ; and he was himself cited to Rome, to answer there for his corrupt life, and his encouragement of simony in the church. He was a brave man, too. His licentious life ceased with his minority. He girded himself for the battle. He called a synod of bishops at Worms. Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII. , is solemnly deposed. What was done at Worms another synod at Placenza confirmed. A messenger goes to Rome with the deposition. Sir James Stephen has given a superb picture of his appearance there :- "It was now the second week in Lent, in the year 1076. From his throne, beneath the sculptured roof of the Vatican, Gregory, arrayed in the rich mantle, the pall, and the other 116 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. His mystic vestments of pontifical dominion, looked . down the far- receding aisle of the sacred edifice on the long array of ecclesiastical lords and princes, before whom ' Henry, King of Germany and Italy, calling himself emperor ' (the pope had not crowned him in Rome) , had been summoned to appear, not as their sovereign, to receive their homage, but as a culprit, to await their sentence. The 'Veni Creator ' was on the lips of the papal choir, when Roland, an envoy from the synods of Worms and Placenza, presented himself before the assembled hierarchy of Rome. demeanour was fierce, and his speech abrupt. ‘ The king and the united bishops, both of Germany and Italy (such was his apostrophe to the pope), transmit to thee this command : Descend without delay from the throne of St Peter. Abandon the usurped government of the Roman Church. To such honour none must aspire without the general choice and sanction of the emperor. ' Then, addressing the conclave- To you, brethren,' he said, ' it is commanded, that at the feast of Pentecost ye present yourselves before the king, my master, to receive a pope and father from his hands. This pretended pastor is a ravenous wolf.' A brief pause of mute astonishment gave way to shouts of fury. Swords were drawn, and the audacious herald was about to expiate his temerity with his blood. But Gregory descended from his throne, received from the hand of Roland the letters of the synods, and, resuming his seat, read them in a clear and deliberate voice to the THE SCENE IN THE VATICAN. 117 indignant council. Again the sacred edifice rang with passionate invective. Again swords were drawn on Roland, and again the storm was composed by the voice of the pontiff. He spoke of prophecies fulfilled in the contumacy of the king and in the troubles of the faithful. He assured them that victory would reward their zeal, or divine consolations soothe their defeat ; but whether victory or defeat should be their doom, the time, he said, had come when the avenging sword must be drawn to smite the enemy of God and of the church. Henry's mother was by his side. She, too, was against her son. Hildebrand turned to her for approval. Then, amidst the breathless silence of that assembly, the old man, in the name of God and the apostles, interdicted to King Henry the government of the whole realm of Germany and Italy, absolved all Christians from their oaths and allegiance to him, and bound him with the bond of anathema, that the nations may know and acknowledge that thou-(the interdict was in the form of an address to the Apostle Peter) -art Peter, and that upon this rock the Son of the living God hath built his church, and that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” It was a new thing to go forth against the head of the German people ; but the power of interdict was not new. A doom, very terrible in those days, was wrapped up within it, for him on whom it fell. He was outlawed from Christian society. The mark of Cain was on his brow. The people shrank from his company, as the brooks from their 118 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. "Anathema maranHe channels in summer's heat. atha " was upon him. His office, his councillors, his power, mouldered away from his side. was left alone. A new election took place ; and masses of armed men, the soldiers of the defenders of the church, took possession of his land in name of his successor. The land itself was made to wear the signs of desolation ; a perpetual Lent was proclaimed ; the people were forbid all games, all pleasures, even salutations in the street and market ; beards were to remain unshaven ; gay clothing to be forborne ; marriages to be performed in churchyards ; public worship was made to cease ; altars, churches, were despoiled of their ornaments ; pictures, images, relics, were thrown upon the ground and covered with sackcloth or brushwood ; except baptism and extreme unction, all religious rites were withholden ; even the bells were removed from the steeples ; and, to wind up the list of calamities, the very dead were interdicted their wonted resting places, and thrown out into ditches, or buried in unconsecrated ground. Often, during the century and a half which went before, had emperors deposed popes. Never till now was the step taken which Hildebrand did ; and it was no mere fulmination of ecclesiastical authority. A new emperor, proposed by the revolted subjects of Henry, was already in the field . Henry was powerless. The excommunication surrounded him with a poison atmosphere. He could not lift a sword until it was withdrawn. A diet of German nobles was summoned at Augsburg for THE KINGLY PILGRIM'S HUMILIATION. 119 the 23d February, 1077. If Henry was still under the displeasure of the church, the new emperor was to be elected. It is already December. In ten weeks more it will be too late. Henry and his queen, in the garb of pilgrims, crossed the Alps to solicit pardon. Alone, unfriended, their way preceded only by a few hired peasants, had these two to toil through snow and ice, to climb the grim passes in the dead of winter, that they might reach the terrible old man. The unwise bishops who at Worms and Placenza had ventured to depose their spiritual head, also had to come, to be confined to solitary cells, and to a fare of bread and water, for their folly. The pope was at the fortress of Canossa, a stronghold of the Tuscan sovereigns. Hither came the emperor and his faithful Bertha. We shall be indebted to the same writer who gave us the picture of the scene in Rome for the description of the scene at Canossa :-"It was towards the end of January, the earth was covered with snow, and the mountain streams were arrested by the keen frost of the Apennines, when, clad in a thin penitential garment of white linen, and bare of foot, Henry, the descendant of so many kings, and the ruler of so many nations, ascended, slowly and alone, the rocky path which led to the outer gate of the fortress at Canossa. With strange emotions of pity, of wonder, and of scorn, the assembled crowd gazed on his majestic form and noble features as, passing through the first and second gateway 120 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. he stood in the posture of humiliation before the third, which remained inexorably closed against his further progress. The rising sun found him there fasting and there thesetting sun left him stiff with cold, faint with hunger and devoured by shame and ill - suppressed resentment. A second day dawned, and wore tardily away, and closed, in a continuance of the same indignities. A third day came, and Hildebrand once more prolonged till nightfall the indignity. Nor was it until the unhappy monarch had burst away from the scene of mental and bodily anguish, and sought shelter in a neighbouring convent, that the pope would admit the suppliant to his presence. It was the fourth day on which he had borne the humiliating garb of an affected penitence, and in that sordid raiment he drew near on his bare feet to the more than imperial majesty of the church, and prostrated himself before the diminutive and emaciated old man, from the terrible grace of whose countenance, we are told, the eye of every beholder recoiled as from lightning. Hunger, cold, nakedness, and shame, had for the moment crushed that gallant spirit. He wept and cried for mercy, again and again renewing his entreaties, until he had reached the lowest level of abasement to which his own enfeebled heart or the haughtiness of his great antagonist could depress him. Then, and not till then, did the pope revoke the anathema of the Vatican." Henry, as you might gather from this quotation, was very far from being a sincere penitent. He HILDEBRAND'S TRIUMPH. 121 left the presence of the pope to wage a war of life and death with him. Free from his excommunication, he appealed to his people. The sympathy which was denied to the licentious boy was freely granted to the unfortunate man. He roused the empire. His rival was slain in battle ; he nominated a new pope ; he came to Rome, and was crowned there. Hildebrand had to flee. He died in exile, exclaiming, " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore I die in exile. " And yet Hildebrand had triumphed. The papacy was supreme. He died in exile ; but he left the papacy the topmost power in Europe. We cannot refrain from closing this account with a sentence or two from Ranke's admirable analysis of the struggle, in the introduction to his " History of the Reformation : "—" The life of Henry, from this time till its close, has something in it which reminds us of the antique tragedy, in which the hero sinks, in all the glory of manhood and the fulness of his powers, under an inevitable doom ; for what can be more like an overwhelming fate than the power of opinion, which extends its invisible grasp on every side, takes complete possession of the minds of men, and suddenly appears in the field with a force beyond all control ? Henry saw the world go over, before his eyes, from the empire to the papacy. An army brought together by one of the blind popular impulses which led to the Crusades, drove out of Rome the pope he had placed on the throne ; nay, even in his own house, he was encountered by hostile opinions- compelled 122 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. to abdicate ; the aged warrior went broken-hearted to his grave." There remain to be set forth some further developments of this first aspect of the Roman Church. These, and the other we proposed to sketch-" The Church of Rome in relation to the ideal of a Christian Church” —we reserve for our next picture. The Eighth Picture. EUROPE ECCLESIASTICAL-THE CHURCH OF ROME IN ANOTHER ASPECT. IN our last picture, we undertook to consider the Roman Church in two aspects-1st, In its relation to the European state ; and, 2d, To the ideal ofa Christian Church. We have already, in considering the first of these, traced the steps by which Hildebrand raised the papacy to be the topmost power in Europe. We saw Henry IV. and himself passing from their struggle. But the work of Hildebrand remained. From his time forward the papacy continued to ascend. It was in the mind of this vast genius that the full conception of an armed European league against Mahommedanism first arose. A few years after his death, his idea embodied itself in the Crusades. Crusaders passed through Rome to obtain the blessing of the pope. The Crusades drew away from Europe the lawless valour which had hitherto opposed the papacy. Crusaders perished-the Crusades went wrong ; but the papal power continued to ascend. In the century which followed that of Hildebrand, an English monarch wished to add Ireland to his dominions. He was not a pious monarch, yet he dared not touch his prey until he has sent 123 124 THE EIGHTH PICTURE. to Rome for leave. Listen to a few sentences from the bull permitting him : "Thou wouldst enter the island of Hibernia, to subject that land to obedience. .. We hold it acceptable that thou make thy entrance, and there execute, at thy discretion, whatever thou shalt think proper for the honour of God. . . . Let therefore, the people of that country receive thee, and honour thee as their sovereign lord and master." Who speaks in the missive ? No ordinary sovereign, as will be perceived, but one who feels himself to be the superior of our English king. And the head of the Roman Church might well feel himself to be so when this bull was written. He was the topmost dignitary in Europe. A king held his stirrup when he mounted his palfrey ; kings addressed him as their spiritual father and lord. He held them and their armies bound to obey his behests. Ambassadors from every court waited in Rome. Roman legates were found in every land. Directly or indirectly, the pope had the control of all the diplomacy of Europe. His subordinate ecclesiastics held all the offices of state under the king ; he claimed to be consulted in the election of elected monarchs ; he deposed kings once and again. In his court, it had become usual to say, that the papal authority was the sun, the regal the moon ; "and as the moon receives her light from the sun, so does royalty borrow its splendour from papal authority. ” The reader will now be prepared somewhat to understand the nature of the relationship in which THE CHURCH SUPREME. 125 the Church of Rome stood to the European state. We have seen the rise of a mighty ecclesiasticopolitico power in Europe. We have been enabled to look upon the struggle which determined its final triumph. It enters into our present purpose to show wherein the ascendancy of the papal power forwarded, and wherein it hindered, the growth of European society. But, before we can do so, with any hope of conveying information worth retaining, we must go into the inquiry, What it was that triumphed in Hildebrand and the papacy? Accommodating ourselves to current language, we have spoken of the triumph of church over state. The language is correct, if it be remembered that it is the Roman Church and the European state we are speaking about. Otherwise, it would be incorrect ; for it was not the church, but specially the Roman Church, which triumphed ; and we have now, therefore, to open the inquiry- What was it which dominated over the European state whenthe Church of Rome rose to the supremacy we have been trying to depict ? We find a symbolic embodiment of the right answer in an observation of Montaigne's. When he visited Rome, he saw that the modern city stood upon the ruins of the ancient one, and that the architects never thought of any other foundation for their buildings but the tops of buried houses. Even so. And the dominion of the popes is, in the very same way, a continuation upwards of the dominion of the Cæsars. The papacy was simply the Christian. 126 THE EIGHTH PICTURE. Church in charge of old Roman civilisation. In the wars of the middle ages, this civilisation must have been lost. In ecclesiastical Rome it was preserved ; and the Roman Church continued in unbroken power, until whatever was worth in that civilisation had been incorporated into the nations of Europe. A few details will show the countenance given to this view by history. Often though Rome had been sacked, it had never been wholly destroyed. In the time of the old empire, the Roman bishop had been a magistrate when the seat of the empire was removed to Constantinople, he was left in charge of the city. But all the roads of the earth led to Rome. Rome had been mistress of the world. Not easily would the provinces lose the habit of looking there for help. When the barbarian incursions came down, the bishop was at once appealed to. He was the remaining potentate, where power had long resided. The memory of the empire brooded over him. It was the instinct of that empire to seek universal dominion. Roman life was still at work-had still huge conquests to make. It took up its central home in the functions of the bishop of the Roman Church, He was named ethnarch-patriarch-hitherto. Henceforth he shall be pope-papa-father of the eternal city. Before he is pope of the universal church, he is pope of the city. The town-life of the Roman empire is identified with him ; he is placed at the head of it ; he is still surrounded by populations of Romanic origin. Out of these populations principally THE ROOTS OF POWER AND GRANDEUR. 127 were drawn the popes. Hildebrand was an Italian. The principal diplomatists of Europe were Italians. At the close of the thirteenth century, when the ambassadors of twelve different states met at Rome to congratulate Boniface VIII. on his election, they all proved to be Italians of the single state of Florence. The pope exclaimed, that earth, air, fire, water, and Florentines were to be found everywhere. So it was then-so it was in the seventeenth century. Italians-Italian ecclesiastics everywhere. It was the civilisation of the old empire still vital ; it was the leavening of European life with this element. Therefore, the preponderance of Italians in European diplomacy -therefore, the control over that diplomacy possessed by the Roman Church. The vital thing in the Roman Church was Rome-Roman lawRoman order. Everything papal shows that it was so. The monastic orders, with their stern discipline, were just the Roman cohorts, reproduced for Christian purposes in a Christian dress. Celibacy was in like manner the reproduction of that grand self-immolation which characterised the best times of Rome ; and the universal sovereignty of the pope was (we use the expression without the snecr implied when it was first written by Hobbes) "the ghost of the dead Roman empire sitting upon the grave thereof. " The old ground of universal dominion- conquest-was broken up. Christianity gave a new ground ; but that which overshadowed and ruled Europe in the name of St Peter was substantially that which ruled over it 128 THE EIGHTH PICTURE. in the name of the Cæsars. The Cæsar reigned by virtue of his being the representative of the highest civilisation upon earth at the time ; the pope reigned because it was given to him to appropriate this civilisation for Christendom, and to leaven the states of Europe with it. This, then, triumphed in the papacy-Roman life-Roman civilisation. Wherein did thetriumph of this either forward or hinder the progress of European society ? It is a fact bearing upon this point, that the main supporters of Hildebrand were Henry's own barons. Even in the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries, the successors of these barons chose their emperors almost systematically out of different houses. Consciously or unconsciously, these men acted on the maxim, that power beginning to be consolidated in one quarter, must be counterbalanced by an increase of authority in another. We know, then, what Europe had to expect from these barons. In Tuscany, they seize on the papacy. In Germany, they help to pull down the emperor. Selfishness lures, actuates these men. Each covets his neighbour's power ; each seeks to be emperor ; each diverges from unity. It can never be looked upon as a misfortune that a power arose strong enough to curb and soften these men. Without that power, confusion would have continued its devastations for generations--perhaps centurieslonger than it did. The strong voice of the papacy said to the turbulent, be still-to the ambitious, THE IDEAL OF UNITY. 120 halt. Within its grasp was a power stronger than the sword to enforce obedience. We frankly confess to being thankful that the papacy rose to the power it possessed. The Germans needed restraint. They came young, turbulent, lawless from their woods. The Italian mastered them in the long run. Let us refrain from pitying them. It is good to bear the yoke in our youth. Not otherwise is it appointed to any noble existence to grow. To have risen into complete supremacy when they came first in contact with Roman civilisation, would have been disastrous to them and to Europe. The Goths did so, and melted away. Better far for the Franks that they did not that Italian monks and priests had them in pupilage for a time. The very submission was good for them. But when we consider that what they were subject to was not brute force, injustice, oppression, but law, order, religion -essentially civilisation in the keeping of religion—and that there in Rome, glorified by traditions, sanctified by the forms of worship, was the representative of unity-of a grand ideal—of an organisation wide as Europe itself ; when we consider that the German races were called by Providence to realise the ideal of the Christian state, and that in the papal hierarchy, an embodiment of this ideal (right or wrong, spiritual or mechanical, but still an ideal) was made to float before their minds for centuries, as the ideal of the temple floated before David the man of war, it seems to us that the natural impulse of every open-minded student is R 130 THE EIGHTH PICTURE to rejoice that the God of nations prepared these races for their yet undeveloped destiny in a school so fit. Thus far, then, as affording proper discipline and restraint to the exuberant youth of the Germanic races, the predominance of papal power in Europe must be looked upon as a forwarding of European life ; much more so when we recollect that European life received from this power the civilisation of the old world. But now we have to add, that the continuance of this power would have been fatal to European life. That the European boy should go to school, we can all recognise as right ; but that the schoolmaster should claim to rule over him, after he has communicated all he has to communicate-that the man should remain in a position fitted only for the boy, this would not have been right. The papacy, in point of fact, was hostile to the formation of nationalities. Unconsciously, it fostered them -could not help fostering them. But the genius of the nation and of the papacy, were antagonistic. "The time will come," said an ecclesiastic, " that the golden statue of the kingdom will be utterly demolished, and every great empire divided into tetrarchies. Not till then will the church stand up free and unopposed, under the protection of the great crowned priest. " This was the aim of Hildebrand. Thus only, according to his view, could society be reformed. This, also, was the aim of his successors ; and it is plain, that beneath such a burden of ecclesiastical domination, nation- THE INNER ASPECT. 131 alities could not develop. Such, according to the light given us, is our view of the Church of Rome in relation to the European state. 2. But there is a second aspect in which this church has to be viewed an inner one-that which it turns toward us when we look upon it in its relation to the membership, or, which is the same thing in other words, to the New Testament ideal of the Christian Church. We require to begin what we have to say here with some remarks upon the nature of a priesthood. It is not so generally known as it should be, that a priest is one who has immediate access to the Deity. In the old religions there was a class (among the Jews, the tribe of Levi) set apart for this express function, that they should go into the presence of God in behalf of the congregations. A true worshipper, in these times, would not venture to approach the Deity himself. He brought his offering to the priest, and the priest presented it in his stead. It was characteristic of a priesthood, then, it was the very essence of the priestly office, that it stood between the object of worship and the worshipper, that all divine influences had to come through it to the congregation, and all worship to ascend through it to God. Accordingly, in places consecrated to public worship-in the temple at Jerusalem, in the temples of Greecethe priest withdrew from the presence of the congregation into a little chamber-a place apartand there communed with God. We believe our readers are aware that Christ- 132 THE EIGHTH PICTURE, ianity is, amongst Protestant nations, understood to have abolished all this ; and that there is understood to be symbolic truth in the rending of the veil of the Jewish temple at the moment the Lord was on the cross. The priesthood, in the old sense of it, was abolished. Each man henceforth is to be a priest. The membership is an holy priesthood. All, by one spirit (not by a class of their own), have access unto the Father. There is to be no official mediator between God and man. God himself is that. The one High Priest is God. The priesthood under him-in communion with him-in the enjoyment of his dignity and nature, is the whole body of believers. And just as the architecture of the ancient religions testified to the existence of a separation between the priesthood and the membership, the architecture of Christian places of worship has yielded a testimony to their identity. In the Chevalier Bunsen's book on the Basilicas of Rome, " this testimony is very ably developed. We shall endeavour to present the main idea of this work. 66 Originally, and for nearly two centuries, there were no stated places for the assembling of Christians. A private house-a catacomb-a workshop, sufficed. When Christians came to have power on their side, there were opened for their use certain buildings where worship might be conducted. The old temples, for example, existed, and might be procured. We find, however, that Christians never had recourse to these temples, but that they invariably preferred buildings resembling in purpose our town- THE CHURCH AND THE EXCHANGE. 133 balls-the Basilicas. What was the Basilica ? In eastern nations, the gateway of the royal palace, where, in the presence of all the people, the kings sat to hear andjudge. In Rome, this primitive use of the Basilica continues ; but over the open pillars of the East a 10of has been suspended, and it has been enclosed by walls. Let our readers go into any cathedral of the Reformed Church. The pillars of the King's Gate are still there ; a wide avenue runs between the pillars from end to end ; at each side is a narrower avenue or aisle, and except that the end of the building is not semicircular, you have before you a Roman Basilica. The judge sat on an elevated platform in the terminal semicircle. Before him, in the one aisle, stretched the men who had causes pending-in the other, the women. The centre was filled by the town's people, and was, in fact, our exchange. Well, it was this building which Christian worship used in the earlier centuries. Here it was most at home. The seat of the judge became the pulpit ; the central avenue, the place of communion ; the side aisles, the auditory. Mark the entire openness of all the parts of worship-mark the entire absence of a priest. No man withdraws from the congregation to commune with God ; no man feels that he is nearer to God than his brother man. The symbol of brotherhood is erected in the centre -in the spot where the common crowd of everyday life assembled. This was the altar ; here the bread was broken ; each communicant felt that he had access personally to God. 134 THE EIGHTH PICTURE. But these early centuries passed away. The age of Hildebrand succeeded. What nowis the interior arrangement of the place of Christian worship ? The veil of the temple is restored ; the communiontable is removed behind ; the sacrament of the Supper has become a sacrifice ; and the ministers of the congregation withdrawfrom the viewofthe people, to offer it alone, in their behalf, unto the Lord. In a word, the fact that each believer is a priest is no longer recognised. The official priesthood has returned. We make this representation under the impression that members of the Church of Rome will not only not find fault with it, but receive it as agreeable to all their notions of what ought to be. Still, we feel that it would be unwise to dwell longer on the subject. Already we tread on thorny ground, and offer this which we have advanced about priesthood in lieu of a more explicit doctrinal exposition of the distinctive features of the Roman Church, when compared with the ideal we find in the New Testament. That ideal was thoroughly known in Rome ; but it was there looked upon as an ideal to be realised only by the clergy. They were the Ecclesia-the holy priesthood-the peculiar people-the royal generation. They were the brethren-the partakers of the sacrament-the habitation of the Spirit-the Church ; and only through them could the mysteries of the Christian faith be derived to the flock. We are, therefore, free, and in no unkindly spirit, to liken the pastors and flock of that church to the THE IDEAL AND THE PROMISE. 135 crew and passengers of a ship in troubled waters. The clergy are the crew ; the flock the passengers. Storms are ahead, and the passengers must go below. The rough weather and the danger belong to the crew ; the passengers are safe in the hold. If safety be bliss, the passengers are blessed. The blast, and the terror, and the splendour are for the poor crew. The ideal was, that each man should stand on the deck, and front for himself the perils of life ; the promise was, that the face of a father would be seen in the drifting cloud and the tossing sea. But it was an ideal the European man had not realised at the end of the fifteenth century ; it was a promise of which the priesthood alone had experienced the fulfilment. At this date, however, the Reformation came. It will be seen how completely it met the two aspects of the Roman Church we have been reviewing, and changed the existing relations between church and state, and between clergy and people. The Ninth Picture. EUROPE ECCLESIASTICAL- LUTHER. ON the 17th July, 1505, a young man, who was studying at the University of Erfurt, in Germany, invited his friends to his lodgings, to pass the evening together. The frugal supper was over : they had some cheerful exercises in music. At the close, he told his companions that it was their last meeting together in this free capacity—" Tomorrow I become a monk." This was Luther. He had been intended by his father for a lawyer, but the death of a friend, and a peril of death he had been in himself, made him resolve to abandon the world. In the heart of this man, the Reformation was to enact itself before it came forth to history. Mark his thought at the date of the supper. As a student, teacher, lawyer, he could not be holy enough, could not be sure enough of heaven. The monastery is holy, the monk is holy. By this means I shall attain to heaven. The European man has come up out of the hold, has left his parents, his friends, his studies below. He presses up to join these noble men who have continual access to God. Honestly he strove to be a monk, did monkish duties with earnestness and zeal, found to his sorrow that he had not left the world behind him, and had sore battles in the 136 LUTHER'S BATTLES WITH HIMSELF. 137 inner man. It was his thought that divine influences entered the soul by attending to church ordinances. With streaming eyes he waited for these influences ; for the pardon of his sins, above all . He knelt at the altar, and sought for it ; he came back to his cell, and sought for it ; he wanted sleep, that he might find it. One morning the brethren find his cell-door shut, and have to force it open. Fra Martin is stretched upon the ground insensible. One of the monks took a flute and played an air that Luther loved, and gradually he was restored. He was not at peace with God. He was a monk, but the unrest remained. He did all a monk's duties, but it was not removed. His soul was full of trouble. It is the birth-throes of the European heart bringing forth Faith. Hitherto the European man was saved by being a monk, by doing a monk's works, or by receiving the sacraments from a monk's hands. The church, the priesthood, stood between him and all danger. The thought was at work in Luther, but he could not yet give words to it, that the priesthood also shut out the light ofheaven from the people. He had stumbled upon a dusty Bible in the Erfurt University Library. The people knew nothing of it ; the monks had forgotten it. Here is God's own Word, he said ; here God speaks out direct to me. He began to study the Bible in the original. Other monks, in whom the good work was going on, gave countenance to him. Others, again, told him to mind his monastic duties. He did mind them. He swept S 138 THE NINTH PICTURE. the monastery, begged for the monastery, prayed in the monastery, did penance ; but his soul was not at peace. "This black heart of mine," he cried ; "these sins, day after day, hour after hour ; this perpetual inclination to sin-who shall free me from all this ?" His soul's trouble brings his body to the brink of the grave. An old monk entered his cell . He repeated the words of the creed, “ I believe in the forgiveness of sin. " He told his young brother it was not enough to believe that David's sins and Peter's sins were forgiven. The commandment is, that " we believe our own sins forgiven. " The word was uttered ; the light had dawned ; the European man was standing face to face with the infinite mercy of God. Luther has entered into the peace which passeth understanding. " I have been begging, and sweeping, and praying, that by repeating these acts I might procure the pardon of my sins." And lo ! my Father has been standing by me all the time, holding it out to me, beseeching me to believe that what I was seeking for by monastic works was mine already by his infinite grace. And yet Luther's own mind was not wholly free. His brethren sent him to Rome on some monastic business. He ran from church to church, doing those exercises which were prescribed for the salvation of his soul, shocked at everything, and yet believing everything. Behold him one day on his knees, climbing up Pilate's staircase. He who does this shall have an indulgence—a boon of future mercy from Heaven. It THE MONITOR WITHIN. 139 was too late for the German monk. The Erfurt Bible was in his heart. And ever as he clomb another step-by this climbing of a material stair, striving to possess more of God's life-a voice from the bottom of his heart cried to him, in tones of thunder, " Luther, Luther, not by climbing stairs ; not by works of this sort ! The just shall live by faith." The work was done. That side of the Reformation which was a protest against the clergychurch was realised in the heart of this man. Luther's preaching was practically, although at first he was not conscious of it, a denial of official priesthoods. He spoke to the individual conscience. This itself was a denial of it. He said, "It is a business of thine own, my brother." This, too, was a denial of it. But it was when he stood up in his Wittenberg pulpit, and, out of the fulness of his own experience and his knowledge of the Word, pointed, on the one side, to the sins of those who heard him, and, on the other, direct to the mercy of God, that the great protest was made. That a man might be saved without the priestthat salvation did not flow to the heart through the church this was the new thing he uttered. He came to light still clearer. His industrious piety received large accessions of knowledge. He came to see that a great evil had dominated over the consciences of men. "The ecclesia-the church -does not exist, " he said, "for the people. The clergy alone are the church. They only partake the symbol of brotherhood. Is not every man a 140 THE NINTH PICTURE. brother ? Is not the Lord brother to every man ? What means the incarnation if He is not ? It was my flesh, not priest's flesh. The Word has hallowed my flesh. My human nature has thereby been brought into contact with the Word of God. I am related direct to that Word. So are all men. All men who recognise this relation recognise also that they are priests. The believer is a priest ; may stand for himself in God's presence ; does not need a fellow-man to go into that presence for him." In this aspect, the Reformation was a new rending of the veil-a new assertion of the doctrine, that separate official priesthood had ceased, and that each believer stands for himself, an anointed priest at God's altar, to perform a priest's function there. "If a priest is killed, " said Luther, in one of his earliest tracts, "the whole district is put under ban. Why not just the same when a poor peasant has been murdered ? We are all priests.' In other words : The European man is crying, ' Good for us to be safe in the hold when storms are ahead, and to have no care. But we have awaked to see that there is no hold. The hatch is gone : the deck is torn up. We are in an open boat. And God is calling us to look with our own eyes upon the terrors and the splendours of His universe, and to listen, each soul for himself, to the Word which He has spoken. "6 But we must depict a second aspect of the Reformation. The first was the protest against the official priesthood of the Roman Church. That THE AWAKENING. 141 which we are now to depict was more external— the protest against the political supremacy realised by Hildebrand. We recall to our readers' mind the Italian element in the church of Hildebrand. The papal government centred and grew in the site of old Rome. The old civilisation was in its keeping. Italy was still filled by Romanic populations. Italians filled all offices of public trust in Europe. The official language of governments was Latin ; the devotions of the people were in Latin ; the Bible was still in Latin. (( How significant of the tendency of the Reformation was it, that it should have issued from those same woods from which, a thousand years before, the destroyer of old Rome had come ! Luther was a Saxon. His parents were Saxon peasants. Germany in him awoke to the consciousness of its worth. "Poor Germans that we are," he said, we have been deceived. We were born to be masters, and we have been compelled to become slaves. Name, title, ensigns of royalty, we possess all these ; force, power, right, liberty, all these have gone over to the popes. For them the grain ; for us the straw ! It is time the glorious Teutonic people should cease to be the puppet of the Roman pontiff. " Germanic life, which needed restraint, needs that restraint no longer. The boy that Trebonius doffed his cap to has become a man. The Papal Church has fulfilled its function. Its political domination is possible no more, bearable no more. Its load of 142 THE NINTH PICTURE. ecclesiastical supremacy lies too heavy on the breast of Europe. Nations cannot prosper under it. The dues which are paid into the Roman treasury pinch national industry ; the interference of ecclesiastics perplexes national movements. The nations must be free to grow-to develop as God intended them. The time has come for the longdepressed Germanic element to dominate-to blossom up into Englands, Germanies, North Americas. And Luther, the preacher at Wittenberg, the son of Saxon peasants, is the spokesman for this movement too. silence of a thousand Germans still speak of "their man." Every Let no intelligent member of the Roman Church regret that, for this purpose, Luther was raised up. It was altogether a right thing that Germanic life should find a tongue to utter. Luther's was that tongue. In him, after the years, the German spoke. him as "their own," as true German felt, still feels, that Luther was a brother. The lost brother is found. Priesthood had absorbed brotherhood. A priest steps forth : "I am not holier than you," he "Ye all are brethren. The Lord died for all." The German people leapt up into new life. reached through and through it. “ What a wonderful man is Luther !" said Melancthon ; " when he goes up to preach, we doctors are impressed by the truth he utters, and yet he speaks so plain that the poorest peasant understands every word he says." No wonder. In him first the German tongue was honoured. He preaches, it is in his "" says. Luther's voice · THE BIBLE IN THE MOTHER-TONGUE. 143 He writes, it is in his He translates the Bible, "And a difficult task I noble German speech. noble German language. it is into the German. had," he says, "in compelling the old Jews to speak good German. " What a revolution was here ! God's Word shut up for centuries in the Latin Bastile, and now set free ! The liturgy also was translated by him. And a mere translation of the Latin words would not suffice. " I would have (the business) carried out, " said Luther, " in a truly German spirit. I would have the whole thing, text and notes, accent and action, an emanation of our own tongue, suited to our German voices, otherwise it will be mere aping and grimace." We shall have German psalms, too, he said. He appealed to the poets. Why not write psalms, as David did ? If the Jew had Hebrew psalms, ought not the German to have German ones ? Luther was not alone in this Germanic revolt. The German princes were ripe for it ; the German towns rejoiced in it. It was this element-I speak humanly-which gave backing to Luther. stood up against the pope, and all Germany leaped up to support him. We shall define the Reformation, therefore, in this, the social aspect of it, as the emergence of the Germanic element in European life from the control and domination of the Romanic. It was the revolt of German faith from Italian ecclesiastical supremacy ; it was German piety finding utterance in German speech ; it was the assertion 144 THE NINTH PICTURE. of German freedom, of German worth ; and, above all things else, the German brother seeking to knit all German brethren into free Christian nationalities. Everything connected with the Reformation takes the impress of this fact. Reformation had already been attempted in Italy, in France, in England. It could only succeed in the German states. We seem to detect the same fact in the theological symbols of the two parties. "Salvation by means of the church," said the Roman, the child of institutions, the inheritor of the civilisation of the past, the successor of him who felt it greater to be a Roman than a man. "Salvation by faith," i. e. , direct contact of man's soul with God's gift, said the German, the man to whom institutions were secondary, who came first before us fresh from the presence of nature-the man with the open, child's heart. One thing bearing on this is especially certain, that nations of Romanic origin, nations in which the Romanic element predominated, have remained in connection with the Roman Church ; while those of Germanic origin have become Protestant. We speak of the past. We talk of Pope and Protestant now, no man making us afraid. With Luther it was not so easy. He did not feel it to be easy. How often, he says, during the first year or two, did I ask myself if it were not presumption in me! His journey to Romeopened his eyes. Then came Tetzel, selling indulgences. The two elements of the Reformation rose up in Luther against this proceeding. First of all, he saw it to BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSEUM Luther's Parting with Melancthon. See page 145. THE MUTTERING OF THE STORM. 145 be a lie that mere writing on a bit of paper could forgive sins. Next, he was indignant that, by means of this lie, good German money should go to Rome. He denounced Tetzel, exposed the falsehood, challenged the whole priesthood to debate the matter with him. No one minded the Saxon monk at first. By and by, however, he is found to be dangerous. A papal bull is issued against him. His books are to be burnt. He himself is to repair to Rome. What will Luther do ? He invited the members of the university and the officials of Wittenberg to meet him, at nine o'clock in the morning of the 10th December, 1520, at the east gate, opposite the Church of the Holy Cross, and there, not without solemnity, he did what never European man hitherto had courage to do, committed the bull, and all papal pamphlets and books connected with it or the question at issue, to the flames. The game is up. "The mighty hunter, " as Luther called the pope, demanded the victim. His peril was great. He is summoned to Worms, to meet the emperor and the German princes, to answer for his doctrines. And on to Worms went emperor, prince, and peasant, all anxious to see the man who had dared to lift his voice against the pope. " Do not go, " said his friends. " I will go," said Luther, " if there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on its house-tops." On the 2d of April, 1521, he sets out. Turning to Melancthon, he said, " If I am put to death, cease not, O my brother, to teach and remain T 146 THE NINTH PICTURE. firm in the truth. If thou art spared, what matters it that I perish ?" He stepped on a low waggon, with block wheels, which the magistrates of Wittenberg had provided. From Wittenberg to Leipsic, from Leipsic to Nuremberg, from thence to Weimar-all was gloom. Everybody looked on him as a man marching to his grave. Next he came to Erfurt. Here, when a little boy, he had sung at the doors of the rich for bread ; here he had been a distinguished student ; here he first saw a Bible. There is no gloom in Erfurt. Their old scholar comes back. They come out on horseback to give him welcome ; they line the streets to give him cheer. "Thou must preach to us, " they said. The herald consented. He was led into the church. Often had he swept its floors, and opened and locked its doors, in days long past. And now he is in the pulpit. His text was, " Peace be unto you : and when Jesus had so said, he showed them his hands and his side." "Life comes from Him," he said. "One builds a church, another goes a pilgrimage, a third fasts, a fourth puts on a cowl and goes barefoot. All vanity this. But Christ hath risen fromthe dead : this is the work of salvation. " From Erfurt to Gotha ; from Gotha to Frankfort. In Frankfort, they took him to a school, and he blessed the boys. One stage more, at Oppenheim- and then ! At last, on the morning of the 16th, he is in sight of Worms. His heart is leaning on the Lord. At Oppenheim, he had composed a hymn and set it to music. When he beheld the tower LUTHER'S HYMN. 147 of the ancient city, where the fate of the Reformation was to be decided, he rose up in his waggon, and sang the hymn. The Germans sing it to this day. We give Carlyle's translation :- "A safe stronghold our God is still— A trusty shield and weapon : He'll help us clear from all the ill That hath us now o'ertaken. The ancient prince of hell Hath risen with purpose fell ; Strong mail of craft and power He weareth in this hour- On earth is not his fellow. With force of arms we nothing can ; Full soon were we down-ridden : But for us fights the proper man, Whom God himself hath bidden. Ask ye, Who is this same? Christ Jesus is his name, The Lord Zebaoth's son ; He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle. And were this world all devils o'er, And watching to devour us, We lay it not to heart so sore- We know they can't o'erpower us. And let the prince of ill Look grim as e'er he will, He harms us not a whit. For why? His doom is writ― A word shall quickly slay him, God's Word, for all their craft and force, One moment will not linger, But, spite of hell, shall have its course→→ "Tis written by His finger. And though they take our life, Goods, houses, children, wife, Yet is their profit small ; These things shall vanish all- God's city it remaineth. " Next morning he is summoned to appear. He stands there, in the old imperial hall, alone in 148 THE NINTH PICTURE. the presence of princes, nobles, dignitaries of the church, and the young emperor. A manly modesty overpowers him at the first. He asks one day to prepare his answers. On the 18th April, then, in the afternoon, he is borne by soldiers through the crowded streets of Worms, into the imperial presence once more. Yesterday, the emperor and the princes were struck by his timidity ; to-day, by his frank, unboastful openness. "I am here," he said, "to answer for my books. In one part of these books, I say that man is saved by God's mercy, and not by going pilgrimages, and doing penances, and the like ; this part I dare not retract. Asecond portion of my writings is directed against papal abuses and tyranny ; this part, the abuses existing, it would be wrong to retract. In a third portion of my works, I have used personalities and hasty words, which, in my more retired moments, I regret ; this portion I most heartily give up. " He added, " I am a man ; I may have formed wrong notions. If there be anything in my teaching opposed to Scripture, show me what it is ; and that which is so opposed I will retract : no more." The official who questioned him was not satisfied. "Thou art to answer simply, not to preach to us ; yes, or no ; retract, or not retract. ' " Since, then, your imperial majesty and your highnesses demand a simple answer, I will give you one. Unless I am convicted of error by the testimony of Scripture, I cannot, and will not retract. I have done. God help me. Amen. " THE DIET OF WORMS. 149 This was the culminating point of Luther's protest ; the upbreaking of the dark morning cloud. And yet this formed but a poor portion of the work Luther did : -Preaching, teaching, writing books, sermons, pamphlets, translating and commenting on the Bible, and bearing the whole burden of the churches. From this point, forward, flows the outer history of the Reformation. Our undertaking in relation to it is completed. For those who wish to study the subject, we shall mention the two works of Ranke-his History of the Popes who have reigned since the Reformation, and his History of the Reformation itself. A book easier to read, but theatrical and one-sided a little, is D'Aubigné's ; and our own Robertson's "History of Charles V. ;" and Michelet's " Life of Luther." We especially recommend this last book. It is made up of extracts from Luther's letters, sermons, and table-talk. Luther depicts Luther in it ; and you are struck by finding yourself in the company of quite an ordinary-looking mortal. There is nothing of the "great man" about him ; no airs, no assumption of superiority. It is not a monk who is beside you ; it is a man who was never meant to be a monk-a homely, rather jovial man, who will take a can of beer with you of an evening, and play his flute, and be delighted with your song. << People fancy," he once said, " because I am joyous and jovial, that I recline upon a bed of roses. God knows how far wrong they are." Yes, indeed, they were wrong. Under all that joviality, 150 THE NINTH PICTURE. there was a soul enlarging itself, by severe discipline, by active thought, by untiring prayer, to know more and more of God. But it was a soul that led its life in secret ; that knew the value of the counsel, "When ye fast, be not as the hypocrites." Luther was no hypocrite ; was not even sanctimonious ; had notions on many things which would be counted loose in our day. But he was honest ; spoke out the word which it was right to speak, whether it was rebuke, or sermon, or joke ; and had no reserves ; he gave you his frank opinion, andthe ground on which it rested ; if he discovered he was wrong, as frankly he retracted. We look upon his conduct in relation to the peasants' war, as, perhaps, the highest outcome of this honesty. This war was a direct result of his work ; I mean, it was one of the evils which flowed out of the principle of private judgment. If Luther was right in revolting from the pope, the peasant is right in revolting from his prince. Everybody saw that it was a result of Luther's principles. The German nobles who had sympathised with the reformer hitherto, turned to ask him what this meant. If Luther declare for the peasants, the princes will forsake him ; if he declare for the princes, the peasants will lose confidence in him. What does Luther care ? There is a word which it is right for God's speaking-man to speak, and he straightway speaks it out. "Ye princes, ye men in power, in this outbreak ye are not without blame. These peasants are God's instruments to punish you for your luxury and oppressions. PAGAN, NOT CHRISTIAN WARFARE. 151 Trample them ; but God will raise peasants out of the stones to afflict and to bring you to do that which is right. .. They will no longer submit to your crying extortions. You lavish, in fine clothes, fine castles, fine eating and drinking, their hard-won produce ; and what you must do first and foremost is, to put a stop to all this vain luxury of yours, to close up the holes through which this money runs, so that you may leave some little part in the peasant's pocket." He then addressed the peasants :-"You have lifted the sword, peasants ; Luther did not lift a sword. If truth sufficed to overturn the pope, have ye not faith enough in truth, that it will overturn the oppression of princes ? Struggle-I forbid you not ; but struggle by the truth. The truth will conquer. If you and the princes come to blows, presume not, on the one side or the other, to call yourself Christians. It will be a war of pagans- nothing else. Christians fight not with swords or arquebuses ; but with the cross, and with patience ; after the example of their General, who handled not the sword, but unresistingly suffered himself to be bound to the cross. Their triumph consists not in domination and power, but in submission and humility. If you abide by reason, by truth, I too will join you ; if you take the sword, it is my determination to throw myself in all confidingness at the feet of God, and take part against you." They did take the sword, and he took part against them. Great, indeed, was Luther's confidence in the power of truth. He translated the Bible, that 152 THE NINTH PICTURE. men might be saved by it-the Koran, that they might see how beggarly falsehood was ; and to the truth he continually ascribed the credit of all that was doing. " While I am drinking beer in Wittenberg, with Philip and the doctors, the Word is saving the world, " he was accustomed to say. For those who know Luther only through the pages in D'Aubigné-who have been accustomed to see him in the pink light of a mere hero-it will be quite refreshing to go fairly through Michelet's book. What a mere man this overturner of the papacy was ! How coarse, how foul-mouthed, he could sometimes be ! A book might be published made up of nicknames which Luther applied ; and the cream of it would be, that this book would turn out as instructive as any of his sermons : for he called men and things by their right names ; and, if they were of the order of Nicholas, then Nicholas names-nicknames-devil names—were the only names to be applied to them. Our Henry VIII. got his chaplain to write a book against Luther, and put his own name on the title- page. "Whether Henry wrote it, or Hall, or the devil in hell, I fear him not. He who lies is a liar, and I defy him. If a king of England spits his impudent lies in my face, I have a right to throw them back, down his very throat." And never king got such a wholly black face in his lifetime as "this royal driveller of lies and poison," as Luther called him, got for his unfortunate book. And yet what pathos, what beauty, lay in that heart of his. Once he looked out, and saw a little bird settling "" LUTHER AT HOME. 153 itself for the night upon the branch of a tree There thou settlest, poor bird," he exclaimed, "the infinite dome of heaven above thee, and the great earth beneath, and goest to rest without fear." It was a delightful thing to spend an evening with him. His broad, beneficent nature expanded into the sunniest, playfullest kindliness. His talk was full of wisdom, of humour, of genuine insight. Nature, art, humanity, philosophy, theology-he was at home in them all. Floods of light came forth from him in single utterances, given freely, without effort. It is something more than curious to find him, at one of these fireside conversations, laughing at the absurdity of the Copernican system of astronomy-curious to go back so far as to find the first man of his generation counting for fancy what the merest child now knows to be the fact. It is seldom you find such things, however. His mind was open as a child's for truth. It is most exhilarating to be beside him when he first discovered, studying the Greek language, after the Reformation has begun, that metanoia did not mean penances but a change oflife. You know, amongst other courageous things he did, that he cast off the monk's cowl, and married a nun. Catherine de Bora was her name. She had to beg her bread from door to door after her husband's death. With his wife he lived a noble domestic life, and yet quite an everyday one. How playfully he bantered her, laughed at her attempts to fathom the deep thoughts of her husband. " My Eve," he called her- " my Kit-my lord Kit-my U 154 THE NINTH PICTURE. rib Kit-that most learned dame, Catherine Luther de Bora. Ah, Kit, thou shouldst never preach ! If thou wouldst only say the Lord's prayer always before beginning, thy lectures would be shorter. " In the history of his married life, you will not miss acts of the highest benevolence of hospitality afforded to those who could not return it-of just dealing with old servants. Luther and she were often very poor. The princes took his preaching, but left him to live as he might. He never would take money for his writings ; the booksellers got all the profit. At one time, he took to turning wood for a little money ; at another, to gardening. Yet, in the midst of all this hardship, when he had not a coin for himself, he would take the silver drinking-cups he had got as keepsakes from the princes, and give them to poor students. We have mentioned his home feelings. We were much touched by his exclamation, when he heard of his father's death-" I am old Luther now. " There was insight in this word. We remember, too, a beautiful letter he wrote to his little boy, namesake of his father, about a lovely and smiling garden-the garden of celestial life-full of children, dressed in robes of gold, who played under the trees with beautiful apples, pears, cherries, nuts, and prunes ; and had drums, and fifes, and music of all sorts. And little Hans would be admitted to this garden, if he be a good boy. So simply-so like a child, could the man who hurled down popes, whose words are still “ halfbattles," write on the proper opportunity. LAST WORDS. 155 The time came when he was to write no more. He was absent from his Catherine, at Eisleben, attending a Protestant synod. It was the 17th February, 1546. He felt that he was dying. " Pray, brethren ; oh ! pray for the spread of the Gospel," he said to his fellow-labourers. Then he took a turn or two in the room, and lay down. Friends, I am dying. Into thy hands, O Lord, I commit my spirit. " " Reverend father," said Dr Jonas, " do you die firm in the faith you have taught ?" Luther opened his eyes, which were half closed, looked fixedly at Jonas, and replied, firmly and distinctly, " Yes." That was the last word he uttered ; then, his great spirit went home. 66 The Tenth Picture. EUROPE SPREADING WESTWARD-COLUMBUS. WE shall recur, for a moment, to the century which preceded the Reformation. It was one of great activity. The crusades were ended ; the energy they called forth sought other modes of expressing itself ; and, just at this crisis, the Turks took Constantinople ; the Grecian and Roman philosophy found its way back into Europe ; universities were founded ; theories of the stellar universe began to be propounded : thoughtful Europeans opened their eyes upon the mystery of earth. Guizot tells how " a thousand new inventions came forth ; others already known, but only within a narrow sphere, became popular, and of general use. Gunpowder was applied to war ; the art of oilpainting developed itself, and covered Europe with masterpieces of art ; engraving on copper, invented in 1460, multiplied and promulgated them ; linen paper became common ; and, lastly, from 1436 to 1452, printing was invented. Amongst these inventions, how high a place is due to the compass and the astrolabe ! The first, known, and for land-travelling used, in the East from the remotest ages, began to be generally used by European mariners during this century. The second was invented at the suggestion of a Por156 THE WORLD OPENING. 157 tuguese king. With these two, the ship is free to leave the land. The mariner no longer needs to run timidly along the coast : his path is on the mighty waters. We owe the application of these instruments to navigation to the activity of the commercial world. Princes began to see of how much more value to their states a corporation of merchants was, than an army of crusaders. The merchants themselves were princes. They multiplied relations with all parts known to them; most of all, with the East. The crusades had opened up the East to them ; their agents had pierced into kingdoms far remote from Palestine. Even in the thirteenth century, " a Flemish shoemaker met in the depths of Tartary, a woman from Metz, named Paquette, who had been carried off from Hungary ; a Parisian goldsmith, whose brother was established at Paris ; and a young man, who had been at the taking of Belgrade. He saw, also, Russians, Hungarians, and Flemings. Many of these adventurers remained and died in the countries which they visited ; others returned, with an imagination filled with what they had seen, relating it to their family, exaggerating, no doubt, but leaving around them, amidst absurd fables, useful remembrances and traditions, capable of bearing fruit. By these means, new routes for commercial enterprise were opened up ; and, what was of far more importance, foreign manners, unknown nations, extraordinary productions, offered themselves in crowds to the minds of the Europeans, confined since the fall of the Roman empire, within too 158 THE TENTH PICTURE. narrow a circle. The world seemed to open on the side ofthe East ; geography took a great stride ; and the desire for discovery became the new form which clothed the adventurous spirit of the Europeans. "* We should especially mention the influence which one of these travellers bad upon the European mind. His father and uncle had left Venice for the East, and penetrated, in the suite of a Mongol ambassador, as far as Tartary and China. They came back to Europe with letters to the pope. They returned to the East, taking young Marco Polo, the famous traveller, in their company. This was still in the thirteenth century. Marco was twenty-four years away. He, his father, and uncle came back to Venice. They were in rags. Their nearest relatives did not recognise them they could hardly find admittance to their own house. On a certain day, they invited their friends and neighbours to a banquet. They appeared in their presence in the superb costumes of the East. Then " Marco produced the rags in which they had been disguised, ripped them open, and exhibited such a profusion of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and precious jewels, as completely dazzled the spectators. " He then published an account of his travels. He had gone to the remotest boundaries of the known East. He had seen wealth of fruits and merchandise, such as Europeans had never imagined. Of Zepangu (Japan) for example, he says : This is

• Guizot's History of European Civilisation.

THE TRADE OF THE EAST. 4 159 a very large island. Gold is very abundant. I will give you a wonderful account of a very large palace, all covered with that metal, as our churches are with lead. The pavement of the chambers, the halls, windows, and every other part, have it laid on two inches thick, so that the riches of this palace are incalculable. " In other parts, he tells of countries where were rich fruit trees, and factories of silk, and other precious goods. Thus the East, with its gold, and diamonds, and silks, opened for the merchants of Italy and Spain untold mines of wealth. But it was no light task to carry on the Eastern trade then. Even two hundred years after Marco Polo, the Mediterranean was infested with pirates, and the merchantmen had to fight their way to the ports at its head. Then there was the overland carriage, and the toils and perils incident to that. A Portuguese prince was seized with the idea that the East might be reached by the coast of Africa. Some of our readers may have seen the late David Scott's picture of " Vasco de Gama. " A ship, on its beam ends, is toiling through the surge, off the cape of Good Hope. The crew, shrivelled into horror, are skulking, one here, another there. Erect, in their midst, with calm, defying aspect, Vasco himself contemplates steadily the wrack of clouds. You follow his eye into the blackness. Slowly a form emerges, angry, threatening, floating in the drift of dark cloud- masses. It is the spirit of the Cape repelling the first invasion of his domain-struggling with the European mariner, 160 THE TENTH PICTURE. rounding, for the first time, the Cape. His task was as difficult as the artistic embodiment of it represents. With a crew of condemned felons, amid farewells which seemed to be everlasting, and tears and sacraments of religion, De Gama had left on his perilous voyage. Superstition had filled the European mind with phantasies, whose dwelling place was the sea. As he drew near to the terrible Cape, the supposed Pandemonium of sea terrors, the region of actual storms, his crew broke out into mutiny, and refused to work the ship. Vasco seized the ringleader, and put him in irons, took the helm himself and achieved his undertaking. But even this was a tedious passage. Before it was accomplished, it had been asked, If no other was possible for European ships ? It was known that the earth was a globe. Japan on the east, Madeira on the west, were the extremes where known land existed. From Madeira westward to Japan was supposed to be water. Happily for discovery, the size of the globe was understood to be smaller than it is. Two-thirds were land ; one third, water. Might we not sail westward, then, to the east ? Trees unknown to European forests had floated on the Atlantic to European shores ; dead bodies, with features differing from those of the European countenance, had also been left by the tide ; a bit of carved wood had been picked up, which had been laboured by no European tool. Then (a great matter in times when the mind was subject to the authority of tradition , ) the old geo- BOYHOOD OF THE ADVENTURER. 161 graphers had described the land as stretching to Spain on the west, to India on the east—the ocean filling the space between. Marco Polo had been in Zepangu (Japan, ) reaching it through the Mediterranean and the commercial land-routes to the Indies, by the east ; but it lay there on our west, a shorter, directer road. Plato's ideal Atalantes Island was also serviceable in building up the supposition-no doubt, these wise Greeks knew something of a westward passage to the East. But, whether or no, here is the undeniable form of the earth. If Japan is there going eastward, then it must be there also going westward. These ideas took shape first in Columbus. His boyhood had been passed in Genoa, where his father was a wool- comber. Here, at the seaside, beside the bustle of departing and returning ships, an inclination to seafaring life was easily developed. At fourteen, he became a sailor. In the wild seaduties of the Mediterranean, he had his training up to manhood. It was his good fortune to be cast ashore on the coast of Portugal, when the Portuguese were intent on discovery. At Lisbon he married, and was still more bound to the Portuguese in consequence. His married life was spent alternately in sea-trips, andthe construction of charts. We find him also going with his family to Porto Santo, a little island in the Atlantic, to reside on a property of his wife's, possessing, amongst other gear, some valuable charts of her father's. It was here, when he was between thirty and forty years of age, that the conviction, which X 162 THE TENTH PICTURE. had been dawning in his mind for years, appears to have taken its final shape. Had not the bleak Atlantic, almost yesterday, rendered up to European enterprise this island on which he lived ? On how many other islands-richer, larger, fruitfuller-might not not its waves be beating ? He himself had gone westward a hundred leagues beyond Iceland before his marriage others had been drifted by storms still further. He left his island residence to offer to the court of Portugal a westward passage to the East. The usual sneers at assumed superiority-the usual imperturbable vis inertia of complacent ignorance—the usual hurry and do- nothing busy- ness of officials-the usual alarm at the expense of experiments, which have met inventors and discoverers in all ages, met the European pilot. It was hardest to encounter the figments of superstition. How do you know, it was said to him, but these waters stretch on for ever ? How, that they are not the abodes of dire spirits ? And how are you so sure of the sphericity of the earth ? And, if it be spherical, that a ship could sail down. the descending side, and not sail sheer down into the void ? And then the Bible. Would the Bible have described the heavens as a curtain, if, instead of rising from a plain, they surrounded a globe ? There was the sincerest piety in all the actions of Columbus. A pious end was to be served by the wealth accruing from his discovery. He took THE PIETY OF COLUMBUS. 163 up the Bible, then, when he met those who confronted him with texts from thence. It is written here, he was accustomed to say, that the ends of the earth are to give glory to God ; the whole earth is to be vocal to his praise the forests to clap their hands, and the floods to lift up their voice, and the heathen to become the heritage of the Lord. And ye will stand up between the fulfilment of these promises, with a figurative expression from a psalm ! Nothing could alter his conviction-nothing could shake it. His mind saw Zepangu as clearly as if he had already landed on its shores. He lived in the continual contemplation of a globe, furnished, in its northern hemisphere, at least, two-thirds by land, one-third by water-by the Mediterranean and by land, on that side, Zepangu ; by the Atlantic, half the distance, on this, Zepangu ! For weary years he travelled from court to court, making applications for means to reach Zepangu. Ah, he was wont to say, one could convert the world with money ! He was thinking of lands whose eastern shores were washed by the Atlantic, which were full of heathen populations. What openings for the church-what opportunities for conversion-when we shall once have crossed ! But courts, and courtiers, and ecclesiastics, had work of other sorts to do. " This mad mariner," as he was sometimes called, must wait. It is fine to see how, amid his much neglect, a ray of sympathy reaches him now and again. Such was the reception given to him, on his first arrival in Spain, by 164 THE TENTH PICTURE. the good prior of the Franciscan convent at the little seaport town of Palos, in Andalusia. Irving found the account of it, in the testimony of a witness in a law-suit between the heir of Columbus . and the Spanish crown. One day, Columbus and his son, travelling on foot, stopped at the gate of this convent, and asked of the porter a little bread and water for his child. The prior happened to pass at the moment. Columbus was a tall, wellmade man, with an authoritative look, and grey, kindling eyes. The prior was struck with his appearance. The stranger's story was told. The prior was still more struck with this. The physician of the village was called in to hear it, and he also was impressed. From that day, the prior ceased not to use his influence on behalf of Columbus. He detained the son, gave the father letters of introduction to the court, and so brought him into notice. Seven years passed, and Columbus knocked once more at the convent gate, on his way to France, to offer his services there. But the worthy prior would not allow the glory to pass from Spain ; and in the summer of 1492, preparations are going on at Palos for the Atlantic voyage. He had waited eighteen years, and now he is within four of sixty. On the 3d of August, he is lifting his anchors. The communion has been partaken by commander and crew. Farewells have been spoken by timid seamen and weeping relatives. The worthy prior has seen the little fleet of three standing out towards the sea. Two of the vessels with which . THE STRATAGEM. 165 Europeans were first to cross the Atlantic were no bigger than coasting craft. Columbus was in a larger one, prepared for the voyage, and decked. The orders were, to sail direct west for seven hundred leagues, and then lie to and watch for land. Westward, then, on the breast of the Atlantic, sailed these three ships. One of them lost her rudder, and turned out to have been caulked by men who wanted back to Palos. Three weeks were lost at the Canary Islands repairing this mischief. Once more westward. No Canary Islands before us now! Our ships have left all ports behind. What a pathless waste we have entered ! Even whilst we were at the Canaries, did not Teneriffe belch out most dismal fire ? Columbus had to calm their fears. Day melted into night ; night melted into day; week chased week ; and these three barks were still on the Atlantic. The tradewinds wafted them on delightfully, but wafted them not to land. At length, weeds floated past ; then birds from the west. Zepangu lies near at last ! The clouds formed into the most smiling islands, and mocked their eyes with fictitious land. Columbus found that the distance was greater than he calculated. It was this which suggested to him the stratagem of the double reckoning—a private and correct one for himself, a public and incorrect one for his pilots. Fear was overcoming the patience of his crew. The slightest incident raised a clamour for home. The steady winds, the calms, the masses of floating weed-each seemed to urge 166 THE TENTH PICTURE them to return. By promises, by persuasions, they have been managed hitherto. At last they are in open revolt. September is ended-October has begun. The most atrocious thoughts are at work in their hearts. Columbus defied them, took the strong tone of a master, and, by rigid mastership, suppressed both assassination and murmurs. The signs of approaching land, too, increase. On the 1st of October, the crew were told that they had sailed, since leaving the Canaries, 580 leagues. In reality, it was 707. The birds are more numerous by the 5th. On the 7th, there was a cry of land, but the land melted away. Europe is 750 leagues behind, and there is no Zepangu. The course was altered to the west-south-west. The birds increase, and are smaller. "Many fish played about the smooth sea, and a heron, a pelican, and a duck The herbage which floated by was fresh and green .' But still no land appeared. The murmurs revived. It is useless, said Columbus ; we are here to do a work, and it must be done. At last, there floated past a branch of thorn, with berries on it ; then they picked up a reed, a small board, and a carved staff. The breeze freshened ; the boats snored bravely through the waves. The 11th October passed on to evening. The vespers are said, but this night no eye shall close. Columbus himself stood watching from the stern of his vessel. At ten o'clock, his eye caught a gleam of light. were seen. • • "" " Pedro ! Rodrigo ! there methought it shone ! There, in the west ; and now, alas ! ' tis gone ! SL.C. BORDERS Columbus sees the Gleam of Light. See page 166. BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSEUM SUCCESS AND MISERY. 167 'Twas all a dream ! We gaze, and gaze in vain. But mark and speak not-there it comes again. It moves ! What form unseen, what being there, With torch-like lustre, fires the murky air ?" He watched this light till two o'clock. A gun from the foremost vessel confirmed his thought ; and on the morning of 12th October, 1492, on the shores of the San Salvador Island, Columbus gave thanks unto that Being " who stretcheth out the earth above the water." From this time till the beginning of the year, he cruised among the islands where his voyage had terminated. Cuba seemed to him to be the veritable Zepangu he had come to seek : San Domingo he took for the ancient Ophir. Not until 1498 did he discover the mainland, and even then the delusion remained with him that he was cruising on the East Indian coasts. He received the usual reward of benefactors, and, after his third voyage, died in neglect and poverty. According to the ideas of right and property which prevailed at that time, the land which a servant of the Spanish crown discovered, belonged to Spain. We, however, would rather not dwell upon the Spanish rule in the New World : it hindered. European domination rather than advanced it. Under the sanctions of misnamed religion, the most atrocious deeds were done ; and God consumed their strength, and called another people to the work of colonising there. The Eleventh Picture. EUROPE SPREADING WESTWARDTHE PILGRIM FATHERS. IT was another of those remarkable coincidences which we have had to call attention to more than once in the course of these pictures, that America was discovered in the very dawn of the Reforma.- tion. The whole character of American society and history flows out of this fact. We had occasion, in a former picture, to define the Reformation as the revolt of the Germanic element in European life, from the ecclesiasticomunicipal control under which it had been held. Luther appealed to the sovereigns, and said, " Your rights also are absorbed in the domination of the papacy." At the outset, therefore, we find the Reformation and the monarchic principle of government leagued together. All the reformed churches sought union with the state at first. Now, recall the history of reformed churches. Everywhere you find it is a history of secessions, disruptions, revolts against this union. The explanation is, that the peculiarity of the Reformation-the pith and essence of it-was the assertion of the right of private judgment : in other words, the assertion that man's reason is given to him by his Maker to discriminate between what is good and 168 THE RISE OF PURITANISM. 169 what is evil. Accordingly, when the English monarchy took the Reformation under its protection, this inner antagonism between authority and private judgment soon revealed itself. The king said, virtually, " I now am your pope you shall thus and thus believe." And Puritanism, the child of the Reformation-the second act, it has been called, of the drama, as the French Revolution is the third -Puritanism arose in England. The Puritan stood on his priestly character. "I am God's priest," he said. " He hath committed to me, and all who, like me, believe His Word, the oracles of truth. He hath given me faculties to read and comprehend these oracles. Myconscience is charged with the right fulfilling of these functions. I cannot believe, I cannot worship, as you dictate to me. And whether it be right for me to obey kings mortal like myself, or the King of kings, kings and lawgivers can judge as well as I. As for me, I will obey my God." The persecution of the Puritans commenced ; and the New World was provided with its future population. In 1602, at Boston, in Lincolnshire, under cover of night, a number of English Puritans, fleeing from the persecution, were taken on board a ship for Holland. The base captain delivered them up to the authorities. Robinson, the pastor of these worthy people, hired a second vessel in the spring of the following year. This time, the vessel shall lie-to on an unfrequented coast between Hull and Grimsby. Thither, in small companies, arrived the men by land. The women and Y 170 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. children were conveyed from another point by sea. There was a slight mismanagement. The bark in which the latter were arrived a day too soon, and was allowed to run aground. To save time, the most of the men were taken on board. Robinson would not embark until the women and children were safe. The people of the neighbourhood observed the unusual bustle on the shore, and came hurrying down. Then came persons in authority, with armed followers. The Dutch captain hoisted sail, and the women and children were left to the tender mercies of the cruel. But the good pastor was their guide. With his help, the parted ones were re-united ; and we find them, a few years after, settled under his ministry in Holland. But Holland was not their home. They were English, and loved English ways of life. To their own country, with its Laudism and Star-chamber, they would not return. They wanted another England-a land of peace and freedom ; and there, beyond the waste of waters, it had arisen. Untilled were its fields, unbuilt its towns ; but heaven was over it, and the Lord of seedtime and harvest was its king. Nathaniel Morton, the first historian of this European exodus, shall describe their departure to us: "So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years. When they came to Delfthaven, they found the ship and all things ready ; and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from · THE HARBOUR SCENE. 171 Amsterdam to see them shipped, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of Christian love. The next day they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting to hear what sighs, and sobs, and prayers did sound amongst them-what tears did gush from every eye, and pretty speeches pierced each other's heart-that sundry of the Dutch strangers, that stood on the quay as spectators, could not refrain from tears. But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks, commended them, with most fervent prayers, unto the Lord and his blessing, and then with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave-taking to many of them." We cannot refrain from adding to this account a sentence or two from Robinson's parting address, because, in truth, the real spirit of Puritan life came out in the words he uttered : " Brethren," he said, " we are now quickly to part from one another, and whether I may ever live to see your face on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows ; but whether the Lord has appointed that or no, I charge you, before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. If God reveal 172 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. anything to you by any other instrument, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any by my ministry ; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy Word." And then he spoke of Luther and John Calvin-" shining lights in their time, ” he said ; "yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God." With counsels so full of Christian openness, the pilgrim fathers set sail. Their arrangements took them first to England. From thence, in two vessels, the Speedwell and the Mayflower, 170 set sail. The Speedwell was not sea-worthy, and put back. At length, on the 6th of September, the little Mayflower, with 101 English Puritans, is fairly on her way. Let us look well at this handful. They are carrying New England over the waste. They are the seed of mighty things. As the world grows older, they will grow more venerable. European life goes with them into the dim old forests of the West. The Spaniard, the gold-digger, the man whose culture was Romanic, is eating his gold and perishing. The Saxon worshipper, with a heart for peace, with an arm for industry, with a trust in God, is to forestall him. The Spaniard will stagnate the Saxon will spread. How the magnanimous heart of Columbus would have rejoiced in such colonists ! There is a patriarchal solemnity about their lives. Their souls are full of the departure of Abraham. God was with him, they thought. " Their strength was in the trust that DREARY PERILOUS DAYS. 173 breasts all billows." They went forth into the wilderness, leaning on the Beloved. They were sorely tried. They could not get landed on the spot they wished. The snell blast from the sea reminded them that winter was at hand. It was already the middle of November before the Mayflower dropped anchor in the shelter of Cape Cod. The pilgrims drew up a deed of government on board, as English subjects, and John Carver was chosen governor for a year. Another month passed ere they could land. Exploring parties were sent forth to find a proper site . It was not easy to find one. The perils of these explorers are most graphically told by Bancroft, in his " History of the United States." At last, on Monday, 10th December, the emigrants leave the Mayflower. The rock where they landed is still shown to the stranger, as one of the sacred things of the New World. Cheever has given us a good panoramic description of Plymouth Harbour at the present day, taken from the Burial Hill. " Below you lies the town, around the bosom of the hill. The harbour is one of those vast inlets so frequent along our coast, where at high tide, you see a magnificent bay studded with islands, and opening proudly into the open ocean, but, at low tide, an immense extent of muddy, soft-grassed, and sea-weeded shallows, with a narrow stream winding its way among them to find the sea.' Such as it is now the pilgrim fathers found it to their cost. They have recorded, in one of their journals, how " we 174 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. could not come near the shore by three-quarters of an English mile, because of shallow water, which was a great prejudice to us, for our people, going on shore, were forced to wade a bowshot or two in going a-land, which caused many to get colds and coughs, for it was by this time freezing weather." It is very touching to read such words-" By this time it was freezing weather. " Their houses are to build their arrangements for the spring to be completed their little society to be governed. The Mayflower is on her passage home-the garment of barrenness is on the land of their adoption. And these were not pictorial distresses. Governor Carver buried a son, then sank into the grave himself. His widow followed, and others were made widows. Two and three died in a day, -" this freezing weather." In March, as many as thirteen have to be buried. Of our 101 , scarce 50 remain to look upon their new homestead when the spring breeze shall blow. The Spaniards got no such welcome when they touched at the Bahama Islands. Columbus cannot sufficiently express his admiration of the fragrance and the beauty of the scene, recalling to his mind the best districts of Spain. But it was appointed to the pilgrim fathers to settle on less hospitable shores. The long ridge of mingled rock and sand, which the sea appears to have left behind as it retired, which rises between the base of the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic-an arid and barren coast-received them and their successors, and was the cradle of those young con- THE FOUNDERS OF THE WEST. 175 federacies which were one day to become the United States of America. Behind the rounded summits of the Alleghanies, the Mississippi rolls down a course of 2500 miles, through a valley which has been pronounced " the most magnificent dwelling- place prepared by God for man.' Beyond the valley of the Mississippi, over its western wall-the Rocky Mountains-lies the Californian wealth. But out of the hard rocks and the poor soil on this side of the Alleghanies, the European Puritan is to extract his gold for generations, and, by patient industry, to prove his title, before he go in and possess the land. The fifty are not without hope : "Our bleak hills shall bud and blow, Vines our rocks shall overgrow, Plenty in our valleys flow. We but ask our rocky strand, Freedom's true and brother band, Freedom's strong and honest hand.

• *

Take your land of sun and bloom, Only leave to freedom room For her plough, and forge, and loom." And thus was founded the American nationthe European west of the Atlantic. In a very able article in the " Edinburgh Review," the remark was made, that " the English Puritans divided their vast inheritance between them in the reign of Charles I. One body remained at home, and established the English constitution ; one crossed the Atlantic, and founded the American republic." The reviewer adds : " According to Mr Bancroft, about 22,000 landed in New England before the 176 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. assembling of the Long Parliament-that is, during the first twenty years after the landing of the pilgrims and they received few accessions afterwards." At the present day, the number of their descendants has been estimated at 4,000,000 ; but, in a population which has to suffer so many amalgamations, the estimate can hardly be more than a surmise. It is both easier, and, on the whole, truer, to say that New England-the states east of the Hudson-is the existing representative of those Puritans who left the old country in the seventeenth century. This being the case, we shall now endeavour, before we pass from this part of our subject, to indicate the more internal connection, the social or political link, which there is between New England society, as we find it, and its Old England fathers. At the first glance, instead of connection, there is 'contradiction. We believe any reader of New England news, much more any one who has been in New England, knows that the essential element of its society is democracy : not merely democracy as to individuals, but democracy as to the opinions of individuals. The majority of votes is master. Public men, public opinions, public worship, are put to the vote. The American is intolerant, only to a minority. Now, there was no condition of things which the Puritan fathers contemplated with greater aversion than this same. As to politics, for example, they were zealous monarchy men. Their social compacts were all drawn out THE PURITAN FAITH. 177 in the name, and for the behoof, of the English monarch. As to religion, again, although they were themselves fugitives from persecution, it was the last thing to suggest itself to them, that persecution, in general, was a wrong thing People who do not examine the matter, say they were too bigoted, too ignorant, to see this. In point of fact, they were simply too sincere. The men felt that they were right, and that there could not be two shapes of right. "God forbid," their leading men said, "that our love for the truth should grow so cold as to allow us to tolerate errors. Better far to have tares in the field, to have people conforming only in appearance, than to have thorns and briars." Another said " Of all impieties, polypiety is the greatest ; and it is impious ignorance to assert that men should have liberty of conscience." They openly taught, and avowed, and acted on these sentiments. And men and women were banished, whipped, and even executed, in accordance with them. And yet, out of this intolerance has sprung New England toleration ; and from monarchy men, the democrats. The explanation lies in the fact that the Puritan fathers were Protestants. The essential thing in them, although they themselves were far from being conscious of this, was the right of private judgment, the supremacy of the individual conscience in things relating to faith, and of the reason in things relating to politics. We have already shown that Luther appealed to monarchy for the support of religion . It was Ꮓ 178 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. an indication of the quite opposite under-current of the Reformation principle, that his successor, Calvin, founded the republic of Geneva ; that the Calvinists of Scotland, at some moments of their struggle, contemplated an imitation of this ; and that the Commonwealth-men of England did erect a temporary republic in their country. But these tendencies were not generally recognised. Even the Quakers, the people of whom the Protestant principle took the deepest hold, sought and obtained patents of government from the English monarchs, before they began to colonise. We are very anxious that our younger friends should have a clear conception of the fact we are now referring to. They are exceedingly apt to be perplexed, in the study of history, by mistaking the essential principles of great movements. And there is almost nothing less known among Protestants than Protestantism itself. " It is justification by faith," says one. "It is the Bible," says another. " It is established churches," says a third. "It is voluntaryism, " says a fourth. Now, it is not one of any of these things. It is connected with these things, simply because its adherents are. But by itself, considered in its vital, actuating principle, it is negatively the revolt of the human mind against traditional authority ; and, positively, it is the resolution of the same human mind to trust to its own judgments of what is right and wrong. We recall to mind what we said in the eighth picture about the Christian priesthood. Protest- THE TRUE PROTESTANT PRINCIPLE. 179 antism grows out of the recognition of this fact, as naturally as the blade does out of the seed. Knowing that I am a priest to God-and this really was the new thing brought to light by Luther-knowing that I, as a believer in Him, without ordination, without apostolical succession, without being either a monk or any other sort of officer in the outward worship, but, by the mere virtue of my portion as a believer, am a priest, a man free and welcome to go, for my own soul, into God's presence -I cannot fail to protest against authority of an official kind. I see that God has lifted me out of that sphere. I see that there is in my own being a faculty by which I may commune with Him. I recognise that He has intrusted to this faculty the mighty function of giving glory unto him. And this once seen-that in regard to the highest things, each man has been, so to speak, placed under his own care—whatever I may believe as to doctrine, whatever shape of the truth may most commend itself to my mind, however much I may be under the influence of bygone habits-I am essentially a Protestant. Now, the English Puritans, without knowing the whole range of the principle of universal priesthood, recognised the fact, and cherished it with abundant clearness. By virtue of it, they endured persecution, rather than conform to the worship of the Episcopal party in England. Even when they were denying to the Episcopalians, on the one hand, and to the Sectaries, on the other, the right of private judgment, they were exercising it themselves. 180 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. Their voluntary exile from their fatherland was an exercise of it. The exercise of it was the vital thing in their history. Everything else has fallen away from them ; their peculiar views in theology; their avowed politics ; their intolerance. In their descendant of New England, in his universal tolerance and democracy, we have the natural and inevitable-we are far from saying the final-development of the Protestant principle. There is another aspect in which the connection between the New Englander and the Pilgrim fathers may be viewed the aspect turned toward us when we stand on exclusively political groundwhich has been admirably pourtrayed in a work we recommend for earnest study, "De Tocqueville's Democracy in America.” This book was written " under the impression of a kind of religious dread, produced in the author's mind by the contemplation" of the irresistable progress of democracy in Europe. A mighty revolution seems to him to be accomplishing itself in all European states. The old bands of society are loosening. The spell of royalty is broken. In politics, in faith, in thought, there is an overturning. All things are tending to equality. All old things have lost their venerableness. And political and religious men are not conscious whither the current is carrying them. Influenced by this sight, he went to America. There, it seemed to him, the revolution going on in Europe has reached its natural limits ; and reached it with perfect ease. And he confesses, that he wished to see in PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY. 181 the west the image of that democracy to which Europe is being borne, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress. It is in connection with this purpose that he is led to speak of the Pilgrim fathers. All the peculiarities of New England society had their germ in them. We shall attempt to give a brief outline of his idea, He was struck, we have said, with the progress of democracy in Europe. From the very first, this element has existed and gathered strength. All movements the whole character of European history has forwarded it. Recur to the feudal times. Physical force was the only means by which man could act on man. The clergy rose to eminence. By their very constitution opening their ranks to all classes, democracy was fostered. Children of the people sat on the throne of St Peter. As property acquired fixed boundaries, lawyers were needed ; and for a long time, only the sons of poor men would submit to a drudgery, which, however, lifted them up to the same tribunal where princes sat. It was a mighty equaliser, money. With money, I can favour a king ; and the money- classes at the first were Jews and traders. Then came literature-the spread of intellectual light-the searcher out of hid talent. Then came the struggle between the nobles and the king. To procure money-help, the nobles granted privileges to the towns on their estates ; to procure soldiers, the kings granted little bits of 182 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. freedom to the people. Democracy throve in the strife. The crusades and civil wars decimated the nobles, and made room for churchmen and merchants. And thus there was implanted in the bosom of European society, the seeds and principles of democracy. When this element had acquired a strength which made decay impossible, the Puritans crossed the Atlantic. Consciously, they were no democrats. Even after the battles with Charles, their English brethren had no other thought than a settlement according to law, under a hereditary king, and this king, the actual Charles Stewart, they had defeated. The pilgrim fathers had not been so shaken from monarchic principles when they went forth. They had a heart-love for monarchic institutions. But they were borne on a current stronger than themselves ; or, rather, they were themselves the channel of a current, of which they were not conscious. At the time of their emigration, the parish system, at bottom a democratic institution, was deeply rooted in the habits of the English. The men who were to erect this system in the New World, did not go forth, as the German tribes had done, under a leader who was to become king. No man thought himself superior to his neighbour. And even when there did, in a land where the population had to be counted by hundreds, where markets were not created, the necessity for personally cultivating the soil preserved all upon an equal footing. THE PARISH SYSTEM. 183 Besides this, the earlier Puritans were all of the educated class. They were not gentry ; but neither were they denizens of the hovel or the lane. They were men accustomed to think : their intellects sharpened by the theological discussions which prevailed in the mother-country ; their moral being purified by suffering-men who left their homes in England, neither for wealth or comfort, but that, in the uncultivated ranges of the Western Continent, the idea to which they adhered might have freedom to develop. Representatives, lovers, of the parish system, then, these cultivated and moral men sat down to frame institutions for New England. You will find in these institutions things rude and oldworld enough ; but you find, side by side with narrowness and crudity, "a body of political laws, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still ahead of the liberties of our age.' You find, in fact, the general principles which are the groundwork of all that is proposed by our modern politics ; "the intervention of the people in public affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of authorities, personal liberty, and trial by jury." "" The parish system was reproduced in the constitution of towns. Each town was to manage its own affairs, provide for its poor, educate its children ; and each citizen had a vote ; and all this in circumstances where there were no hindrances, such as hem us in overpeopled districts, where there was ample space, material and social, for the institution to grow. 184 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. Such is a very meagre account of the genealogy of American institutions, as illustrated by De Tocqueville. Added to the view we have presented from the religious ground, there has been given, we venture to think, a very full and simple pourtrayal of the inner connection which exists between the Pilgrim father and the New England statesman. An additional remark, implied, indeed, in all we have said about them, is that, as the founders of a nation, they are in human history rare examples of untarnished worth. Rome was founded by outlaws ; England by pirates ; the old empires of Asia were baptised in blood. The American nation alone has taken its rise from men, who, of all things, least wished to use the sword unjustly, or to do an unjust thing by their brother man. We look back, not without reverence, to the men who were raised up out of obscurity, to govern the little colonies at the first. We see them ploughing, and buying and selling, like their neighbours, and yet fulfilling the august functions of the magistracy. We see their actions subjected to public opinion, and their position maintained notwithstanding. Venerable are all lawgivers and rulers. Numa, Solon, Lycurgus, Charlemagne, Alfred, Hildebrand, Cromwell, are names which we hallow, for that they represented justice. We shall add to the reverend catalogue the name of Winthrop, the Puritan Governor of Massachusetts. He was not a democrat, the Boston historian will tell you. The least part is the best part, he was accustomed to BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSEUM BORDERS. Winthrop and the Thief. Seepage 185. ANECDOTES OF WINTHROP. 185 say, of a community. A wiser than he had also said it. He was a man of wise heart. The intolerance of his brethren was little relished by him. On his deathbed, when they asked him to sign the banishment of a minister, he refused, adding, " I have done too much of that already." In one of the Boston accounts of the early settlements there, a number of fine things are told of Winthrop. In our England, he was made Justice when he was only eighteen years of age. His aptitude for the magistracy was very great. " It is a pity," said Charles I., " that such a worthy gentleman should be no better accommodated than with the hardships of America. " He had a wonderful control of his own passions. On one occasion, one of the officers of the colony wrote him a "sharp letter," complaining of his official acts. He sent back the letter ; would not keep such a letter of provocation by him. By and by, the writer of the letter, while there was a scarcity of food in the colony, sent to buy some of Winthrop's cattle. "Receive them," said the governor, " as a gift, in token of my good- will." The offender wrote back -"Sir, your overcoming of yourself hath overcome me." This way of dealing with offenders was loved by him. One hard winter, complaint was made that a person frequently stole wood from his pile. The governor soon put a stop to the stealing. He ordered the man into his presence. "Friend," said he to the trembling thief, “ it is a cold winter this, and I doubt not you are but poorly provided with wood. You are welcome to 2 A 186 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. supply yourself at my pile, until the winter is over." His free, generous disposition subjected him at first to many unjust suspicions. The narrowminded fancied , because he did not do as they wished, that he was too arbitrary in his government ; and he was put upon his defence. The defence was such, that, from that time forward, he was always re-elected governor of the state. In the course of the defence, he gave a fine description of liberty, in the following sentences : "There is a liberty, " he said, " of corrupt nature, which is affected both by men and beasts, (the liberty) to do what they list ; and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint ; by this liberty, we are all hurt ; ' tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty which is the proper end and object of authority ; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good ; for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives, and whatsoever crosses it, is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority, and the authority set over you will, in all administration for your good, be quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a disposition to shake off the yoke, and lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the honour and power of authority. " Amid the echoes of these true words, we shall take leave of the Pilgrim fathers. Well may the patriots of the New World hallow their memories. THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS. 187 They are their heroes. The Revolution and Washington are but fruits of them. They were the true beginning the soul of America. New England is their monument-their bequest. And when the destiny of the states which make up New England shall have unfolded itself-when the dominating and ascending spirit, which at present flings its radiance thence, up over the Canadas, and down through the states of the south, shall have clothed itself in proper institutions—it will refer, with all its voices, to the little companies of Puritans, who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, sailed from England, to build homes and churches on the opposite shore of the Atlantic. The Twelfth Picture. EUROPE SPREADING WESTWARDTHE MODERN EMIGRANT. OF Europe spreading westward, we have now seen two notable instances-that of Columbus, and that of the Pilgrim Fathers. The one rolled back the mist which had shrouded the western continent from our eyes ; the other carried to that continent the principles by which its population were to be knit together. A third movement, distinct from these two, with a special character of its own, is going on at the present day ; and we shall endeavour to place some representation of it before our readers. By way of background to our Picture of the Modern Emigrant, we submit the following generalised statistics of the emigration to the continent we have had under notice. The first is from M'Gregor's " American Statistics :" " Few have fixed their eyes steadily upon it -few have estimated the depth, width, and volume of the vast and regularly increasing flood of population, which pours, not from England only, but from all western Europe, into that huge reservoir. Professor Tucker, in a memoir cited by Mr M'Gregor, estimates the whole number of European emigrants to the States, from 1800 to 1840, at about a million persons. We suspect that the number is 183 THE FORCE OF THE CURRENT. 189 very greatly under-rated ; but, whatever be the case as to the early part of the century, the increase since has been so prodigious as to render such calculations unimportant, except for historical purposes. "Official data show that nearly four and a quarter millions of foreigners arrived in the States between September 1819, and the close of 1855-a period of 36 years. Of these 207,492 were born in England, 747,930 in Ireland, 34,559 in Scotland, 4,782 in Wales, and 1,398,692 others in parts of Great Britain not designated. "The report of our Colonial Land and Emigration Company gives 82,239 as the number of British emigrants to the United States in 1846, being about 20,000 higher than any previous year. In the same year, 43,439 went to our North American colonies ;" and to this must be added the 60,000 Germans whom the banks of the Maine and the Necker contribute annually to America. "If to these, again, be added the miscellaneous emigrants of other countries, 1846's swarms from the old hive to North America cannot be estimated at much less than 200,000 persons. In 1847, it amounted to 300,000 ; and the number is steadily on the increase." Our own Emigration Statistics also show that since the close of the Peninsular war to Dec. 1855, (a period of forty- one years, ) the total Emigration from the United Kingdom, amounted in round numbers to four and a quarter millions. Of these, about half a million went to the Australian Colonies and New Zealand ; 11 190 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. millions to the North American Colonies, and 21 millions to the United States. To this influx must be added, in order to a full view of the emigration which is going on, the movements of the Americans themselves from the east sea-bord to the far west. The whole movement "offers to the mind's vision a spectacle of the same silent and sustained grandeur with which the eye is impressed in watching the everlasting flow of some deep and powerful river. The endless procession moves ever from east to west, without regard to the counsels, or prophecies, or speculations of statesmen-an exceeding great army, in which the masses, acting without concert or knowledge of each other, accomplish their purpose as effectually as if one will actuated the whole.” (“ Edinburgh Review," October, 1847.) The other passage, to the same effect, has to be received with this qualification, that the numbers mentioned in it are too antiquated to be worth remembering. The general view, however, remains correct ; it is from De Tocqueville's book ; " At this very time thirteen millions (add, at least, seven millions) of civilised Europeans are peaceably spreading over those fertile plains, with whose resources and whose extent they are not yet themselves accurately acquainted. The European leaves the cottage for the transatlantic shores ; and the American, who is born on that very coast, plunges, in his turn, into the wilds of Central America. This double emigration is incessant. It begins in the remotest parts of Europe, WESTWARD HO ! · · 191 it crosses the Atlantic Ocean, and it advances over the solitudes of the New World. Millions of men are marching at once towards the same horizon, with the same object. Fifty years have scarcely elapsed since the state of Ohio was founded ; the greater part of its inhabitants were not born within its confines ; its capital has only been built thirty years, and its territory is still covered by an immense extent of uncultivated fields : nevertheless, the population of Ohio is already proceeding westward, and most of the settlers who descend to the fertile savannahs of Illinois are citizens of Ohio. Sometimes the progress of man is so rapid, that the desert reappears behind him. The woods stoop to give him a passage, and spring up again when he has passed. It is not uncommon, in crossing the new states of the west, to meet with deserted dwellings in the midst of the wilds ; the traveller frequently discovers the vestiges of a loghouse in the most solitary retreats. "* "I remember," continues De Tocqueville, " that, in crossing one of the woodland districts which still cover the state of New York, I reached the shore of a lake, which was embosomed in forests coeval with the world. A small island, covered with woods, whose thick foliage concealed its banks, rose from the centre of the waters. Upon the shores of the lake, no object attested the presence of man, except a column of smoke, which might be seen on the horizon, rising from the tops of the trees to the clouds, and seeming to hang from heaven, rather than to be mounting to the sky. An Indian shallop was hauled up on the sand, which tempted me to visit the islet, that had first at- tracted my attention, and in a few minutes I set foot upon its banks. The whole island formed one of those delicious solitudes of the New World, which almost lead civilised man to regret the haunts of the savage. A luxuriant vegetation bore witness to 192 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. . This background would be ill filled in, if we were to forget that, besides the scene depicted by De Tocqueville, the mighty continent of Australia and the islands of the Pacific receive portions of the emigration tide. The whole western sea has been explored. The European mariner has crossed and recrossed it on familiar courses. He has gone westward until the true Zepangu was in view ; and there is not an island, nor a spot of rock, between that and the Frith of Clyde, which does not bear on its shores the footprints of the European. And now let us select from this mass one of the units of which it is composed. Let us endeavour to apprehend the mighty purpose he is spreading westward to fulfil. Let us try to catch a glimpse of that inner character by which the European Emigrant of the nineteenth century will be known in the after-story of the world, when he lies as far · the incomparable fruitfulness of the soil. The deep silence, which is common to the wilds of North America, was only broken by the hoarse cooing of the wood-pigeon, and the tap- ping of the woodpecker upon the bark of trees. I was far from supposing that this spot had ever been inhabited, so completely did nature seem to be left to her own caprices ; but when I reached the centre of the isle, I thought that I discovered some traces of man. I soon perceived that a Euro- pean had been led to seek a refuge in this retreat. Yet what changes had taken place in the scene of his labours ! The logs, which he had hastily hewn to build himself a shed, had sprouted afresh ; the very props were intertwined with living verdure, and his cabin was transformed into a bower. In the midst of these shrubs, a few stones were to be seen, blackened with fire, and sprinkled with thin ashes ; here the hearth had no doubt been, and the chimney, in falling, had covered it with ubbish. I stood for some time in silent admiration of the ex- uberance of nature and the littleness of man ; and when I was obliged to leave that enchanting solitude, I exclaimed, with melancholy, " Are ruins, then, already here ?" STILL ONWARD. 193 behind the historian of the future as Columbus and the pilgrim fathers do behind us. The first feature we recognise in him is this, that he is moving westward, as a man replying to the call of the Creator-" Go in and possess the land." The Alleghanies have been left behind ; the prairies of the Mississippi have been explored ; the Rocky Mountains have been crossed ; the waves of the Pacific are now beating on the homesteads of European men in North America. The shores of Australia, the harbours of New Zealand, are receiving populations ; and the settler is awakening to the fact, that he has only a handful of that earth which God means him to possess in full. Fast as the tide is flowing, it will have to flow still faster and broader, before the capacious west will be able to tell its full sum of population. Whilst we are living on disputed inches in the old country, there are hundreds and thousands of leagues untilled in that direction. Broad savannahs, rich with God's floods, are crying to the husbandman for culture ; deep woods, rotting in ignoble loneliness, are spreading forth their arms to embosom human homes ; broad rivers, wandering loose through the marsh, and supplying drink to the foul serpent, are waiting for the coming of him who is to build its embankments, and make it musical with the clack of the mill-wheel, and beautiful with the presence of the sail ; harbours, built deep into the foundations of the earth, and walled in by the everlasting mountains, are offering refuges for ships and openings for markets ; the whole earth ex2 B 194 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. panding, rising up as from a deluge, with its groves, and streams, and fields, and shores, beautiful as the thoughts of the Creator, hospitable as the love in his bosom, even in its forlornness giving birth to the lily, and supplying food to the fowls of the air ; this earth, at this moment, is lying open to the approach of its European lord, and, lo ! from the sea-bord of America, from the shores of Europe, from the depths of the German forests, he hurries to his heritage, to receive from the Great Landlord the mighty charge in perpetual lease. The second feature we recognise in our Modern Emigrant is, that he is a fugitive from the yoke of artificial society. We mean no disparagement to society as it exists around us, when we say, that it presses upon our necks as a yoke. It is the price we must pay for our conveniences, our quietness, our luxurious ways. Look at the machinery which is at work around you. What human want is it for which you do not find a minister ? Mills rise up without the help of the worker ; streets are built without the co-operation of the tenant ; authority is preserved without anxiety to the subject ; sharp eyes are awakening to detect anomalies ; strong heads are toiling to preserve the right ; your churches come to your doors ; your lecture-rooms stand in your respective districts ; your rivers are over-arched by stable bridges ; your cities are approached by iron and water ; daily comes the post to your dwelling ; daily the printing- press throws off the newspaper for your perusal your tea and sugar, your loaf and water, your raw material and THE DEAD-WEIGHT OF LUXURY. 195 woven cloth, everything which the body and the soul of man can lust after, behold, it is prepared for you, offered to you, forced on you, in this luxurious nest, where our callow wings have grown broad. But behind this amazing profusion of things convenient, the gaunt bones of the most cunning misery are erect. Not a fine lady in the land, who sips her coffee in the morning, with her foot on the soft settle, and her back to the cushioned chair, but pays for her comforts with her blood. Not a personable young fellow in all Europe, who puffs his cigar into your eyes and goes to theatres and ball- rooms, who has not given life, stronghearted, good-blooded life, for his patent of gentility. Not an intelligent artisan, who rushes upon his newspaper of an evening, and forgets the hardships of this sorry world amid the volubilities of ever-hopeful politics, who has not exchanged for his privilege the ruddy cheeks he received from his mother. What is our Pauper question, and our Encumbered Estates question, but the mighty groans of England under her centuries of luxury? At bottom it is this. Squandering, drunkenness, misgovernment, triumph of party, Whiggism, Toryism, Chartism, are but different aspects of our luxurious appetite. We fix our eye upon a certain difficulty ; we look at it until we see nothing else -until it seems to us to shut out the light of heaven ; we form a party ; we publish newspapers ; we send members to parliament, till we accomplish its removal ; and then, when it is overturned, we find another and another, stretching on like the 196 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. summits of mountains before a weary traveller. And on reforms which do so little for us, we spend our best lives ; to procure positions from which we may look down on our fellows, we barter our life of soul ; that we may still the perpetual cravings of a political, and domestic, and social luxury, we allow ourselves to be blanched whiter and still whiter, until the grave closes over the wreck of our poor existence. We see in the Modern Emigrant, we repeat, the fugitive from all this. We see a man brought to a stand amid the perplexities around him, numbering his chances here, trying the strength of his right arm, finding in emigration an outlet, a door of hope, a blue bore in the wracking sky. Look at him. How indifferent he has become, on a sudden, to your politics. With what a philosophic complacency he allows you to talk on about your charters and your financial reforms, and your meetings of parliament ! What cares he now about your municipal taxes-whether they are on means and substance, or on rent ? He has emerged out of the jungle ; he lives serene in a foreign atmosphere. The air of the far colony fans his freshening cheek. The tasks of his new home rise before him in waking dreams : the old house, the stair he so often went up and down, the factory he sweat in for so many years, the church he worshipped in, have passed behind him-are growing less and less to his view. And he is content to encase himself and his little ones within the walls of a berth in an emigrant vessel for weeks or FROM DREAMS TO REALITIES. 197 months, that he may leave England and its perplexities behind him, and go once more into the presence of nature, and be as a little child again, and look upon green woods, and running brooks, and smokeless skies, and build for himself a home, where the law of his own making shall be his politics, and indolence the only tax upon his labour. But let us be better acquainted with this fugitive. He would not be of much value if he were nothing else ; neither, if he were simply a possessor of the land. Fugitives from old countries, before now, have gone forth to possess rich lands. These are not the most important features in our Mcdern Emigrant. He is no Roman robber, who has fled from justice ; neither is he a Goth, with a sword at his side ; and, it must be added, with special reference to our own land, that he is not an inmate of the pauper house. He is a free and independent goer forth. His steps are tracked by no officers of the law. He goes into the west as a man of peace and industry. The third feature we find in him fits into this. The tide of European emigration has not begun to flow till now. It soon paused among the Spaniards. After the meeting of the Long Parliament, comparatively few emigrations took place. But in this nineteenth century, they have broken out. All this time, God waited. All this time, the Alleghanies in America, and our penal settlements in Australia, acted as walls. And now the walls are opened. The tide flows broad and deep. Look well at the man whom Heaven has sum- 198 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. moned into the west at this particular juncturé. In religion, he has seen the development of Reformation principles-has partaken of them also, whether he be Protestant, Catholic, or Freethinker. In politics, he has seen the French Revolutions— dignities weighed in the balance, and found wanting-anarchy sitting on the seat of order, with the guillotine by its side ; he has seen into abysses hid from men before, and the seeds of a wiser politics than he has known hitherto are implanted secretly in his life. In literature and science, he has seen the growth and development of the newspaper influence, the rise and progress of mechanics' institutions, and the popularising of great thoughts by this double means. Above all, in mechanics, he has seen the distaff displaced by the factory ; the hand- loom by the steam- loom ; the waterwheel bythe engine ; the drag-boat by the steamer : the turnpike-road and canal by the railway. He waited in Europe until James Watt was become venerable, and the element he had loosed from its long imprisonment was yoked into all possible services for man. He waited until light was found in stones, and carried in thin air by pipes into every dwelling. He waited until thought itself was carried along the wires of the telegraph. And then, the heir of all the wealth which belonged to his fathers at once the heir of Hebrew religion and Greek wisdom, of Roman town-life, and Reformation principles, of all the bequests of fifty centuries of human toil upon the earth, and the bearer of the aptest tools ever placed in human WHAT HE CARRIES ! 199 hands for labour-he went forth into the wild to be a seed of new things, that in lands whose shores have never echoed but to the beat of the inhospitable sea, there might spring up the churches, and the institutions, and the printing-presses, and the newspapers, and the whole wealth of steam appliances, which his eyes had looked upon in his earlier home. Watch him there, as he steps upon the vessel. There are railroads, and steam-engines, and printing-presses, and factories, and literature, and science, and religion in his brain. What a little thing he is ! He has just paid down his four pounds for his steerage passage ; he is but one of an innumerable host ; but, all the while, he is the winged possessor of European culture, borne on the breath of Providence, where culture is not. And yet we have not seen the best of him. He is a man-this is our fourth feature-of Germanic lineage. His fathers felled forests in the north of Europe-felled empires in the south. It is the son of Siward the strong, of Charlemagne, of Saxon Luther, who goes forth. Recall the description we gave in our first picture, of the character and capacity of the German race, and accept, as supplemental to it, the following extract from Dr Arnold's inaugural lecture, when he was appointed professor of modern history in Oxford : "The importance of this stock-the Teutonic or German-is plain from this, that its intermixture with the Celtic and Roman races, at the fall of the western empire, has changed the whole face of Europe. If we consider the Roman empire 200 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. in the fourth century of the Christian era, we shall find in it Christianity-we shall find in it all the intellectual treasures of Greece-all the social and political wisdom of Rome. What was not there was simply the German race, and the peculiar qualities which characterise it. This one addition was of such power, that it changed the character of the whole mass. We will pause for a moment, to observe over how large a portion of the earth this influence is now extended. It affects, more or less, the whole west of Europe, from the head of the Gulf of Bothnia to the most southern promontory of Sicily-from the Oder and the Adriatic, to the Hebrides and to Lisbon. It is true, that the language spoken over a large portion of this space is not predominantly German ; but, even in France, and Italy, and Spain, the influence of the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards, while it has coloured even the language, has, in blood and institutions, left its mark legibly and indelibly. Germany, the Low Countries, Switzerland (for the most part, ) Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and our own islands, are all, in language, in blood, and in institutions, German most decidedly. But all South America is peopled with Spaniards and with Portuguese ; all North America with Englishmen. I say nothing of the prospects and influence of the German race in Africa and in India ; it is enough to say, that half of Europe, and all America and Australia, are German, more or less completely, in race, in language, or in institutions, or in all." And then, THE OUTCOME OF ALL. 201 • after remarking that this element of race constitutes the main difference between ancient and modern history, he draws this startling conclusion from the predominance of the German race. " Modern history appears to be not only a step in advance of ancient history, but the last step ; it appears to bear marks of the fulness of time, as if there would be no future history beyond it. Looking anxiously round the world for any new races which may receive the seed, so to speak, of our present history into a kindly yet a vigorous soil, and may reproduce it, the same and yet new, for a future period, we know not where such are to be found. Some appear exhausted, others incapable, and yet the surface of the whole globe is known to us. The Roman colonies, along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, looked out on the countries beyond those rivers as we look up at the stars, and actually see with our eyes a world of which we know nothing. The Romans knew that there was a vast portion of earth which they did not know ; how vast it might be, was a part of its mysteries. But to us all is explored ; imagination can hope for no new Atlantic Island to realise the vision of Plato's Critias-no new continent, peopled by youthful races, the destined restorers of our worn- out generations. Everywhere the search has been made, and the report has been received. We have the full amount of earth's resources before us, and they seem inadequate to supply life for a third period of human history." We could not have shortened this extract with2 c 202 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. out disturbing the completeness of Arnold's thought. He gives it forth with some hesitation. But does it not bear upon its face very strong presumptive proof of its truth ? Over all races, the German or Teutonic has risen supreme. Where else is its rival ? Whatever the Sclavonic race may become, it certainly has shown no virtues yet to promise competition with the Germanic. This race dominates this, the highest growth in the human life-tree. Our Modern Emigrant comes before us, therefore, with increasing interest. He is the highest, last man in human history. Campbell's "last man goes. past us on his way to the emigrant-ship. We see the race which shall fill the world at its dissolution. Whatever is noble in the future of human history must be sought in them. "" And now, one other mark of note, and we are done. Of all races, it is the German who is to possess and carry on the world. Of all Germans, it is the English. Our Modern Emigrant is an Englishman. Travel from New York to California, it is our English speech that is spoken. The masters of North America-the Canadians and the New Englanders-think and speak in English. The Spanish portions of the Germanic race are well nigh exhausted. Gold has eaten their strength out. The southern continent will learn English yet. New Zealand speaks English. So does Australia. All the west belongs to England. We have out-stripped France, Germany, Russia, Spain. For good or for evil, our speech is to become the GLORIOUS VISIONS. 203 language of the west. It is a mighty thought for Englishman. All thoughtful men are impressed by it. It is an august, prolific fact. Our poets and novelists see miracles in it. The other day, we looked into Douglas Jerrold's " Man made of Money. " He escapes from his hard political style into free poetic exuberance in the contemplation of it. He cannot heartily enough rejoice in it. His hero goes on board, and the ship becomes mythical, magical, wondrous. "She carries a glorious freightage to the antipodes-English hearts and English sinews-hope and strength to conquer and control the waste, taming it to usefulness and beauty. She carries in her the seed of English cities, with English laws to crown them free. She carries with her the strong, deep, earnest music of the English tongue-a music soon to be universal as the winds of heaven. Amid the tangled ropes, clustered like birds, poets and philosophers, history-men and story-men, annalists and legatistsEnglish all-bound to the other side of the world to rejoice it with their voices !" He sees Milton, and Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Bacon, swinging by yard and block under the shrouds, and "poetic heads of every generation, from the half-cowled brow of Chaucer to the periwigged pate of Dryden, from bonnetted Pope to nightcapped Cowperfancy sees them all-all, ay, from the long dead day of Edward to the living hour of Victoria." What a shipful ! And yet Jerrold has not stretched his fancy a shade beyond the truth. In the log cabins of the far west, human lips will 204 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. tell our English stories, and human hearts be interested in our fathers' history. There, too, Wallace will be a hero, and Robin Hood a tolerated thief. Shakspeare and Burns will be familiar spirits to them, as to us. And when the Yule fires are lighted, in the long, deep nights of winter, and their faces are bathed in flickering red, they will tell how their fathers fought in Old England, till the oaken doors were broken, and the stone cells overthrown, and the Word of Life reclaimed for the heart of man from its sleep of . many generations. But we shall leave to the reader's imagination the filling up of the picture. We have not noted all the characteristics of the modern emigrant, We have, perhaps, noted enough of them, to give an interest in his destiny. Take him wherever we may, he is a man of note. However circumstanced, he is worthy of our regard. We too much despise what is around us. Because it is common and present, we heed it not. We give our love to the past. The past is all bathed in beauty. The future, as Wordsworth suggests, cannot contradict it. Therefore, we love the Pilgrim Fathers and Columbus. They lie calm and hallowed behind us. We forget that the Admiral had to beg bread and water for his son at the convent-door. We forget that horrid winter of coughs and rheumatisms in Plymouth bay. All that falls off from the worthies of the past. It is trivial, external, accidental. The inner form shines outthe spiritual, of which these things were but the holes and patches of the garment. And this trans- THE HUSK AND THE KERNEL. 205 figuration is not illusive. An inner form would not shine forth if there were not one. The beautiful figure of the past is the actual of the present dissolved into its ideal. What you see beautiful now, God saw while Columbus and the Pilgrim Fathers lived. The beauty was in their souls, or the past would never have revealed it. Let us apply this to the Modern Emigrant. Try to forget that you actually see him in the steerage or the cabin-in a log hut, or leading a waggon through the wilds ; try to forget that he wrought in the same shop with you—that you saw him doing common acts. Or if you think of these things, do so as things which are without him. There is an ideal, a soul of good, in the humblest servant of the Almighty. They also serve, who stand and wait. Much more, this heir of fifty centuries, this tool-bearer, this bearer of European culture into the west. Be sure he is a sacred person. The time will come when that restlessness, with which he is at present possessed, will be seen to have been a divine possession. It is the answer of the European man to the call of Providence. The earth is empty-he cannot rest until it is filled : the earth is uncultivated-he cannot rest until it is tilled : the earth is waste-he cannot rest until it is fruitful : the earth is silent-he cannot rest until it is vocal : consciously or unconsciously, he speeds forth in the fulfilment of a purpose as old as the earth, and he will cease to be important only when the dream of Columbus and the hope of the Hebrew prophets shall be realised 206 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. -when "the wilderness and the solitary place

shall be glad when the desert shall rejoice and

blossom as the rose." THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR.

THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. ON the morning of the 2d of January, 1492, long before the dawn of day, there issued slowly and obscurely from one of the small postern gates of the magnificent fortress of the Alhambra, in the ancient Moorish city of Granada, one of the most mournful processions in the world's records. The whole history of a once mighty but now fallen empire, renowned for centuries in war, in art, and in song, was now complete, and had reached the end of its last fatal decade. The crescent of the Moslem was that day to be lowered, and ere the bright southern sun had reached its meridian, the ensign of the cross would be seen floating aloft on the glorious towers of the Alhambra, in sight of the fallen monarch and his conquered people. As the procession traversed the silent streets of the devoted city, every eye was yet closed in sleep, save those of the guards who were now keeping morning watch, and who shed tears as they silently opened the gates to the family of the unfortunate Boabdil, with their small band of veteran Moors. As they wound along the beautiful banks of the silvery Xenil, there was one proud spirit that, even in deep dejection, refused either to bend, or to 209 2 D 210 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. murmur, or even to cast one look behind. This was the mother of Boabdil, who rode on with a haughty demeanour, while his wife and her attendants uttered loud lamentations as they turned from time to time to look on those beloved towers, still shaded in gloom, which they were now leaving for ever. Their road lay through the Alpuxarras, but they halted when they reached a small hamlet not far distant from the city, for their number was not yet complete. Here they were to be joined by the unfortunate monarch, who had yet to perform his last act of humiliation, to the full measure of which nothing had been awanting. He had been denounced as a traitor, a rebel, and a coward. The very day after he had opened negotiations for the surrender of the city, a frightful apparition was seen on its streets ; the form of a living skeleton, with eyes glaring in their sockets, and speech wild and frantic. This was the santon or dervise, Hamet Aben Zarah, who had often before excited commotions among the people by his prophecies and denunciations, and who had been endeavouring to obtain succours from the Moslems of Barbary. He inveighed against the king as false to his religion and his country in offering to capitulate, and called upon all true Moslems to go forth against the unbelievers, for Allah had decreed them a signal triumph. Thousands rose to arms, and rent the air with their shouts, filling the streets till long after nightfall, when a wintry tempest tamed their fury, and before the dawn of morning the wretched QUITTING THE ALHAMBRA, 211 enthusiast had vanished, and among the populace sullen silence again reigned. Boabdil, who had all the time remained as it were a prisoner within the walls of the Alhambra, then came forth, attended by his nobles, and harrangued the people on the necessity of the surrender and the futility of defence. In the depth of his dejection, he bitterly accused himself as the cause of the miseries of his conntry. It was my crime in ascending the throne in rebellion against my father," said he, mournfully, " which has brought these woes on the kingdom ; but Allah has grievously visited my sins upon my head." "" The people were touched by the misery and humility of their sovereign, and agreed to the surrender, which was made on the following day, when what we have already called his last act of humiliation was performed. Scarcely had the sun arisen, when the Christian camp was in motion. The Moorish king, with a handful of faithful followers, slowly issued forth from the now silent and deserted halls of the Alhambra, the Castilian troops having reached the summit of the hill on which it stood. To the commander he said, “ Go, seignior, and take possession of those fortresses which Allah has bestowed upon vour powerful lord in punishment of the sins of the Moors." He then descended to the vega or plain, to meet the Catholic sovereigns, who had moved forward to within half a league of the city, where they paused, and waited impatiently, their eyes fixed on 212 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. the lofty tower of the Alhambra. At length they beheld the silver cross glancing in the beams of the morning sun, and instantly kneeling down with their whole assembled host, they returned thanks to God, while, at the same moment, there sounded forth from the royal chapel, swelling high into the air, the solemn anthem of "Te Deum laudamus. " Ferdinand and Isabella then moved on till they came to a small mosque near the foot of the Hill of Martyrs, where they were met by the fallen monarch, who would have dismounted to do homage, but the conquerors magnanimously declined this sign of vassalage. Boabdil's son, who had remained a hostage in the Christian camp, was then delivered to him, after which he presented the keys of the city to Ferdinand, saying, " These keys are the last relics of the Arabian empire in Spain. Thine, O king, are our trophies, our kingdom, and our person. Such is the will of God. Receive them with the clemency thou has promised, and which we look for at thy hands !" Ferdinand, concealing his exultation, made a gracious reply, and now, despoiled of every emblem of his power, the unfortunate Boabdil slowly wended his way towards the mountains with his faithful followers, who could not repress their sighs and lamentations when the soft breeze wafted to their ears shouts of victory and strains of martial music. Having joined his family, the cavalcade halted on a height which commanded the last view of the beloved city. Never before had it appeared THE LAST VIEW. 213 so lovely in their eyes. The glorious sun was shining on many a well-remembered spot, lighting up mosque, and minaret, and the red, high, towering battlements of the Alhambra ; but as they gazed, a cloud of smoke and a faint peal of artillery told the tale that the imperial city had now become the prey of the unbelievers, and the unfortunate exiles turned their eyes away, and bowed themselves in silent agony. Boabdil, borne down by grief and remorse, essayed to utter the words " Allah achbar !" (God is great !) but his voice failed him, and tears started to his eyes. His proud and undaunted mother, instead of pitying him in this the extremity of his misery, addressed to him words of scorn. "You do well," said she, " to weep like a woman for what you failed to defend like a man." One of his faithful viziers would have soothed his royal master, and whispered to him some few words of consolation, but vain was the effort. The unhappy monarch sighed out the words " Allah achbar ! when did misfortunes ever equal mine?" and, laying the reins on the neck of his favourite steed, his hands fell powerless by his side, and, lifting up his voice, he wept aloud. The hill on which this last sad scene was enacted, is still called by the Spaniards, " El ultimo suspiro del Moro,' or "The last sigh of the Moor. " It is well known that the followers of Mahomet are firm believers in predestination, and also remarkable for the composure with which they bear the heaviest trials and the severest sufferings. 214 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. They bow the head, and the countenance changes not. "It is the will of God! it is the will of God!" is all that the true son of Moslem gives utterance to, when sentence of death is pronounced on him, when the cherished of his heart fades away from his desiring eyes, or when he must exchange wealth and luxury for poverty or a prison. But there is a depth of misery in which all national peculiarities give way and are forgotten ; in which Christian and Moslem, Jew and Gentile, are all found to be of one flesh ; for, whatever be the creed, the custom, or the discipline, the broken spirit must find an utterance ; must cry aloud to the Father of spirits, whose power to cast down and to raise up again, to kill and to make alive, is thus, however unwillingly, acknowledged, It is generally by words like those of the unhappy Moor-" when did misfortunes ever equal mine ?"—that the overburdened heart speaks from its troubled depths ; and when we contemplate the wretched Boabdil lamenting over his fallen race, and the destruction of the lovely Granada, on which he was now looking for the last time, we are forcibly reminded of the pathetic lamentation of the Hebrew prophet over the holy city : " Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger." The imperial city of Granada is of very ancient date. Some chroniclers assert that it was founded more than two thousand years before the Christian era. WAVES OF ANCIENT WARFARE. 215 However this may be, it was known as a place of some importance in the time of the Romans. When the mighty hordes of Arabian invaders overran some of the fairest territories of Asia and Africa, and had achieved a series of the most splendid victories, especially in Syria and Egypt, a mixed tribe of the Asian and African at length landed at Gibraltar, and, like the rush of an impetuous torrent, spread their conquests even beyond the Pyrenees ; but, having met with an effectual check on the plains of Tours, they were driven back to these mountain cliffs, which henceforth formed the boundary of their possessions. At the period of which we are writing, nearly eight centuries had passed away since the Arabian invaders had sealed the fate of Spain by the defeat of Roderick, the last of her Gothic kings. Moderate in victory, they at once abandoned the principle of conquest common to all the tribes of their wandering race, and sought, by the cultivation of the arts of peace, to be the founders of a lasting dominion in the lovely land they had conquered. Into the rude western lands of Europe, they brought all the elegancies of Oriental civilisation. To the promotion of commerce, agriculture, and manufactures, they added mild and equitable laws, and the diligent pursuit of Arabian science and learning ; while over the more useful arts a romantic grace was thrown by the refinements of music, poetry, and chivalry. The universities of Seville, Cordova, and Granada, were long famous for their science, and treasures of 216 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. @ ancient lore, and Christian artisans resorted in great numbers to the Moslem cities of Spain, for in them was to be found the best instruction in all the useful arts. All over the country were libraries, containing many thousands of precious volumes at a time when a few hundreds were counted a great store ; and in Cordova alone were eighty free schools. Here, then we see this infidel, but brave and highly civilised race, whom Washington Irving describes as a remote wave of the great Arabian inundation, cast upon the shores of Europe," sundered from their own race by oceans and burning sands, and from the Christians among whom they might be said to dwell, by the still wider barrier of faith and custom. But quiet possession was not to be theirs. They were never to take solid root in the soil they had conquered. They were only to tread as it were on the surface of the land they had embellished and fructified. Their whole existence was to become a protracted struggle, for the Goth had no sooner recovered from the shock of the mighty rushing tempest that had desolated and laid him low, than, like a strong man refreshed, he arose again to the renewal of a combat which was never to cease till the last of the infidels was driven forth, leaving behind him vast piles of stately though silent ruins, but with these many great and imperishable benefits. There is no correct chronicle extant of the earlier period of these protracted wars, both the Spaniard and Arabian historians having mixed up much that is THE SPANISH CHRONICLES. 217 fabulous in their works. In the cathedrals and convents of Spain were found numerous MSS. from the hand of that most zealous Christian chronicler, Fray Antonio Agapida, containing an account of these wars ; and such of the fragments as were not dispersed during the frequent convulsions to which Spain has been subjected, are still preserved in the library of the Escurial. It is certain, however, that the Arab disputed with the Goth every inch of ground ; and that, when the arts of peace were most flourishing, when specimens of the most exquisite workmanship were being produced by the loom of the manufacturer, and in the shop of the cunning artisan ; while the different universities were surprising the world by their science and learning, and attracting to their halls the student of other lands ; the neighbouring provinces were the scene of the most vexatious warfare-a warfare whose sure ravages were to spread, till the learner had driven out him who taught him, till the hand of the workman was to be paralysed, and his eye to grow dim, as the blood of his countrymen flowed through the streets of his city, and the voice of the learned and eloquent was no more to be heard in those splendid halls which they had made the boast of all Europe. Province after province had been gained back by the obstinate valour of the Goth, till at length the rich and populous territory of Granada alone remained to the infidel in the land he had conquered. This beautiful kingdom was situated in the southern extremity of Spain, its shores washed 2 E 218 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. by the waters of the Mediterranean, and defended on the land side by chains of lofty, rugged mountains, covered with perpetual snow. Its quiet possession was left to the Moor, but only in vassalage, and on payment to the King of Castile and Leon of a large tribute of gold and captives. This tribute had been regularly paid till the time of Muley Aben Hassan, who came to the throne in 1465. Proud of his illustrious lineage, that of the first Moorish King of Granada ; his power also augmented by many of the cities and strongholds bordering on Granada having sheltered themselves under his protection ; his sway extending over fourteen cities, ninety-seven fortified towns, and numerous unwalled towns and villages, defended by formidable castles, his heart swelled with indignation at what he regarded as the degradation of his race. He had once been at Cordova with his father to pay the tribute, and the humiliating scene, the haughty looks and sneers of the Castilian, never ceased to rankle in his memory. On becoming king, he ceased payment of the tribute, the bare mention of which put him in transports rage ; and when Ferdinand and Isabella sent a cavalier to demand it, the fierce Arab, seated on a magnificent divan in the hall of the ambassadors, the most sumptuous in the Alhambra, scornfully replied, "Tell your sovereigns that the kings of Granada who used to pay tribute in money to the Castilian crown are dead. Our mint at present coins nothing but blades of scimitars and heads of lances." of The Moor's Message-A Scene in the Alhambra. BORDERS See page 218. BRITISH 15 JA61 HUSTUM THE MOOR'S MESSAGE. 219 Notwithstanding these words of defiance, the ambassador was treated with the utmost courtesy. The king sent him a splendid scimitar, the blade of the finest Damascus steel, the hilt of agate, set round with precious stones, the guard of gold ; upon drawing which he said, " His majesty has given me a trenchant weapon. I trust a time will come when I may show him that I know how to use his royal present." The ambassador and his attendants saw well that the Moor was prepared for hostilities, both offensive and defensive. His fortifications were of vast strength, and mounted with heavy ordnance ; his magazines fully stored ; his infantry and cavalry a mighty host, and endowed with fiery courage. The Christian warriors scanned the sumptuous mosques and gilded palaces of the far-famed city, as they turned to depart. They saw its bazaars laden with cloth of silver and gold, and the rich merchandise of eastern countries ; the plain around studded with towers ; every mountain pass defended ; every height surmounted by a watchtower. From the eye of many a turbaned sentinel there darted glances of defiance ; and from tower and fort bright lances flashed in the rays of the morning sun. The Christian exulted in the thought of encountering a foe worthy of him. What to him were years of toil and bloodshed, if this the loveliest of all the dominion of his ancestors were at length to be purified from the infidel usurper ? Ferdinand and Isabella being at this time embroiled in a war with Portugal, three years passed 220 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. away before they could direct their forces to the conquest of Granada. The wary Ferdinand determined to carry on the war with the utmost caution. His words were these : "I will pick out the seeds one by one of this pomegranate. " (Granada being the Spanish for pomegranate.) The fierce Moslem struck the first blow by the sudden capture of Zahara. The unfortunate Moors instantly awakened to a sense of their danger when they saw the Christian captives driven like cattle through the streets of Granada. When a crowd of flatterers filled the Alhambra to offer incense to the king on his victory, a voice sounded forth from the midst of them, Wo! wo! wo to Granada ! its hour of desolation approaches ! the ruins of Zahara will fall upon our heads ; my spirit tells me that the end of our empire is at hand !" "" This was the first of the denunciations of the ancient dervises. And when, not long after, the city of Alhama was taken in reprisal by the Christians, the men of Granada groaned in spirit, and the women, forcing their way into the presence of the king, cried out, " Accursed be the day when the flame of war was kindled by thee in our land ! May the holy prophet bear witness before Allah, that we and our children are innocent of this act. Upon thy head, and upon the heads of thy posterity, to the end of the world, rests the sin of the desolation of Zahara !" The melancholy little Spanish romance, "Ay de mi, Alhama, " is said to be of Moorish origin, and to have been composed at this time, when THE SON AGAINST THE FATHER. from every mouth Alhama!" 221 was heard "Wo is me, Internal dissensions, the rebellion of his son Boabdil, now hastened the downfal of Muley Aben Hassan, and the destruction of his kingdom. At the birth of Boabdil, the astrologers had predicted that this prince should sit upon the throne of Granada, but that the downfal of the kingdom should take place in his reign. Instigated by the jealousy of the favourite sultana, the lovely Fatima, called, from her refulgent beauty, "the Light of the Dawn," who had supplanted the mother of Boabdil in the old king's affections, and who desired the succession for her own sons, he resolved to "prove the falsehood of those lying horoscopes," by putting his son to death. Secretly apprised of this design, the mother of the prince contrived his escape, by tying together a number of shawls and scarfs, and lowering him thus from the tower where he was confined. He soon gathered a number of adherents, and one day when Muley Aben Hassen returned to the capital from a palace in the vicinity, he found the gates closed against him, and Boabdil proclaimed king in his stead. With the composure belonging to his faith, and the usual words " Allah achbar !" (God is great) he acknowledged that the first part of the prediction had been fulfilled ; but he at once set about endeavouring to falsify the second. From this period the kingdom was weakened, and its destruction hastened, by the existence of two hostile factions, meeting often in deadly combat, but yet 222 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. never failing to unite their forces against the common enemy. At length, on the fall of the city of Ronda, an important station on the frontiers, the versatile Moors, attributing their misfortunes to their rulers, resolved to set up a third king, in the person of El Zagal, the brother of Muley Aben Hassen, who, borne down by age and misfortunes, took refuge in a small town in one of the deep valleys of the Mediterranean coast, where he long remained in durance, blind and bedridden, till removed, by the sudden and somewhat doubtful compassion of his brother, to another valley, famous for its salubrity, where was a strong Moorish castle ; he died there, not without suspicion of treachery, a few days after. His treasure was seized ; his body conveyed to Granada on the back of a mule, and borne to an unconsecrated grave by two Christian captives. But where all this time was the unfortunate Boabdil ? Having fallen into the hands of the enemy at the battle of Lucena, he was carried captive to the Castle of Vaena, where he was treated with the courtesy and deference due to his rank, and received messages of sympathy and consolation from Ferdinand and Isabella, who, after much deliberation, agreed to liberate him, on condition of his returning to a state of vassalage. He was then conducted to Cordova, where he swore allegiance. On his departure, when he beheld his son, his only child, who was to be left in hostage, a captive in the land of the foe, he bowed himself, and wept over him, exclaiming, " Wothe day that EVIL UPON EVIL. 223 I was born ! and evil the star that presided at my birth ! Well was I called the unlucky, for sorrow is heaped upon me by my father, and sorrow do I transmit to my son !" On his return to Granada, he found the hostile faction too powerful for him, and retired with his court to Almeria, contrary to the counsels of his proud mother, who said, disdainfully, that he was not worthy of being called a monarch who was not master of his capital. From this time to that of his entire defeat-fighting first against his father, and then against his uncle, who tried to kill him by means of poisonous herbs, and who once closed with him in single combat, each showing implacable fury ; cursed by his people, who regarded him as the enemy of his faith and of his country ; receiving succours from Ferdinand, whose policy it was to foment the civil dissensions, that he might the more readily help himself to the whole kingdom-the life of Boabdil, who was brave only by starts, was one succession of disasters, lightened by one or two gleams of triumph. City after city, and fort after fort had fallen, till at length, on the 23d of April, 1491 , after having twice the year before ravaged the fertile plain of Granada, the Christian sovereigns pitched their tents about a league and a half from the city. The situation of poor Boabdil was the dreariest possible. True, there was assembled within the walls of Granada all that was noblest in rank and chivalry, and its towers and bulwarks seemed impregnable. But every port and harbour was in 224 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. the hands of the enemy ; Granada was completely landlocked ; there were only a few months' provisions in the garrison ; no yellow corn would that autumn gladden the eye of the husbandman, for he had lacked heart to till the land ; and, since the last forage, scarcely a green blade or a living animal was to be seen in that once so fertile plain. Many ofthe Moors and their families were suffered to depart for Africa. El Zagal, after having fought in his fury under Ferdinand against Boabdil, and being execrated by his people, at length also departed for Africa, where he was received as a traitor, blinded, by a basin of glowing copper being passed before his eyes, and wandered about for long years, scorned and pitied, bearing on his raiment an inscription in Arabic, " This is the unfortunate King of Andalusia." Ferdinand, with his usual cautious policy, resolving to reduce the place by famine, went on ravaging the valleys, and cutting off every convoy with provisions, which only made the Moors more brave as their condition became desperate. They hurled defiances at the Christians. One knight even leaped the barriers, and darted his lance quivering in the earth, close to the royal tent, importing that it was meant for the queen. In revenge for this insolence, a Christian cavalier, with fifteen dauntless followers, sallied forth at dead of night, surprised the guards, galloped up to the principal mosque of the city, took possession of it, and dedicated it to the blessed Virgin, nailing on the door of it with his dagger the words, " Ave THE COMBAT. 225 Maria." Great was the indignation of the Moslems when they viewed this desecration. Next day, when the king and queen went forth to view the city, the same insolent but brave Moor suddenly appeared, rode slowly past them with an air of defiance, and having the very inscription, "Ave Maria," that he had torn down from the mosque, tied to the tail of his steed, and dragging in the dust ! Who can tell the horror of the Catholics ? A Christian knight closed with the haughty Moor in single combat. After a fierce and lengthened struggle, they both fell to the ground ; the Moor had his knee on the breast of his victim, and was about to despatch him, when the Christian, who had dexterously shortened his sword, struck his adversary to the heart. " " It was a singular and miraculous victory," says Fray Antonio Agapida ; " but the Christian knight was armed by the sacred nature of his cause, and the holy Virgin gave him strength, like another David, to slay this gigantic champion of the Gentiles. " One little green belt of garden and orchard was still to be seen around the city, and winding along the banks of the lovely Xenil and Darro. This must also be laid waste. Then came forth Boabdil and his brave followers for the last fatal struggle. Was the last spot, sacred to so many sweet memories, to be laid desolate ? Love and desperation nerved their arms with giant strength. After deeds of noblest prowess, and disputing every bush and shrub, they were at length forced to retreat 2 F 226 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. within the walls of the Alhambra, whose gates were now heavily closed behind them. The night before this last combat, the Christian camp had been destroyed by an accident. When all was still, and Queen Isabella was at her orisons, every sleeper was roused by a sudden conflagration, and speedily the royal camp, with all its costly adornments, was not. But there now arose, as if by magic, on the same spot, a city with massive walls and high towers. Its form was a cross, terminating in four gates, and in the centre was a square, capable of containing the whole assembled It was called Santa Fé, or the city of the holy faith ; " and it remains to this day, " says Fray Antonio, " a monument of the piety and glory of the Catholic sovereigns. " This sight only served to deepen the despair of the Moors, who called to mind the predictions of the astrologers. Autumn came, but brought no harvest. people were clamorous for food ; and when Boabdil assembled his council, the general voice was " Surrender." Thus, after nearly ten years, terminated this brave and desperate struggle. army. The And what wonder if the wretched exiles should cast one last agonised look to this, their paradise, from which they had been thrust out ? It has been described by eloquent writers as " the Damascus of Spain," "the queen of cities," " Imperial Granada," where were united all the delights of climate, beauty, and fertility. This enchanting city lay on the slope of two lofty hills, having between them a deep valley, watered by the river Darro, ove: A PICTURE OF GRANADA. 227 which several fine bridges were thrown. Almost close behind those hills, and nearly surrounding them, rises the chain of mountains called the Sierra Nevada, from whose snowy summits the most delicious breezes temper the sultry heats of summer. Washington Irving, in his " Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada," says of the city itself, " The declivities and skirts of these hills were covered with houses to the number of 70,000, separated by narrow streets and small squares, according to the custom of Moorish cities. The houses had interior courts and gardens, refreshed by fountains and running streams, and set out with oranges, citrons, and pomegranates ; so that, as the edifices of the city rose above each other on the sides of the hill, they presented a mingled appearance of city and grove delightful to the eye. The whole was surrounded by high walls, three leagues in circuit, with twelve gates, and fortified by 1030 towers. ” Another writer says that Granada had formerly twenty gates. On the summit of one of these hills proudly towered the unrivalled Alhambra ; the other was surmounted by the fortress of the Alcazaba, now by the chapel of St Michael. From their base stretched out the immense vega, or plain, about 37 leagues, or more than 100 miles in circuit, also surrounded by high mountains, the slopes of which were covered with orchards and vineyards, while the valleys presented a lovely, diversified scene of cornfields, flowery meads, large plantations of mulberry, rich gardens, the fig, the orange and the citron trees. Through this plein 228 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. of exquisite beauty, in many sweet meanderings, softly flowed the lovely Xenil. Boabdil's eye drank in every feature of the matchless scene. There towered in all its pride the majestic Alhambra. There, not far off, was his favourite palace, the Xeneralife, with its amphitheatre of gardens, and high perched the stone seat from which he was wont to view the deadly combat. There flowed his own Xenil, each of whose windings was to him as a heart-string. He turned away. The cup, his life-cup of sorrow, bitterer than death, was now full, and must run over. The palace of the Alhambra, the most extensive as well as magnificent of all the Moslem remains in Spain, was built by the second Moorish King of Granada, who defrayed the expense by a tribute on his conquered subjects, although the Arabs have a tradition that, being skilled in alchymy, he thus supplied himself with precious metal for the purpose. It was also called the royal Alcazar, from the Arabic word Al Cayçar, or of Cæsar, from Julius Cæsar having granted to one of their tribes a monopoly of the silk trade, which they afterwards introduced into Spain, where, the climate being so favourable to the growth of the mulberry, such an immense quantity of silk was reared, that at one time 600 villages were employed in its manufacture. Our space would utterly fail us for any lengthened description of this splendid edifice. We must imagine what must have been the splendour of the hall of Ambassadors, said to be the finest ever possessed by Christian or infidel, when THE ALHAMBRA. 229 we read that even the smallest apartment was adorned with arabesques, paintings, and mosaics, and that some of the columns, and even floors, were covered with porcelain mosaics, very different from the mats and bulrushes of the Goths ; and the elegant distribution of the courts, which seemed a continuation of the suites of apartments, where "halls and galleries, porticoes and columns, arches, mosaics, and balsamic plants, and flowers of various hues, were seen through the haze of spraying fountains." And the renowned Court of Lions, with its still more famous fountain, where twelve lions support the alabaster basins ; when we find that even the outer court was paved with white marble, and decorated with light Moorish peristyles, having in the centre a pond 130 feet long, bordered by hedges of roses. The grand entrance is formed by an immense Arabian arch, in the form of a horse-shoe, on the key-stone of which is engraven a gigantic hand. On the key- stone of the gate below, is a gigantic key ; and there runs a tradition, that when the hand shall reach down to grasp the key, the whole pile will fall to pieces. Besides the ingenious control they exercised over water, the Arabs introduced into all these apartments two currents of air. They also placed in the walls tubes, or caleducts of baked earth, through which, from fires under the earth, warmth was diffused over the whole range of baths, and whereever it was needed. Their works for irrigating the fields are splendid, even in ruins. So great was their science, so unwearied their diligence, 230 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR. that a facetious bishop of Granada, soon after the conquest, was wont to say, that to make a good Christian, Spanish faith and Arab works were needed. Within the gates of the Alhambra, 40,000 men could be lodged. Now, the whole city contains only about 50,000, while in high Moslem times it had 250,000 inhabitants. Every Friday the devout Moslem prays to Allah for the recovery of Granada, that he may be restored to what he deems his earthly paradise, over which, on account of its surpassing beauty, he supposes to hang the paradise of his Prophet. One last request Boabdil had made, that no one should ever enter or depart by the gate from which he issued to surrender Granada. It was granted, and the gate is still shown, blocked up by stones and rubbish. He lived for some years in the vale of Porchenar. Then came the days of the Inquisition, making the Spaniards a nation of bigots or hypocrites. To the exiled Moor could not even be left the quiet possession of his faith. He passed over to Africa, and fell in battle in 1536, fighting under a foreign standard : " An instance, " says an ancient chronicler, " of the scornful caprice of fortune ; dying in defence of the kingdom of another, after wanting spirit to die in defence of his own. ” THE FAMOUS ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.

THE FAMOUS ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. IN whatever light we may regard the motives which impelled the nations of Western Europe to engage in the desperate, and in the end, fruitless crusades for the possession of Palestine, it is impossible not to admire the devoted heroism to which those enterprises gave rise, or to overlook the influence they have exercised on the character and civilisation of the modern world. For centuries the devout Christians of all countries had gratified their curiosity or excited their piety by laborious pilgrimages to those interesting localities which had been the theatre of the labours and sufferings of our blessed Lord. When at length the Holy Land fell under the dominion of the Saracens, and still later, when it was overrun by the Turkish hordes, those visits became more dangerous, and probably on that very account more frequent. The humble and defenceless palmers then became the victims of every species of insult and oppression ; and their piteous tale of suffering roused the sympathy and indignation of Christendom. That "inflammable mass of enthusiasm ' 233 2 G "" 234 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. which pervaded Europe was at length kindled into a flame by the preaching of Peter the Hermit, who had himself been an eye-witness of the sufferings of the pilgrims and natives of Palestine ; and when, in 1095, the council of Clermont decided on attempting its deliverance, the shout of the expecting thousands-" It is the will of God ! " was re-echoed from one end of Europe to the other. Four years after, the victorious banner of the cross floated over the heights of Jerusalem ; a Latin kingdom, co-extensive with the ancient dominions of David, was established under Godfrey of Bouillon ; and the total rout of the Egyptian sultan at Ascalon seemed to warrant its stability. The laws, language, and feudal jurisprudence of the Franks were introduced ; and then also arose those two famous orders of military friars, the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templars, as they came to be called, and the Knights of the Hospital of St John-two of the most singular associations recorded in history, and who long continued the firmest bulwarks of the Christian power, both in the East and the West. In the present sketch we propose to give an account of the origin and history of the former of these rival brotherhoods. After the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, as above alluded to, vast crowds of pilgrims, from all parts of Europe, hastened to the Holy City. The roads from the sea-coast to Jerusalem were infested by armed bands of Mussulmans, who issued from their strongholds among the mountains, and robbed ORIGIN OF THE ORDER. 235. and murdered the pilgrims. For the protection of the latter, nine noble knights, who had greatly distinguished themselves in the siege and capture of the city, formed a brotherhood in arms, and took the vows of perpetual chastity, obedience, and poverty, after the manner of monks. Uniting in themselves the two most popular qualities of the age, devotion and valour, and exercising them in the most popular of all enterprises, they soon acquired a splendid reputation, and the most illustrious warriors of Christendom aspired to the honour of being enrolled members of the fraternity. Such was the origin of the renowned order of the Templars. They derived their name from the edifice vulgarly called the Temple of Solomon, on the summit of Mount Moriah, which was assigned them for their habitation by the King of Jerusalem, nineteen years after the conquest of that city by the crusaders. The protection of the pilgrims was their first object ; but they soon determined, in addition to this, to make the defence of the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, the eastern church, and all the holy places, a part of their particular profession. St Bernard, the famous abbot of Clairvaux, warmly espoused the cause of the fraternity ; and their rules, revised and corrected by him, were sanctioned by the council of Troyes (A.D. 1128) , and confirmed by a papal bull. An astonishing enthusiasm was excited throughout Europe in behalf of this chivalrous association ; ⚫ princes and nobles, sovereigns and their subjects, vied with each other in heaping gifts upon them, 236 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. and scarce a will of any importance was made without an article in it in their favour. Many illustrious persons, on their deathbeds, took the vows, that they might be buried in the habit of the order ; and sovereigns, quitting the government of their kingdoms, enrolled themselves amongst the fraternity, and bequeathed even their dominions to the master and brethren of the Temple. The order, in consequence, soon became enormously wealthy. Its annual income in Europe has been estimated at six millions sterling ; and, according to Matthew Paris, it possessed nine thousand manors or lordships in Christendom, besides a large revenue and immense riches, arising from constant charitable bequests and donations of sums of money by pious persons. The order was governed by a grand- master, provincial grand-masters, preceptors, &c. The provincial grand-masters were controlled by visitorsgeneral, specially deputed by the grand-master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, to reform abuses, make new regulations, &c. The body was divided into three great classesknights, priests, and serving brethren-all bound together by the vow of obedience to the grandmaster. All those of the first class were men of noble birth, and were not admitted to the vows till after they had received the honour of knighthood according to the laws of chivalry. The serving brethren were what their name implies : they were armed with bows, bills, and swords ; and it was their duty to attend the person of the knight, to THEIR CONSTITUTION. 237 supply him with fresh weapons or a fresh horse in case of need, and to render him every succour in the affray. The Templars had always a large number of retainers, and of mercenary troops officered by the knights. These were clothed in black or brown garments, to distinguish them from the actual members of the order, who were habited in white. The white mantle was a regular monastic habit, having a red cross on the left breast, and was worn over armour of chain-mail. When they took the field, the grand-master commanded in chief ; the marshal was second in command ; and the balcanifer bore the famous Beauseant, or black and white war-banner of the order, and was supported by a certain number of knights and esquires, who were sworn to defend it, and never suffer it to fall into the hands of the enemy. The Templars acted a very conspicuous part in the long and bloody wars between the Christians and Mahommedans for the possession of the Holy Land, and were the mainstay of the Latin kingdom during the whole period of its stormy existence, till it expired in blood amidst the ruins of Acre. In what follows, we shall endeavour to present our readers with some of the more striking incidents connected with their military history. The successes of the famous Noureddin, sultan of Damascus, which shook the Latin kingdom to its foundations, and excited the greatest alarm in Europe, gave occasion to the second crusade, which proved a miserable failure. In the year 1146, the 238 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. Grand-master of the Temple convened a general chapter of the order at Paris, which was attended by the pope, the king of France, and many prelates, princes, and nobles, from all parts of Christendom. A second crusade was then arranged ; and the Templars, with the sanction of the pope, assumed the blood-red cross, the symbol of martyrdom, whence they came to be known by the name of the red friars, and the red cross knights. The preaching of St Bernard excited an astonishing enthusiasm in favour of this holy war. Conrad, emperor of Germany, set out for Palestine at the head of a powerful army, which was cut to pieces by the infidels, in the north of Asia. The emperor himself fled to Constantinople, embarked on board a merchant vessel, and arrived at Jerusalem with only a few attendants. Louis the Seventh, king of France, at the head of another army, also set out for the Holy Land, accompanied by the Grand-master of the Temple, and all the brethren collected from the western provinces. During the march through Asia Minor, the Templars brought up the rear, and signalized themselves so greatly, that, in a council of war, it was ordered that all should bind themselves in confraternity with them, and march under their orders. After the arrival of the king at Jerusalem, be and the emperor, supported by the order, who now, for the first time, unfolded the famous red-cross banner in the field of battle, laid siege to the city of Damascus, which wasdefended bythe great Noureddin. The siege, which was unsuccessful, proved highly THE SIEGE OF DAMASCUS. 239 disastrous to the crusaders ; and after the departure of the King of France, accompanied by the grand-master, the knights were left, alone and unaided, to withstand the career of the victorious Mussulmans. They despatched a letter to the grand-master, describing their miserable situation, and imploring him to return to them with succours. On receipt of their letter he abandoned his authority, and was succeeded by Bertrand de Tremelay, a noble of an illustrious Burgundian family. Shortly after his election, the infidels crossed the Jordan, and advanced within sight of Jerusalem. In a night attack, however, they were defeated with terrible slaughter, and pursued all the way to the Jordan ; five thousand of their number being left dead on the plain. In the year 1153, the grand-master and a number of knights attempted to take the city of Ascalon by storm ; but having penetrated to the centre of the town, they were surrounded and overpowered by the infidels, who slew them to a man, and exhibited their dead bodies in triumph from the wall. In the summer of 1156, another body of knights, headed by the new grand-master, whilst marching with the King of Jerusalem, were drawn into an ambuscade near Tiberias ; three hundred of them were slain, and eighty-seven, among whom was the chief himself, fell into the hands of the enemy. Shortly afterwards, thirty Templars routed two hundred Mussulmans ; and in a night attack on the camp of Noureddin, they compelled that famous chieftain to flee from the field without arms and 240 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. half naked. Having recovered his liberty, the grand-master went on an expedition to Egypt ; and during his absence with the greater part of the knights, Palestine was invaded by Noureddin. The serving brethren and mercenaries who remained to defend the country were defeated with terrible slaughter, and sixty of the knights who commanded them were left dead on the field. About this time the Hospitallers, the other great order of military friars, began to take a leading part in the defence of the Latin kingdom. Their order, more fortunate than that of the Templars, survived till modern times, and they are well known in recent history as the Knights of Malta. The Templars were now destined to meet with a more formidable opponent than any they had hitherto encountered. This was the famous Saladin, who, on the death of Noureddin, in the year 1175, raised himself to the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria. Marching from Cairo at the head of an army forty thousand strong, he laid siege to the city of Gaza, which belonged to the order. In an unexpected sally, the defenders performed such prodigies of valour that the sultan abandoned the siege and retired into Egypt. In the year 1177, he again invaded Palestine, and in a great battle fought near Ascalon, the master of the Temple, at the head of eighty knights, broke through the guard of Mamelukes, and penetrated to the imperial tent, from which Saladin escaped almost naked. Next year, the sultan assembled a great army at Damascus ; and SALADIN IN THE FIELD. 241 the Templars, in order to cover the road to Jerusalem, began the erection of a strong fortress close to Jacob's Ford, on the river Jordan. Saladin advanced to oppose the progress of the work, while the King of Jerusalem assembled all his chivalry in the plain, to protect the knights and their workmen. The fortress was finished in the face of the enemy, and a strong garrison thrown into it. Redoubled efforts were then made by Saladin for the destruction of the place. At a given signal, his forces intentionally fled, and the Christians having become disordered in the pursuit, the Arab cavalry wheeled upon both wings, and defeated the entire army with immense slaughter. All the Templars engaged in the fight were killed or captured, and the master fell alive into the hands of the enemy. The fortress was then besieged, and after a gallant defence it was set on fire and taken by storm. The sultan, it is said, ordered all the knights found in the place to be sawn asunder, except the most distinguished, who were reserved for ransom, and sent in chains to Aleppo. The master refused to be exchanged for the sultan's nephew, and perished in prison. Saladin, after wasting the country, retreated to Damascus, and the Christians purchased a truce of four years by the payment of a large sum of money. At the expiration of the truce, the war was renewed with greater fury than ever, and the order was now destined to meet with more terrible disasters than any which had yet befallen it. Raymond, count of Tripoli, refusing to acknowledge 2 H 242 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. Guy de Lusignan as king of Jerusalem, retired to his strong citadel of Tiberias, and there remained, proudly defying the royal power. The king's friends, foreseeing the ruinous consequences of a civil war, advised him to offer terms of reconciliation to his powerful vassal ; and it was agreed that the Grand-master of the Temple and other persons of distinction should proceed to Tiberias, and endeavour to bring the count back to his allegiance. On the second day of the journey, the grand-master, when at supper in a castle belonging to the order, was informed that a strong corps of mussulman cavalry had crossed the Jordan, and was marching through the territories of the Count of Tripoli. He immediately summoned from a neighbouring castle all the knights who could be spared ; and as soon as it was light, he rode over to Nazareth at the head of ninety knights, and was there joined by the Master of the Hospitallers and fifty knights of the garrison of that town. The united military friars were accompanied by four hundred of their foot soldiers ; and the whole force amounted to about six hundred men. With this small band they set out in quest of the infidels ;, and had proceeded about seven miles in the direction of the Jordan, when they came suddenly upon a strong column of mussulman cavalry, amounting to several thousand men. The Templars attacked them with the utmost fury ; but the enemy, though thrown into confusion by the sudden onset, and discomfited with terrible slaughter, speedily rallied, closed in upon their assailants, and overpowered them by THE BLOCKADE OF TIBERIAS. 243 numbers. In this bloody skirmish, the Grandmaster of the Hospitallers fell, and all the Templars, except the grand-master and two knights, who broke through the ranks of the enemy, and escaped to Nazareth. The fatal battle of Tiberias, which led to the capture of Jerusalem, soon followed. The Count of Tripoli having become reconciled to the King of Jerusalem, Saladin marched against Tiberias, took the town by storm, and reduced it to ashes. The countess, retiring with the garrison into the citadel, sent messengers to her husband and the King of Jerusalem, imploring instant succour ; and the Christian army assembled at Sepphoris set forward, after long delay, for the relief of the place. Saladin then turned the siege into a blockade, called in his cavalry, and hastened to occupy all the mountain passes. His army amounted to 80,000 men. The Christians attempted to force the defiles of the mountains, but in vain ; after a bloody battle, they found that they had merely been able to keep their ground, without advancing a single step. The king ordered the tents to be pitched in a place where not a drop of water could be procured. About sunrise next morning, the Templars and Hospitallers formed in battle array in the van of the Christian army, and prepared to open a road to the lake of Tiberias through the dense masses of the enemy. Saladin, on his part, set fire to the dry grass and shrubs which covered the ground between the two armies ; and the wind blowing 244 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. the smoke and flames directly in the faces of the military friars and their horses, after almost superhuman exertions to cut their way through to the lake, they halted, and sent to the king for succour. At this critical moment, the Count of Tripoli fled from the field, and the troops that were advancing to the support of the knights, seized with a sudden panic, were driven in one confused mass upon the main body. Alone and unaided, they maintained a short and bloody conflict with the enemy, which ended in the death or captivity of every one engaged except the Master of the Hospital, who made his escape to Ascalon, where he died of his wounds the day after his arrival. In this fatal battle the Christian army was annihilated. The King of Jerusalem, the Grandmaster of the Temple, and other leaders, were taken prisoners ; and the so-called true cross, which had been carried in front of the army, fell into the hands of the infidels. The day after the battle, all the military friars, with the exception of the grand-master, for whom a heavy ransom was expected, were led to an eminence above Tiberias, and offered the alternative of the Koran or death. To a man they chose the latter, and were all beheaded in the presence of the sultan, striving who should be the first to receive the crown of martyrdom. In accordance with the superstition of the times, it was believed by the Christians that for three nights, during which they remained unburied, miraculous rays of light played around the bodies of the slaughtered knights. SALADIN BEFORE JERUSALEM. 245 City after city, and fortress after fortress, now fell into the hands of Saladin, and at length he appeared before the gates of Jerusalem, and summoned the city to surrender. Though ill prepared for standing a siege, it was gallantly defended for several weeks ; and at length, when a large breach was effected in the wall, a suppliant deputation was sent to the sultan to implore his mercy. At first he refused to hear them, declaring that he would take Jerusalem sword in hand ; but ultimately he was induced to listen to terms, and a treaty was entered into with the Christians to the following effect. The Mussulmans were immediately to be put in possession of all the gates ; and the liberty and security of the inhabitants were to be purchased in the following manner :-Every man was to pay the victor ten golden bezants ; every woman five ; and every child under seven years of age one. When these terms were known in the city, the poor were filled with grief and indignation ; but resistance on their part was now hopeless. The number of those who were reduced to a state of hopeless slavery, being unable to pay the ransom, is estimated at fourteen thousand men, women, and children. The few military friars who were in the city spent all the money they possessed in ransoming their poor Christian brethren, whom they escorted in safety to Tripoli. Thus Jerusalem again fell into the hands of the Moslems, eighty-eight years after its conquest by the Crusaders. The Templars still maintained themselves in 246 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. some of the strongest castles of Palestine, and the city of Tyre, into which Conrad, marquis of Montferrat, had thrown himself with his followers, was valiantly defended until the winter, when the sultan, despairing of taking the place, burnt his military engines, and retired to Damascus. As soon as the winter rains had subsided, Saladin again took the field, and laid siege to Saphet, the strongest fortress possessed by the Templars in Palestine. Here they made such a gallant defence that the siege was turned into a blockade, and the sultan drew off the greater part of his forces to attack the Christian possessions in the principality of Antioch. Having appeared in arms before the gates of Tripoli, he found that place in such a posture of defence that he retired without attacking it, and directed his march upon Tortosa ; while the Grand-master of the Temple threw himself into the strong castle belonging to the order, and prepared to defend the town. After a short struggle, the knights were compelled to abandon the city; but they defended the castle with such obstinate valour, that Saladin, despairing of taking it, drew off his forces, leaving the once flourishing city a heap of ruins. Gabala, Laodicea, and Berzyeh now fell into his hands ; and before the walls of Antioch he concluded a treaty with Prince Bohemond, whereby a suspension of arms was agreed upon for the term of eight months. The intelligence of the fall of Jerusalem threw all Europe into consternation. The pope is said to have died of grief, and the cardinals made a SARACEN DARING. 247 solemn resolution never to mount a horse so long as the Holy Land was trodden under foot by the infidels ; they, moreover, declared that they would march on foot to the holy war at the head of armies of pilgrims, and would subsist by asking alms by the road. This was mere talk ; but the chivalry of Europe at once responded when the new pope issued apostolical letters exhorting all Christians. immediately to assume the cross, and march to the deliverance of Jerusalem, promising a plenary indulgence to all who should comply. Crowds of armed pilgrims in consequence set out for the Holy Land ; the Templars hurried from their preceptories to join their brethren in the east ; and during the winter, Tyre was crowded with the newlyarrived warriors, and with fugitives who had fled thither for refuge. At the commencement of the summer, the King of Jerusalem and the Grand-master of the Temple took the field at the head of an army 9000 strong, and marched along the coast to lay siege to the important city of Acre. The city was regularly invested before the arrival of Saladin, and he encamped in such a manner that the besiegers themselves were besieged. In a sudden attack upon the Christian camp, he broke through the lines, and threw into Acre a reinforcement of 5000 soldiers, laden with provisions and everything necessary for the defence of the place. Having accomplished this daring feat, he made a masterly retreat to his camp. In an attack upon the sultan's camp, on the 4th 248 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. of October, 1189, the Templars, who led the assault, put the right wing of the mussulman army to flight. The undisciplined masses of the Christian army then rushed heedlessly after the infidels, penetrated to the sultan's tent, and abandoned themselves to pillage. Saladin, having rallied his fugitive troops, led them on in person ; and the Christian army would have been annihilated but for the gallantry of the knights, who presented an unbroken front to the advancing Mussulmans for the space of three hours, and gave time for the panic-stricken crusaders to recover from their terror and confusion ; but, ere they had returned to the charge, the grand-master and more than half of his comrades were numbered with the dead. The siege of Acre is very famous in history. Nine pitched battles were fought in the neighbourhood of Mount Carmel, and during the first year of the siege a hundred thousand Christians are computed to have perished. Their places were supplied by new comers from Europe, while succours were thrown into the town by the fleets of Saladin. During the winter, the Templars, in common with the rest of the Christian army, suffered great hardships, and many died of famine and disease. Saladin, before the unhealthy season set in, had retreated from the pestilential plain of Acre to his elevated camp on the mountains of Keruba ; and early in the spring he again assembled his forces to raise the siege of Acre. The Templars and crusaders, during his absence, had not been idle. They had dug trenches and thrown FRESH STRATAGEMS. 249 up ramparts around their camp ; they had filled up the ditch around the town, and constructed, three enormous towers, which they rolled on wheels to the wall, and were about to descend from them upon the battlements of the city, when the towers and all the warriors upon them were consumed by some inextinguishable composition, discharged out of brass pots by a brazier from Damascus. In the month of July the order suffered severe loss in another attack upon Saladin's camp. The licentious crusaders, deceived by the flight of the Mussulmans, were again lured to the pillage of their tents, and were again defeated by the main body of the sultan's army which had been posted in reserve. The Templars, surrounded by an overpowering force, fought their way back to their camp, and left the plain strewed with the dead bodies of the enemy. The garrison continued bravely to defend the town, and Saladin, by various ingenious stratagems, sent in succours from time to time. In the month of January, 1191 , a tempest having compelled the fleet of the crusaders to take refuge in Tyre, Saladin, finding the sea open, threw a fresh body of the troops into the town, and withdrew the exhausted garrison. Famine and disease were now making frightful ravages among the besiegers ; from two to three hundred persons died daily, and the living were unable to bury the dead. After every thing in the shape of provisions was consumed, bones were ground down, and all the shoes, bridles, saddles, and old leather in the camp were 21 250 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. softened by boiling, and greedily devoured. To add to the misfortunes of the crusaders, there was now serious discord in the camp, one party declaring for Conrad and another for Guy de Luignan, who both laid claim to the throne of Jerusalem. Such was the state of matters, when, in the month of May, in the second year of the siege, the royal fleets of France and England cast anchor in the bay of Acre. The siege was now pressed with great vigour ; Saladin, after two attacks on the camp of the besiegers, agreed to surrender the city, and on the 13th of July the gates were thrown open. The Templars took possession of their ancient quarters, and the Temple at Acre thenceforth became the chief house of the order. The King of England, the famous Richard Coeur de Lion, took up his abode with them, whilst the King of France resided in the citadel. Richard stained his laurels by a deed of cruelty. The ransom to be paid by the garrison and inhabitants of Acre for their lives and liberty was not forthcoming at the time specified, and some doubts were raised about the agreement. Richard, fired with indignation, led out his prisoners, 2000 in number, into the plain of Acre, and caused them all to be beheaded in sight of the sultan's camp. Having taken the island of Cyprus during his voyage to Acre, Richard sold it to the Templars for 300,000 livres d'or ; and on the 21st of August they joined the standard of the English monarch, and left Acre for the purpose of marching upon Jerusalem by way of the sea-coast. In this famous march they INTRIGUES FOR THE THRONE OF JERUSALEM. 251 the led the van, whilst the Hospitallers brought up rear. Saladin, at the head of an immense force, exerted all his energies to oppose their progress, and the march to Jaffa formed one perpetual fight. On the 7th of September, a pitched battle, in which the Christians had the advantage, was fought near Arsoof; and two days thereafter they marched to Jaffa, which they found abandoned and in ruins. An attempt to negotiate a treaty of peace having failed, Richard and his army marched out of Jaffa, and proceeded through the plain towards Jerusalem. The sultan slowly retired before him, laying waste the country, and removing the inhabitants. In the mean time, the fortifications of Jerusalem were repaired, and the city was put into a posture of defence. But the siege did not take place. The crusaders, afraid of penetrating into the defiles of the mountains, which were occupied by the Moslem forces, retraced their steps to the sea-coast, in a state of disorganization, and with the loss of their horses. The military friars adhered faithfully to the standard of Richard, and marched with him from Jaffa to Ascalon, where they assisted him during the winter in repairing the fortifications. Whilst they were thus employed, Conrad, the pretender to the throne of Jerusalem, supported by the Duke of Burgundy and the French, was intriguing with Saladin for the advancement of his own schemes of private ambition. Richard, when informed of his traitorous correspondence with the infidels, summoned him to appear in the camp at Ascalon, 252 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. The marquis refused to obey the summons, and throwing off the mask, attempted to gain possession of Tyre, but was repulsed. In an assembly of the barons, Richard denounced him as a traitor, and it was declared that he had forfeited his right to the share of the revenues of the Latin kingdom, which had been allotted to him by the council of Acre. Transported with indignation, he made fresh overtures to Saladin, and a treaty was concluded between them, according to which they were to make joint war against Richard ; but before it could be carried into execution the marquis was assassinated. Six days after his death, Queen Isabella, his widow, married Richard's nephew, the Count of Champagne. Induced by the Templars, Guy de Lusignan agreed to abdicate in favour of Isabella and the Count, and as a recompense for the loss of his empty title, he was to receive from the knights the island of Cyprus, they reserving to themselves certain splendid possessions in the country, which they were to hold as private property. The Count of Champagne and Isabella were crowned King and Queen of Jerusalem ; but Jerusalem had yet to be conquered. The army at Ascalon once more resumed its march, with the avowed intention of laying siege to the Holy City. At Beitnabah the crusaders again halted for the space of a month, on pretence of waiting for the new king and the forces from Tyre and Acre ; but the rugged mountains which lay between them and Jerusalem were the real cause of the delay. THE TREATY OF JAFFA. 253 When the pilgrims murmured at this inactivity, Richard had recourse again to the advice of the military friars, and it was decided in a great council that the intention of besieging Jerusalem must be abandoned. Accordingly, on the 4th of July the Christian host began a retrograde movement, and were infested in the rear by the cavalry of the enemy. Richard hastened to Jaffa, and from thence sailed to Acre, intending forthwith to return to England. He had collected his galleys, when intelligence reached Acre that Saladin, at the head of a powerful army, had advanced from Jerusalem and laid siege to Jaffa. The Templars marched by land to the relief of the place, and Richard hurried by sea. He leaped foremost upon the beach, drove the Saracens before him, and encamped under the walls of the town with a force of only seventeen knights and three hundred archers. Next morning the enemy returned to the attack, but the king maintained his position till the arrival of the Templars with the main body of the army. Both monarchs being now weary of war, a treaty of peace was concluded between them, which was to last during three years, three months, three weeks, and three days. It secured to the Christians the privilege of visiting Jerusalem without tribute or molestation, and to the Latins the possession of Tyre, Acre, and Jaffa, with all the seacoast between them. The English fleet sailed homewards, and Richard, in the disguise of a Templar, secretly embarked in a galley placed at his 254 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. disposal by the grand-master. After the departure of Richard, the Templars, to secure their dominion in Palestine, erected and garrisoned several strong fortresses. The most noted of these was the Pilgrim's Castle, which commanded the coast-road from Acre to Jerusalem. It was a place of great strength, and had a garrison of 4000 men. The great Saladin died in March, 1193, and bis vast empire fell to pieces. The pope, thinking that the dissensions of the infidels afforded a favourable opportunity for the recovery ofJerusalem, caused a new crusade to be preached ; and two expeditions were speedily organised in Germany, which set out by different routes for the Holy Land. In defiance of the truce, and in spite of the remonstrances of the military friars, the newly arrived warriors sallied out of Acre, and ravaged the Moslem territories. At the first intelligence of the violation of the truce, the Mussulmans flew to arms. The renowned Saifedden, brother of the deceased sultan, rapidly marched from Jerusalem at the head of a powerful army, and compelled the Germans to quit the open country and throwthemselves into the fortified city of Jaffa. Having induced them to make a rash sortie, he fell suddenly upon their main body, defeated them with terrific slaughter, and, entering the city pell mell with the fugitives, annihilated the entire German force. The small garrison of the Templars was massacred, and the fortifications were rased to the ground. The military friars now made vigorous preparations for a war which they could no longer avoid ; VICTORY DEARLY BOUGHT. 255 and whilst the troops were marching out of Acre the King of Jerusalem was accidentally killed. By the two orders a marriage was speedily negotiated between Isabella and Amauri, king of Cyprus, who were crowned King and Queen of Jerusalem and Cyprus ; after which they repaired their castles, put their cities into a state of defence, and maintained their ground until the arrival of the second division of German crusaders, whose presence gave a favourable turn to the war. The Mussulman army was defeated in a bloody battle fought between Tyre and Sidon, and Saifedden, desperately wounded, fell back with his shattered forces upon Damascus. The crusaders now took Beirout, and all the towns between Tripoli and Jaffa ; but their triumphant career was arrested by dissension. The two military orders retired to Acre with the barons of Palestine, whilst the Germans threw themselves into Jaffa, and rebuilt the fortifications of that place. When Saifedden heard of the separation of the knights from the Germans, he played his old game over again. Having induced the latter to come forth into the plain, he attacked them with his whole force ; and, though the crusaders gained the victory, it was purchased with the lives of their best men. In the year 1205, the King and Queen of Jerusalem died at Acre, and Mary, the eldest daughter of Isabella by the famous Conrad, was acknowledged heiress to the crown of the Latin kingdom. She was fourteen years of age, and during her minority the military friars, her natural guardians, 256 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. defended the kingdom against all the attacks of the infidels. In 1209, she was married to the Count de Brienne, who brought with him a large cortège of knights and foot soldiers from France. The Templars took the field with the new King of Jerusalem and his French knights, and gained some signal successes over the Mussulmans ; but the French soon grew tired of the war and returned home, leaving the military friars the sole defenders of the Latin kingdom. Queen Mary died in the twentieth year of her age, leaving an infant daughter, named Violante, whilst the Count de Brienne continued to wear the crown. In the year 1215 the pope summoned a general council at Rome, for the purpose of arranging a fresh crusade ; and the King of Hungary and the Dukes of Austria and Bavaria having been induced to place themselves at the head of a numerous army, composed of many different nations, sailed from Venice, and landed at Acre in the beginning of the year 1217. The crusaders, accompanied by the Templars and Hospitallers, laid siege to the strong fortress of Mount Tabor ; but their patience became exhausted, and, deaf to the remonstrances of their allies, they abandoned the siege and moved towards the coast. They were attacked in the rear by the Arab cavalry, and their retreat would have been most disastrous but for the gallant conduct of the military friars, who sustained the charge of the Moslem cavalry, suffering immense loss in men and horses. The king of Hungary and the greater part of SIEGE OF THE PILGRIM'S CASTLE. 257 the crusaders now returned home, but the Duke of Austria remained in Palestine during the winter ; and in the following spring a large body of fresh crusaders, with a valiant band of Templars and Hospitallers, reached the shores of the Holy Land. In the month of May, the galleys of the Templars, with the fleet of the crusaders, sailed from Acre to Egypt, and cast anchor in the mouth of the Nile. After a gallant defence, the city of Damietta was taken by assault on the 5th of November. During the siege the Templars performed prodigies of valour, and several times saved the intrenched camp of the Christians from being taken by a powerful Mussulman army. Immediately after the capture of Damietta, the Grand-master of the Temple returned with the King of Jerusalem to Palestine, to provide for the defence of the Latin kingdom. The Duke of Austria had by this time returned home, and during the ensuing spring most of the crusaders followed his example, leaving the military friars to maintain a desperate struggle for the preservation of their possessions in Palestine. Conradin, sultan of Damascus, invaded the country at the head of a vast army, blockaded Acre, and laid siege to the Pilgrim's Castle. In their intrenched camp at this place the Templars maintained a force of 4000 men, who successfully resisted the assaults of the infidels. During the summer of 1221, considerable succours arrived from Europe, the troops of Conradin were driven beyond the frontier of the Latin kingdom, and the Grand-master of the Temple returned 2 K 258 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. to Damietta, to superintend the military operations in Egypt, where a most disastrous campaign was closed by the surrender of Damietta to the infidels. Shortly after the disasters in Egypt, and the conclusion of an eight years' truce with the Mussulmans, John de Brienne, with his daughter Violante, queen of Jerusalem, landed in Italy, and had an interview with the pope. A council assembled at Ferentino, which was attended by the pope, the Emperor Frederick, &c. The pope urged the emperor to fulfil the vow which he had made eight years before, to lead an army to the succour of the Holy Land ; and the hand of Violante was offered him, with the crown of the Latin kingdom as the dowry of the young queen. The nuptials were shortly afterwards celebrated ; and all men now expected the speedy conquest of Jerusalem, and the restoration of all the holy places to the arms of the Christians ; but the glowing anticipations which had been formed from the union of the emperor with the young Queen of Jerusalem were doomed to a speedy disappointment. In the middle of August, 1227, the emperor set sail from Brundusium with a powerful army, but returned to land after three days, on a plea of ill health, and was publicly excommunicated by the pope in the great church of Anagni. Without troubling himself to obtain a reconciliation with the Roman pontiff, the emperor again embarked with his forces at Brundusium, and arrived in the port of Acre in September, 1228. The pope sent letters to Palestine, denouncing him as publicly JERUSALEM RE-CONQUERED. 259 excommunicated, and commanding the military friars not to join his standard. As they paid implicit obedience to the pope, and treated the commands of the emperor with neglect and disdain, the latter instructed his lieutenant to seize all the property they possessed in his dominions in Europe, and to take possession of their preceptories. He also made some violent attempts against the two orders in Palestine, and sought to take from them their castles and strongholds ; but the military friars flew to arms, and Frederick thought fit to decline a conflict with them. During the winter he concluded a treaty with the infidels, whereby Jerusalem was nominally surrendered to him. He then made a peaceful march to the city with a few attendants, and performed the solemn farce of crowning himself in the Church of the Resurrection. The whole affair was a mere delusion ; and after a stay of a few days in Jerusalem, Frederick hurried back to Acre to prepare for his return to Europe. After his departure, the Templars, in revenge for the wrongs the emperor had done them, drove all the Germans out of Acre and other parts of Palestine, and compelled them to take refuge in Tyre. We are now approaching the memorable period when Jerusalem was re-conquered from the infidels. The descendants of the great Saifedden had gone to war with each other ; a new crusade had been preached in Europe ; and the Templars, desirous of taking advantage of the dissensions amongst the infidels, had recommenced hostilities, and anxiously 260 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. awaited the arrival of the crusaders. The greater part of those who had assumed the cross were permitted to compromise their vow, and enrich the papal treasury, under the pretence of paying money towards the expenses of the expedition. The King of Navarre, however, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Counts of Brittany and Bar, proceeded to Palestine with a considerable force of armed pilgrims. They marched with a party of Templars to attack the Sultan of Egypt, but were defeated in a bloody battle near Gaza. The survivors retreated to Jaffa, and sailed from that port to Acre, where they joined the Grand-master of the Temple, who was preparing to carry the war into the territories of the Sultan of Damascus. On their march towards Tiberias they were met by the sultan's messengers, who were proceeding to the grand- master with overtures of peace, and offers to surrender Jerusalem upon terms very advantageous to the Christians. The Grand- master of the Templejoyfully acceded to these terms, and induced the chiefs of the crusaders to assent to the compact ; but the Grand-master of the Hospital absolutely refused to be a party to it. Immediately after the conclusion of this treaty the greater part of the pilgrims returned home, leaving the Templars to fulfil their engagement and recover Jerusalem. In the year 1240, Richard Earl of Cornwall, the brother of Henry III. , king of England, arrived in Palestine, and aided the Templars in rebuilding the castle of Ascalon. This was the only exploit THE TEMPLARS AT GAZA. 261 performed by him in the Holy Land, and immediately after its accomplishment he set sail for England. Towards the close of autumn, the Templars, in conjunction with the Sultan of Damascus, marched against Gaza, and speedily obtained possession of the dismantled fortifications. They rebuilt the walls of the castle, established a strong garrison in it, and then marched joyfully upon Jerusalem. The fortifications of the Holy City having been dismantled during the siege of Damietta, the military friars entered it without difficulty or resistance, and took possession of their ancient quarters on Mount Moriah. The Sultan of Egypt, when informed that they were in possession of Jerusalem, sent an army across the desert to drive them out of the city before they had time to repair the fortifications ; but the Templars advanced with all their forces to meet the Egyptians, and gained a great victory over them, having cut them to pieces or driven them into the desert. The Christians, however, did not long retain possession of Jerusalem. The Sultan of Egypt, finding himself unable to resist the united arms of the Franks and the Sultan of Damascus, called in the Carizmians to his assistance. They were a fierce people, originally from the neighbourhood of the Caspian, and were encamped on the left bank of the Euphrates, pasturing their cavalry on the plains, when their chief received a deputation from the Sultan of Egypt, inviting their assistance in the reduction of Palestine, and offering them a settlement in the country as soon as it was re- 262 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. covered from the Franks. Thus invited, the Carizmians crossed the Euphrates, ravaged Syria, and directed their march towards Jerusalem. The military friars, regarding the city as untenable, resolved to abandon it, and many of the Christian inhabitants quitted it with them, and proceeded under their escort to Jaffa. More than six thousand, who had remained behind, afterwards attempted to make their escape, but only three hundred succeeded in reaching Jaffa ; the rest were slain or dragged away into captivity. The barbarians entered Jerusalem sword in hand, massacred the few remaining Christians, and pillaged the city. They then marched upon Gaza, took it by storm, and put the garrison to the sword ; after which they sent messengers to the Sultan of Egypt to announce their arrival, who thereupon dispatched his army, in all haste, to join them before Gaza. The military friars, in conjunction with the troops of Damascus and Carac, marched upon Gaza, attacked the united armies of the Egyptians and Carizmians, and were exterminated in a bloody battle of two days' continuance. The Grandmaster of the Temple was slain, and the Grandmaster of the Hospital taken prisoner. Three hundred and twelve Knights Templars, and three hundred and twenty-four serving brethren, with several thousand soldiers in the pay of the order, were slain in the terrible fight. The enemy then laid siege to the Castle of Ascalon ; but the Hospitallers made such a gallant defence, that the ASSEMBLY OF A GENERAL CHAPTER. 263 infidels raised the siege in despair, and spread themselves throughout Palestine, destroying and pillaging all the country. A new crusade was now preached in Europe, but with little effect ; the ancient enthusiasm had died away, and the military friars, for several years, received only small assistance in men and money. The Emperor Frederick, who still bore the empty title of King of Jerusalem, bestowed no thought upon the Holy Land, except to abuse the Templars, by whom that land had been so gallantly defended. The military orders, unassisted, still maintained a brave struggle against the fearful odds opposed to them ; Ascalon, however, was taken by storm, and the strong citadel of Tiberias shared the same fate. A general chapter of the Templars was assembled in the Pilgrim's Castle, a new grand-master was chosen, and circular mandates, which were promptly attended to, were sent to the western preceptories, summoning all the brethren to Palestine, and directing the immediate transmission of all the money in the different treasuries to the head-quarters of the order at Acre. In the course of a few years the Carizmians were annihilated ; but the Holy Land, though happily freed from the presence of these barbarians, had everything to fear from the powerful Sultan of Egypt, with whom hostilities were still continued. He had dethroned the Sultan of Damascus, the ally of the Templars, and his sway now extended over many of the fairest provinces of Syria. 264 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. In the summer of 1249, Louis IX. , king of France, landed in Egypt at the head of a powerful army, and took possession of Damietta, which was abandoned on his approach. In the month of June, the galleys of the Templars left Acre with a strong body of forces on board, and joined the French fleet in the mouth of the Nile. The campaign in Egypt proved exceedingly disastrous, but we have not space for the details. In the march towards Cairo the Templars led the van, and performed prodigies of valour : in two bloody battles which were fought with the infidels, the greater part of them fell, and in the last the grand-master was slain. The army attempted to retreat when retreat was almost impossible ; the soldiers were dispersed and scattered ; thousands died by the wayside, and thousands, with the king himself, fell alive into the hands of the enemy. All those of the prisoners who were unfit for service as slaves, or unable to redeem themselves by ransom, were inhumanly massacred, and a circle of heads decorated the walls of Cairo. The king, having obtained his liberty by the surrender of Damietta, and the payment of a vast sum of money, returned with the Templars to Palestine, and remained four years at Acre. The year after his departure, the order concluded a truce with the Sultan of Damascus. The Tartars, under Holagan, now invaded Syria and Palestine, entered Jerusalem in triumph, and ravaged and desolated the whole country. In the month of September, 1260, they were completely defeated by the Egyptian army in the neighbour- SAPHET TAKEN. 265 hood of Tiberias, and driven back beyond the Euphrates. The commander of the Egyptian army was the famous Bendocdar, who slew his master upon his return, and was proclaimed sovereign of Egypt. He soon proved a most formidable enemy to the Templars. He took by storm the cities of Cesarea and Arsoof, rased the fortifications, and put the garrison to the sword. After an obstinate defence, the strong fortress of Saphet capitulated ; but the faithless sultan broke his agreement with the order, and offered them the alternative of the Koran or death. They all refused to renounce their faith, and were beheaded, to the number of fifteen hundred. Jaffa and Beaufort were taken by storm ; the garrison of the former was massacred, that of the latter was permitted to march out with the honours of war. In the year 1268, the city of Antioch, containing a population of 160,000 souls, was taken by storm, and reduced to a heap of ruins, the inhabitants being either slain or carried into captivity. Two years thereafter, Louis IX. again landed near Tunis, at the head of an army of crusaders, and speedily fell a victim to the climate. His troops, after suffering severely from sickness, returned home ; and thus the hopes of the Latin Christians were cruelly disappointed. In the summer of 1271 , Prince Edward of England arrived at Acre with fifteen hundred men, and was joined by the military friars ; but nothing of importance was achieved. In the spring of the following year, the sultan concluded a truce with the inhabitants 2 L 266 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. of Acre, but only the city and adjacent plain, and the road to Nazareth, were comprehended in the treaty. Edward returned to Europe in the autumn, and thus terminated the last expedition undertaken for the relief of Palestine. The Sultan Kelaoun, who was raised to the sovereignty of Egypt and Syria shortly after the death of Bendocdar, renewed the war with terrible success. Laodicea, Tripoli, Gabala, and Beirout fell into his hands ; and he was preparing to attack Acre when death terminated his victorious career. He was succeeded by his eldest son Kalil, who, in the spring of 1291 , marched against Acre at the head of sixty thousand horse and a hundred and forty thousand foot. The siege lasted six weeks, during the whole of which period the sallies and attacks were incessant. After more than forty days of hard fighting, the double wall was forced, and the King of Cyprus, with all his followers, and more than three thousand of the garrison, fled by night to his ships, and sailed away for Cyprus. In the general assault which followed, the military friars resisted for a time all the efforts of the enemy; but they were overpowered by numbers, the Grand-master of the Temple was slain , and the infidels burst into the city. Thousands of Christians were killed in attempting to escape by sea ; thousands fled to the churches, and perished in the flames ; ten thousand, who fled to the Moslem camp to beg for mercy, were beheaded by command of the sultan ; three hundred Templars, the sole survivors of the order in Acre, fought PHILIP THE FAIR. 267 their way to their convent, shut the gates, and bade defiance to the advancing foe ; a number of them, with the treasure of the order, got on board a small vessel, and escaped to Cyprus. The residue retired to a large tower, which, being undermined, fell with a tremendous crash, and buried the defenders in its ruins. The city was set on fire, the fortifications were demolished, and the last stronghold of the Christian power in Palestine was reduced to desolation. We have now done with the military history of this famous order, and have only to notice their cruel persecution and downfall. Philip the Fair, king of France, having cast a greedy eye on their possessions, resolved to accomplish their ruin in order to enrich himself with their spoils. On the night of the 13th of October, 1307, by secret orders from the king, all the Templars in the French dominions were simultaneously arrested. The most absurd and incredible crimes were laid to their charge, such as denying Christ, spitting and trampling on the cross, worshipping the devil and pagan idols, cooking and roasting infants and anointing their idols with the fat, celebrating hidden rites and mysteries, &c. The Templars, it is very probable, were licentious enough in their morals ; but these accusations were manifestly untrue, and invented for the nonce. During twelve days of severe imprisonment, they remained constant in the denial of the horrible crimes imputed to the fraternity ; the king's promise of pardon extorted from them no confession of guilt. and 268 THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS. they were therefore handed over to the tender mercies of the Inquisition. Some of them, under the torture, now confessed the crimes laid to their charge, but afterwards retracted the confession ; the far greater part, however, remained firm, protesting their innocence to the last. In England, and other countries of Europe, they were imprisoned and tortured, but, with few exceptions, they persisted in maintaining the innocence of the order. None of the Templars were executed in England, but in France many of them were burned at the stake ; and among these the grand-master, whom the pope, the creature of the king, had treacherously drawn into his power. On the 3d of April, 1312, the papal decree, abolishing the order of the Temple, was published in the presence of the council assembled at Vienne. To save appearances, the pope issued a bull, transferring the property of the order to the Hospitallers ; this bull, however, remained for a considerable time nearly a dead letter, and the Hospitallers never obtained a twentieth part of the ancient possessions of the rival order. THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE.

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. THE beginning of the fifteenth century marks the dawn of one of the most important epochs in the history of the world. To a rightly constituted mind, indeed, no part of the annals of our race can be otherwise than interesting, since it is always possible, even amidst the follies and crimes they record, to discern the overruling hand of a Providence that brings good out of evil, and leads on, often through trial and suffering, the progress of humanity. The commencement of the fifteenth century, however, is peculiarly calculated to rivet attention, and to awaken a lively interest in those plans of divine government, whereby the downfal of feudal and spiritual despotism was accomplished, and out of which, in the fulness of time, have sprung the civil and religious freedom, the intellectual, moral, and industrial activity which distinguish our own times. From the issue of events, the significant religious movements of the period assume an importance above all others, and bere it will not be improper to review the condition of Europe at and prior to the time in question. A most striking feature may be observed in the increased authority and considera- 271 272 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. 1 tion of the great sovereignties, and in the rise of a spirit of nationality among the people. The decay ofchivalry, and of that insane fervour which wasted itself in the crusades, naturally left the nations of Europe greater leisure to attend to objects of interest and ambition nearer home. The commerce of the Italian cities, and of the Hanse towns, gradually extended in all directions, had arisen to minister to the growing love of luxury and refinement ; and learning, policy, and wealth, came in for some share of that consideration, formerly given to merely physical qualities. In the Peninsula, the Portuguese, under John I., and his illustrious son Henry, began a career of maritime discovery, destined before the close of the century to pour into the lap of Europe the treasures of the east and west. Spain, then divided into the states of Castile, Arragon, Navarre, and Granada, seemed passing through the process of consolidation, which eighty years after, when the Christian power became united in the hands of Ferdinand and Isabella, led to the expulsion of the Moors, and the conquest of the New World. In Germany, in 1411 , the election of Sigismund, king of Hungary and Elector of Brandenburg, to the imperial dignity, had restored stability to the throne of the Cæsars, and offered to Europe the first example of a civil ruler, who was called on to set limits to the assumption of the popes. France, harassed by factions, and distracted by civil wars, presented, beneath the imbecile rule of Charles VI. , a melancholy contrast to its temporary prosperity under his predecessor ; while in THE WORLD OF THAT DAY. 273 England, already advancing in industry and wealth, Henry V., the second monarch of the house of Lancaster, succeeded in 1413 to the crown his father's policy had secured for him, and exchanged a youth of revel for that career of ambition, over which the memorable victory of Agincourt has thrown such lasting renown. In the East, again, the expiring shadow of the Greek empire obtained a temporary respite by the invasion of Tamerlane the Tartar, who, having swept like a torrent the whole of Western Asia, led his victorious hordes against the Ottomans, and prostrated the power of Bajazet on the same field where Pompey had overcome the army of Mithridates. But all contemporary events are lost sight of, or derive their chief significancy from their bearing on the great moral revolution now fast approaching, and of which the proceedings at the Council of Constance afforded an early and momentous indication. Whatever may be said of the errors and even crimes of the popedom, it is impossible to deny it the credit of having been the main instrument of planting and consolidating the religious element in the public mind of Europe. It had the mission, and it accomplished it, of subjecting the rude minds of the northern barbarians to the restraints of civil and religious obligation. But this task once finished, the monstrous assumptions of the ecclesiastical power came into fatal conflict with the awakening intelligence of the people, and the ambition of their rulers. Thus, while the thirteenth century beheld the papacy in its noontide splendour, and 2 M 274 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. Rome once more the mistress of the world ; the fourteenth witnessed the gathering of those clouds which were destined to overwhelm her with a terrible eclipse. Even in the zenith of their power, the popes had failed in their object of fully subjecting the temporal to the spiritual authority ; and the empty assertion of the principle by Boniface VIII. , in 1302, met with a rebuff almost ludicrous in that course of events, which, beginning in an unsuccessful contest with Philip the Fair of France, and Edward I. of England, shortly after led to what has been called the Babylonish captivity, transferring the court of Clement V. from Rome to Avignon. Literature, too long the handmaid of spiritual despotism, began also to assert her legitimate birthright of ministering to liberty and truth ; and in the writings of Dante, Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, the whole edifice of the pope's temporal power was questioned and opposed. But it was not till 1378, on the restoration of the pontifical chair to Rome, followed by the decease of Gregory XI. , that the great schism arose from which the prestige of papal infallibility received its most fatal blow. In that year the college of cardinals, having met to nominate a successor, were awed by the Roman populace into the election of an Italian archbishop, who assumed the name of Urban VI. This choice, a few weeks after, they thought proper to annul, and anew appointed a Frenchman, Clement VII. Whatever posterity may think of the pretensions of these competitors, they then shared the obedience of THE RIVAL POPES. 275 Europe in nearly equal proportions. Urban, who remained at Rome, received the adherence of Italy, the Empire, England, and the North ; while Clement, who resumed the station of Avignon, gained the allegiance of France, Spain, Scotland, and Sicily. Christendom was thus called to witness the unseemly spectacle of two heads of the church, each assuming infallibility, engaged in the task of anathematizing and excommunicating each other. Neither party would admit of compromise. After the death of Urban, the Roman conclave elected three pontiffs successively, Boniface IX. , Innocent VI. , and Gregory XII.; while the cardinals at Avignon, on the demise of Clement, in 1394, placed their tiara on the head of Peter de Luna, better known as Benedict XIII. Such a state of things, which the church evidently possessed within herself no means of terminating, could not fail materially to shake the hold possessed by the papacy on the minds of mankind. Still, however, its influence was too powerful to leave room for any other feeling than a desire to terminate its difficulties by lay interposition. Of the opportunity thus afforded, the secular sovereigns were quite willing to take advantage. Accordingly, in 1409, during the double pontificate of Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII. , a general council was called at Pisa, at the instigation of France, which deposed both popes, and elected Alexander V.; but as neither of the two first thought proper to acquiesce in this decision, the only result was the addition of a third claimant 276 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. for the triple crown. The Emperor Sigismund now resolved to interfere. By far the most accomplished prince of his time, he united to a certain dissimulation or duplicity of character many of those generous and patriotic virtues which add lustre to exalted rank. A brave and skilful soldier, he was at the same time a man of letters, and gloried in being thought a patron of learning and an arbiter in theology. The work of taking order in the affairs of the church was one to which policy, pride, and ambition, alike prompted ; while the necessity of uniting the force of Europe against the revived power of the Ottomans, who had lately defeated his army in the battle of Semendria, added the strong impulse of self- preservation. As, therefore, a general council seemed still the only remedy, he instigated, or rather commanded, John XXIII. , the successor of Alexander, to summon that memorable convocation, afterwards notorious as the Council of Constance. It was accordingly convened in 1414, and continued sitting till 1418.* The constitution of this assembly, which has been called the states-general of Christendom, was significant of the altered temper of the times. Hitherto the bishops had been considered the sole members of ecclesiastical assemblies ; but at Constance, there sat and voted, not only the heads

• Fox gives the following quaint catalogue of the personages assembled at Constance on this occasion :-""There were, " says

he, " archbishops and bishops , 346 ; abbots and doctors, 564 ; princes, dukes, earls, knights, and squires, 16,000 ; common women, 450 ; barbers, 600 ; musicians, cooks, and jesters, 320. " -Constance is a city of the Grand-duchy of Baden, on the lake of the same name, and now contains about 6000 inhabitants. THE ASSEMBLY. 277 of monasteries, but the ambassadors of all the Christian princes, the deputies of Universities, with doctors of law, and numerous inferior theologians. To counteract the number of the Italian bishops, who were generally in the papal interest, its adversaries also carried the important innovation, that the council should divide itself into four nations, the Italian, German, French, and English, each with equal rights, and that every proposition, after being separately discussed, should be decided by the majority of the four. This constitution, the triumph of what Mr Hallam calls the Whig principles of Catholicism, led naturally to that celebrated decree which asserts the supremacy of general councils over the pope, and declares any pontiff liable to punishment who should refuse to obey them. This principle, in effect little better than a transfer of the pope's authority to themselves, and by which the laity gained extremely little, the council were not slow to act upon. They confirmed the deposition of Gregory and Benedict, as decreed at Pisa ; John himself, who had summoned them together, shared the same fate, after many ineffectual attempts to avert it ; and, in the third session of the council, a new pontiff, under the name of Martin V., was declared the only legal successor of St Peter. In this decision Gregory agreed to acquiesce, John was compelled to submit to it by force, but Benedict, who was in Spain, remained as tenacious as ever of his assumed dignity, and excommunicated all his antagonists. Though, therefore, the council 278 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. assumed the credit of settling all difficulties, it was not till 1429, by the resignation of a dignitary calling himself Clement VIII. , a successor of Benedict, that the one Catholic infallible church was again found reposing, without dispute, under her one Catholic infallible head. These transactions, it might be thought, would have opened the eyes of mankind, more readily than they did, to the real value of such pretensions. Meantime, while the council were thus seeking to heal the deadly wound schism had inflicted on the papacy, by a process which exposed more internal weakness than either its friends or foes had counted on, they had been led to perpetrate, in its defence, a crime that covers all connected with it with imperishable infamy, and which left a fatal example to after times. The cruel extirpation of the Albigenses, and the terrors of the Inquisition, had failed to repress that spirit of inquiry so much dreaded by the priesthood ; and so early as 1380, the preaching of Wycliffe, in England, exposed their vices and corruptions, while his translation of the New Testament gave to the world the germs of those pregnant principles since called the doctrines of the Reformation. These doctrines, soon widely diffused, had found a worthy apostle and an appropriate audience among the primitive Sclavonian race inhabiting the mountain circle of Bohemia. Born in 1370, at the village of Hussinatz, on the border of the Black Forest, JOHN HUss belonged to a rank of life whence so many lofty spirits have come forth to that work to which not many THE APOSTLE OF THE BLACK FOREST. 279 rich men, not many noble, are called. Uniting the sanctity of the Christian with the zeal of the apostle, and the devotedness of the martyr, he has been less distinguished than his great German successor, mainly because Luther lived to plant the standard of the Reformation on the citadel of Popery, while Huss fell fighting in the trench. He passed his early studies in the University of Prague, where his assiduity, talents, and blameless conduct, soon rendered him conspicuous. In his thirtieth year he was ordained priest, and appointed confessor to the Queen of Bohemia, who long continued to befriend him. The writings of the English reformer, with which he had become acquainted through his friend Jerome, who had brought them from Oxford, struck him with the force of revelation. After some short time given to meditation and forming his resolution, Huss boldy proclaimed these views from the pulpit, exposing the profligate lives of the clergy, and denouncing the infamous traffic in indulgences. He was soon at the head of a party. In 1408, under the influence of the German students, the heads of the University declared that whoever taught the doctrines of Wycliffe should be expelled from that. body ; but the reformer, identifying his cause with that of his Bohemian countrymen, compelled the withdrawal of the Germans from the University, and was himself elevated to the dignity of rector. From this commanding position he diffused his views with augmented energy ; and, while the Archbishop of Prague ordered his works to bo 1 280 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE, publicly burned, suspended him from his priestly functions, and held the threat of excommunication overall who adhered to him, he assembled the people in their own houses and in the fields, and preached to them against the pope, against purgatory, and, above all, against indulgences. Thus invited to examine subjects hitherto deemed the sole province of the clergy, the humblest soon became familiar with the great truths of Scripture, and convinced of their entire sufficiency as a rule of faith and life. The priesthood were now thoroughly alarmed. John XXIII. cited Huss to appear before him at Bologna, and as the reformer declined to obey the mandate, he was formally excommunicated. Such a sentence he had now learned to estimate at its true value ; but as tumults began to arise in the streets of Prague between his partisans and those who upheld the papal authority, he became unwilling to appear as encouraging these disorders, and withdrew to his native village. There, both with tongue and pen, he continued the work he had begun. Subsequently, on the death of the archbishop, Huss returned to Prague, where, aided by his ingenuous disciple Jerome, he anew denounced the abuses of the papacy in the strongest terms. Fresh tumults now took place ; and, after more citations from the pope, which Huss disdained to obey, the Council of Constance at last assembled. The constitution of this convocation has already been explained, and it may be enough to say, in addition, that, besides aiming to terminate the schism, it proposed to itself the task of settling THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION. 281 the abuses and disorders of the church. Among the most prominent of these were reckoned the rapid diffusion of Wycliffe's views, which had been solemnly denounced, while his followers, of whom Huss stood most conspicuous, were marked out for signal punishment. He was accordingly summoned to appear before the council ; and, having obtained a solemn promise of protection and safety from the emperor, he resolved to obey. His progress through Germany to Constance resembled a triumphal procession. The streets, and sometimes even the roads, were lined with people ; and at Nuremberg the magistrates and clergy waited on him in form, and expressed their conviction of his innocence and integrity. These demonstrations, a hundred years before the time of Luther, show the progress Reformation principles had already made in Germany. No sooner, however, had the reformer arrived at his destination, than he was thrown into prison, where, to the eternal disgrace of Sigismund, he was retained for six months, till his trial in June, 1415. He was accused, generally, of advocating the proscribed views of Wycliffe, as well as of sowing sedition among the people and dissension in the church. The trial, on the part of judges predetermined to condemn him, presented a disgraceful scene of disorder, chicanery, and cruelty, contrasting strongly with the calm fortitude and resignation of the reformer. By his unjust imprisonment, the safeconduct of the emperor had already been violated, and the bigotry or irresolution of Sigismund pre2 N 232 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE. vented him from interposing now to prevent judicial murder. The sequel need not be dwelt on. Degraded from his priestly office, insulted, and reviled, he was handed over to the secular power, and condemned to the stake. He perished with a fortitude which even his enemies admired. The last words he addressed to his persecutors were worthy of his life and death :-"I have no errors to retract ; I endeavoured to preach Christ with apostolic plainness ; and I am now prepared to seal my doctrine with my blood." This tragedy was perpetrated previously to the deposition of John XXIII. , and it was shortly after followed by the martyrdom of the amiable and affectionate Jerome, who followed his master to a better world through the same fiery pathway. The election of Martin V., as already mentioned, in 1417, closed the business of the council, which had thus distinguished itself by acts of cruelty and baseness, unhappily too common in the annals of intolerance. It secured a temporary calm to the eternal dissensions of the papacy, but it utterly failed in quieting the public mind of Europe, or arresting the progress of the Reformation. In Bohemia, the martyrdom of Huss and Jerome gave rise to a long and bloody war between their adherents and those of Rome, which war only terminated by the concessions of the council of Basle in 1433 ; and Europe beheld the consequences of its flagitious principle, that no faith is to be kept with heretics, in many a future scene of cruelty and folly. 15 JA 61 Uniform with the present Volume, price 3s. 6d. Where Illustrations are specified, these are on Tinted Paper, full size of page. Small Beginnings : On. With Eight Illustrations. or, the Way to Get CONTENTS. John Walter of the " Times "-the Sovereign of " The Fourth Estate ." The Story of the first Indian Baronet- Sir Jam- setjee Jejeebhoy the Parsee Merchant. Minton and Wedgwood; or, the History of a Tea- cup and two great Potters. George Heriot the Shrewd Goldsmith. Joseph Brotherton the Factory Boy. Stephen Girard the Cabin Boy. John Leyden the Shepherd Boy. Drake the Sea- King; or, the Building of " Old England's Wooden Walls ." Dupuytren the Resolute Surgeon . Laffitte the Banker ; or, a Fortune in a Pin. James Montgomery, Poet and Editor. John Ray the Reverent Inquirer. Breguet the Ingenious Watchmaker. David Wilkie the Painter of Daily Life. John Pounds and his Ragged Scholars ; or, the Cobbler's Experiment. William Knibb the Friend of the Slave. George Birkbeck and the Origin of Mechanics" Institutions. Edward Baines the Successful Printer. The Sea and her Famous Sailors. A History of Maritime Adventure and Exploration, with Incidents in the Lives of Distinguished Naval Heroes and Adventurers. With Eight Illustrations. This Volume, whether viewed as a careful concise Ocean History, or as a compact series of Tales and Adventures, possesses many attractive as well as useful features . It embraces the rise and fall of Maritime Greatness in connexion with the annals of various nations-the enterprise and endurance which won and maintained Naval Power- and the innumerable episodes of brilliant daring which mark the career of our Early Adventurers . The Pilgrim in the Holy Land ; or, Palestine, Past and Present. By the Rev. HENRY OSBORN, A.M. With Twelve Illustrations, representing various leading objects of interest in the Holy Land, including several Views of the Holy Sepulchre, drawn from Photographs, &c. &c. Complete and Illustrated Edition of BUNYAN. The Pilgrim's Progress. By JOHN Bunyan. With Twelve Illustrations.

• .* It has been the aim of the Publishers, in producing a New Edition of this Standard Work, to combine at once a plain readable text, and such artistic excellence as will present a popular Edition with features hitherto obtainable only in Editions published at a much higher price.

Todd's Lectures to Children. A Complete Edition of the First and Second Series, with a Memoir of the Author, from Authentic Sources, and Twelve full-page Illus- trations on Tinted Paper. How do we know there is any God. Repentance for Sin. Angels' Joy when Sinners repent. What Faith is and what its Use is. God will take care of us. Jesus Christ tasting Death . Christ interceding for us. Giving Account to God. Great Events hang on Little Things. Fragments all to be saved. The Sabbath to be kept Holy. The Grave losing its Victory. CONTENTS. The Lowly Cradle. The Lost Child. The Child Found. Gathered Lilies. The Little Strip. The Great King. The Broken Staff Mended. The Flowers. The Angel's Errand. God Rejoicing. The Oldest Riddle. The Great Change. London : JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9, St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street, E.C. Uniform with the present Volume, price 3s. 6d. Where Illustrations are specified, these are on Tinted Paper, full size of page. Men who have Risen : a Book for Boys. With Eight Illustrations. The Rise ofthe Peel Family. The Beginning of the Rothschilds. Stephenson the Railway Pioneer. Davy the Chemist. Oberlin the Pastor. Franklin the Navigator. Astor the Millionnaire. CONTENTS. Hutton the Bookseller. Linnæus the Naturalist. Smeaton the Engineer. Wilson the Ornithologist. Eldonthe Judge. Wilhelm the Knife-Grinder. The Story of Hugh Miller's Early Days. Pictures of Heroes, and Lessons from their Lives. With Eight Illustrations. CONTENTS. An Imperial Convert ; or, the Youth and Man- hood of Constantine. The Moslem's Dream; or, the Crescent on the Loire. King Alfred ; or, a Thousand Years Ago. Frederick Barbarossa, the " Redbeard " of the Rhine. Brother John of Vicenza. Northern Lights. The Snow King. Scenes in the Life of William the Silent. The Polish Wizard. Innsbruck and its Echoes ; or, the Rescue, the Run, the Bribe, and the Ruin. The Habits of Good Society: a HandBook ofEtiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen. With Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes concerning Social Observances, Nice Points of Taste and Good Manners, and the Art of Making One's-self agreeable. The whole Interspersed with Humorous Illustrations of Social Predicaments, Remarks on the History and Changes of Fashion, and the Differences of English and Continental Etiquette. CHAP. I.-The Dressing- Room, II.- The Lady's Toilet. III.- Dress. IV.-Lady's Dress. PART 1.-THE INDIVIDUAL. CHAP. V -Accomplishments. VI -Feminine Accomplishments. VII -Manners, Carriage, and Habits. VIII.-The Carriage ofa Lady. PART II.-THE INDIVIDUAL IN INDIVIDUAL RELATIONS, CHAP. IX -In Public. 1 CHAP. X.-In Private. PART III.-THE INDIVIDUAL IN COMPANY, CHAP. XI .-Dinners, Diners, and Dinner- Parties. CHAP. XIV - Morning and Evening Parties. XII. Ladies at Dinner. XIII -Balls. XV -Marriage. XVI.-Presentation at Court. AHandy Book of Medical Information and Advice. Containing & Erief Account of the Nature and Treat- ment of Common Diseases ; also , Hints to be followed in Emergencies ; with Suggestions as to the Management of the Sick-room, and the Preservation of Health, and an Appendix, in which will be found a List of the Medicines referred to in the Work, with their Proper Doses and Modes of Administration. By a PHYSICIAN. In addition to the simple every- day knowledge, which is useful to all, and particularly to the Head of a Household, this little Volume is specially intended as a Safe and Ready Guide to those Resident in Country Places, and generally under circumstances where Medical Advice is not instantly available. London : JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9, St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street, E.O. Uniform with the present Volume, price 38. 6d. Where Illustrations are specified, these are on Tinted Paper, full size of page. Women ofWorth: a Book for Girls. With Eight Illustrations. The Worthy Daughter-Charlotte Bronte. The Newgate Schoolmistress-Elizabeth Fry. The Jail Missionary-Sarah Martin. The Worker of Charity-Margaret Mercer. The Teacher in the Wilds-Sarah Judson. The Noble Matron-Lady Russell. The True Wife-Lady Fanshawe. CONTENTS. The Pattern of Domestic Virtue-Lucy Hutchin- son. The Friend of Columbus-Isabel the Catholic. The Queenly Scholar-Lady Jane Grey. The Star of Austria-Maria Theresa. The Pastor's Helpmate-Madeleine Oberlin. The Children's Favourite-Ann Barbauld The Estimable Governess- Suzanne Curchod. The Patient Astronomer-Caroline Herschel, The Quiet Reformer-Hannah More. The Poet's Companion-Mrs. Wordsworth. The Sculptor's Assistant-Ann Flaxman. The Earnest Christian-Lady Warwick. The Guardian Angel-Lady Mackintosh. The Old-Fashioned Dame-Lady Somerville. The Book of Children's Hymns Rhymes. Collected by the Daughter of a Clergyman. and This is a comprehensive collection of what may be called " THE CHILDREN'S FAVOURITES. " The volume is profusely Illustrated by Wood Engravings, and printed in clear bold type Favourite Passages in Modern Christian Biography. A Treasury of Biographical Facts, and a Collection of some of the Finer Passages in Modern Christian Biography. With a Group of Seven Portraits. Richard Cecil. Andrew Fuller. Adolphe Monod. Frederick William Krum- macher. Robert Hall. CONTENTS. John Foster. Thomas Arnold. William Archer Butler. Thomas Chalmers. Henry Martyn. John Williams. Robert Murray M'Cheyne. John Mackintosh. Henry Havelock. Hedley Vicars. James Wilson. Patrick Fraser Tytler. Friendly Hands and Kindly Words. Stories Illustrative of the Law of Kindness, the Power of Persever. ance, and the Advantages of Little Helps. With Eight Illustrations The Fortunes of the Skinner's Apprentice. The Golden-winged Messenger. The Flower Girl and the Divers. Connemara Joe. The Sprig of Moss. CONTENTS. The "Good Seed ; " or, the Ups and Downs of the Mariner's Life. Watching for a Sunbeam. The Hermit of Gaul. In Prison with a Four- footed Friend. The Little Boy's Purchase. I'll Do it ! Love and Faith. One Bright Beam on a Cheerless Path. A Word from Bessy ; or, the Turning- Point of a Life. Save the Erring. Little Davy and My Stolen Purse. The Donkey of Many Masters. Speak Gently. Feathered Helps. The Good Angels . The Story of Mozart and his First Attempt. The Merchant of Cairo. The Busy Hives Around Us : a Variety of Trips and Visits to the Mine, the Workshop, and the Factory. With Popular Notes on Materials, Processes, and Machines. With Illustrations. London : JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9, St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street, E.C. Uniform with the present Volume, price 38. 6d. Where Illustrations are specified, these are on Tinted Paper, full size of page. The Angel of the Iceberg, and other Stories and Parables. To which is added TRUTH MADE SIMPLE, a System of Theology for Children. By the Rev. JOHN TODD, D.D. With Twelve Illustrations. ANGEL OF THE ICEBERG . Niblan the Great and the Little Angel. The Day Lily and the Old Mahogany- Tree. The Old House in Sunken Hollow. Little Mufta and the Valley of Sorrow. The Island of Convicts and the Young Prince. The Living Ship. " " The Great Cable. The Angel of Toil and the Great Mill. Tadmorin the Wilderness. Timothy Tuttle and the Little Imps. Capeenim the Golden-handed. Little Sunbeam. TRUTH MADE SIMPLE. Address to Mothers. Lecture I.-Is there any God ? II-God a Spirit. " "2 " " " III.-God Eternal. IV. God is Everywhere. V.- God Wise. VI.-God Knows Everything. VII.-God's Power. VIII -Truth of God. IX. God does as He Pleases. X.-God is Holy. XI.-God is Good. The Popular Preachers of the Ancient Church: their Lives, their Manner, and their Work. With Four Illustrations. CONTENTS. The Christian Philanthropist -Cyprian of Carthage. The Faithful Minister-Ambrose of Milan. The Homely Preacher-Augustine of Hippo. The Fearless Bishop-Basil the Great. The Genial Theologian - Gregory Nazianzen. The Golden-mouthed " Orator-Chrysostom of Byzantium . The Vicar of Wakefield. With the following Twelve Illustrations :- Farmer Flamborough and the Blind Piper. The Vicar's Sly Accident. The Squire begs to be favoured with a Song. A Lord and a Squire for Two Shillings. George Primrose on his Travels " No song, nosupper." The Vicar tries Horse-dealing. Moses starts for the Fair. Hunt the Slipper. The Vicar as a Gaol Reformer. Unexpected Visitors. The Wanderer's Return . The Vicar's Second Meeting with Ephraim Jenkinson. Roses and Thorns : or, Five Tales of the Start in Life. With Eight Illustrations. "Blessed are the Pure in Heart." I. AKIN FOR EVER. CONTENTS. " Let Patience have its Perfect Work. " II. RACHEL ASTON'S ENGAGEMENT. "Be of Good Cheer." III.-TWO TIMES IN MY LIFE. "Behold the Power of Love. " IV. THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE. "The Rolling Stone gathers no Moss." Y.-A STORY IN A SNUFF-BOX. The Star ofHope and the Staff ofDuty. Tales of Womanly Trials and Victories. With Eight Illustrations. My Early Days ; a Tale in Seven Chapters. Beatrice Rington ; in Two Parts. CONTENTS. My First Situation : being the Fugitive Remini scences ofa Retired Governess. A Year of Married Life. London: JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9. St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet street, E.O. NEW JUVENILE WORK. Euited and Written by MARY HOWITT. With Illustrations by ZWECKER, printed on Toned Paper. In One handsome Small Crown 8vo Volume, Full Gilt, price 5s. , A Treasury of Tales for Young People. THE OLD FAVOURITES. AUTHOR'S PREFACE AND DEDICATION. Ir is to the young that I would address this Preface and dedicate this book; this selection of stories, mostly belonging to a past generation, and now presented, like flowers from an old-fashioned garden, for their delight and edification. Looking at my young audience with affectionate regard, and seeing amongst them boys and girls, youths and maidens, of all classes, of all tastes and dispositions , I have endeavoured to find something suited for all; for the elder ones, whose maturer minds require food of a more varied and elevated character ; and for the little ones, to whom the fairy- tale will never lose its attractions. Stories for all such are within these pages ; are the flowers which compose my nosegay, and which have been selected with thoughtful care, and bound together with a loving hand, as an offering to that great and interesting portion of the public, its JUVE- NILE READERS ; the children now-the men and women of a few years hence. To them, therefore-the generous, warm-hearted, pure-minded, and affectionate youthful generation, which has its ranks filled up in never-ceasing succession-this volume is inscribed. LONDON, September 1860. CONTENTS. ROCKBOURNE HALL, introducing the Young Folks' Readings, and their Conversations about old Favourite Tales. MARY HOWITT. ARABELLA HARDY. THE CONJUGATING DUTCHMAN. THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY, EARL OF MORELAND. SOME ACCOUNT OF ROBIN, DICKY, KING LEAR. FLAPSY, AND PECKSY. THE NEW ROBINSON CRUSOE. THE INQUISITIVE GIRL. THE TRIAL OF CAREFUL v. LUCKLESS. THE TRIAL OF SALLY DELIA. KEEPER'S TRAVELS IN SEARCH OF HIS MASTER. KING ALFRED. A NEW ACQUAINTANCE. THE LITTLE HEROINE. SANDY WRIGHT AND THE ORPHAN. LADY GRIZEL BAILLIE. TRAVELS OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. THE SOLITARY FAMILY OF NOR- MANDY. THE HISTORY OF A SURPRISING CURE OF THE GOUT. THE BANK NOTE. MY LORD SNOWDROP. SIMPLE SUSAN. THE NOBLEACTS AND HEROIC DEEDS OF SIR GALAHAD. MORAL CONVERSATIONS & STORIES. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. London: JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9, St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street, E.O. In Two Volumes, Cloth, price 21s. , With Sixteen Fine and Characteristic Engravings on Wood, by Charles Altamont Doyle and the Brothers Dalziel, The Queens of Society. PHILIP WHARTON. By GRACE and A SERIES of MEMOIRS of the MOST CELEBRATED WOMEN who, in virtue of their Wit, Strength of Mind, or Beauty, have taken a lead in the Literary, Political, and Court Circles of the last two and present Cen- turies, in England and France ; who have been the intimate Friends of Great Men, or taken a prominent part in Great Movements ; with Notices and Anecdotes of their principal Contemporaries, and Reviews of the Character of the Society in which they moved and shone. The Choice has been made among those Women who have not purely Historic Names, but whose Lives, Letters, and Memoirs serve to illustrate, in the most interesting manner, the History of their Day, and whose Private Careers form in themselves Subjects of peculiar interest. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Madame Roland. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Madame Recamier. Lady Hervey. Madame de Stael . Mrs. Thrale- Piozzi. Lady Caroline Lamb. Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L.E.L.) Madame de Sevigne. Sydney, Lady Morgan. Jane, Duchess of Gordon. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. Anne Seymour Damer. La Marquise du Deffand. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. Mary, Countess of Pembroke. La Marquise de Maintenon. In Two Volumes, Cloth, price 218., With Sixteen Illustrations from Drawings by H. K. Browne and James Godwin, Engraved by the Brothers Dalziel, The Wits and Beaux of Society. By GRACE and PHILIP WHARTON, Authors of " The Queens of Society." MEMOIRS Of MEN who, from the days of Louis XIV. and Charles II. to the present Century, have been celebrated for their Wit, their Manners, their Dress, and their general Social Pre-eminence, in England and France ; Anecdotes of their Eccentricities ; their Sayings and Doings ; Sketches of their characters, of the Courts, Clubs, and Côteries they frequented, and of the Phases of Society in which they shone. The Selection has been made among the Talkers and Walkers of Society, rather than among men renowned for literary abilities ; and when, as is often the case, the latter have been also the former, the literary has pur- posely been made ancillary to the social character. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. George Villiers, Second Duke of Buckingham. De Grammont, Saint Evremond, and Rochester. Beau Fielding. Of certain Clubs and Club-Wits under Anne. William Congreve. Beau Nash and the Bath Set. Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. George Selwyn and Gilly Williams. CONTENTS Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince's Set. Beau Brummell, and the Prince's Set. Philip, Duke of Wharton. Lord Hervey and the Twickenham Set. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield The Abbe Scarron. La Rochefoucauld and Saint Simon. OF VOL. II. Theodore Edward Hooke, and the Literary Set. Sydney Smith, and the Holland- House Set. George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe. London : JAMES HOGG & SONS, 9, St. Bride's Avenue, Fleet Street, E.C.

Front matter

PICTURES COBAS AND ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

goog . b.15. NOBLE TRAITS OF KINGLY MEN ; OR, Pictures and Anecdotes of European History : WITH A BIRD'S- EYE VIEW OF THE GRANDER MOVEMENTS AND THEIR LEADERS. ILLUSTRATED BY S. A. GROVES. BRITISH MUS USEUM BRITISH 15 JA61 MUSEUM MANOMET HILDE BRAND BORDER The Herald's Summons to Hildebrand. Frontispiece. See page 116. NOBLE TRAITS KINGLY CHARLEMACNE PICTURES &ANECDOTES OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. WITH A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF GRANDER MOVEMENTS AND THEIR LEADERS LONDON JAMES . HOGG .& SONS. G1 BRITISH MUS CONTENTS. PAGE THE FIRST PICTURE.- EUROPEAN LIFE THE SECOND PICTURE. -THE ORIGINAL ELEMENTS OF EUROPEAN LIFE THE THIRD PICTURE.-THE CHRISTIAN ELEMENT 5 21 332895 THE FOURTH PICTURE. THE CRUSADES 49 THE FIFTH PICTURE. -THE SECRET OF MAHOMMEDAN CONQUEST 66 THE SIXTH PICTURE. -THE INFLUENCE OF THE CRUSADES 79 THE SEVENTH PICTURE. -EUROPE ECCLESIASTICAL- THE CHURCH OF ROME-HILDEBRAND · · 102 THE EIGHTH PICTURE. -THE CHURCH OF ROME IN ANOTHER ASPECT 123 THE NINTH PICTURE.-LUTHER 136 THE TENTH PICTURE. -EUROPE SPREADING WESTWARDCOLUMBUS 156 THE ELEVENTH PICTURE. THE PILGRIM FATHERS 168 THE TWELFTH PICTURE. -THE MODERN EMIGRANT 188 THE LAST SIGH OF THE MOOR 209 THE FAMOUS ORDER OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS 233 THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE · 269 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE THE HERALD'S SUMMONS TO HILDEBRAND. -Frontispiece. ALFRED AND CHARLEMAGNE. -Vignette Title. THE MAN WHO SPOKE " TO THE HEARTS OF FIGHTING MEN" 57 CHIVALRY OF THE BLACK PRINCE 95 LUTHER'S PARTING WITH MELANCTHON 145 COLUMBUS SEES THE GLEAM OF LIGHT 166 WINTHROP AND THE THIEF 185 THE MOOR'S MESSAGE-A SCENE IN THE ALHAMBRA 218 EUROPEAN LIFE.