The Crusades are, beyond all question, the most extraordinary and memorable movement that ever took place in the history of mankind. Neither ancient nor modern times can furnish any thing even approaching to a parallel. They were neither stimulated by the lust of conquest nor the love of gain; they were not the results of northern poverty pressing on southern plenty, nor do they furnish an example of civilized discipline overcoming barbaric valour. The warriors who assumed the Cross were not stimulated, like the followers of Cortes and Pizarro, by the thirst for gold, nor roused, like those of Timour and Genghis Khan, by the passion for conquest. They did not burn, like the legionary soldiers of Rome, with the love of country, nor sigh with Alexander, because another world did not remain to conquer. They did not issue, like the followers of Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the "Koran" in the other, to convert by subduing mankind, and win the houris of Paradise by imbruing their hands in the blood of the unbelievers. The ordinary motives which rouse the ambition, or awaken the passions of men, were to them unknown. One only passion warmed every bosom, one only desire was felt in every heart. To rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the Infidels—to restore the heritage of Christ to his followers—to plant the Cross again on Mount Calvary—was the sole object of their desires. For this they lived, for this they died. For this, millions of warriors abandoned their native seats, and left their bones to whiten the fields of Asia. For this, Europe, during two centuries, was precipitated on Asia. To stimulate this astonishing movement, all the powers of religion, of love, of poetry, of romance, and of eloquence, during a succession of ages, were devoted. Peter the Hermit shook the heart of Europe by his preaching, as the trumpet rouses the war-horse. Poetry and romance aided the generous illusion. No maiden would look at a lover who had not served in Palestine; few could resist those who had. And so strongly was the European heart then stirred,—so profound the emotions excited by those events, that their influence is felt even at this distant period. The highest praise yet awarded to valour is, that it recalls the lion-hearted Richard; the most envied meed bestowed on beauty, that it rivals the fascination of Armida. No monument is yet approached by the generous and brave with such emotion as those now mouldering in our churches, which represent the warrior lying with his arms crossed on his breast, in token that, during life, he had served in the Holy Wars.

The Crusades form the true heroic age of Europe—the Jerusalem Delivered is its epic poem. Then alone its warriors fought and died together. Banded together under a second "King of men," the forces of Christendom combated around the Holy City against the strength of Asia drawn to its defence. The cause was nobler, the end greater, the motives more exalted, than those which animated the warriors of the Iliad. Another Helen had not fired another Troy; the hope of sharing the spoils of Phrygia had not drawn together the predatory bands of another Greece. The characters on both sides had risen in proportion to the magnitude and sanctity of the strife in which they were engaged. Holier motives, more generous passions were felt, than had yet, from the beginning of time, strung the soldier's arm. Saladin was a mightier prince than Hector; Godfrey a nobler character than Agamemnon; Richard immeasurably more heroic than Achilles. The strife did not continue for ten years, but for twenty lustres; and yet, so uniform were the passions felt through its continuance, so identical the objects contended for, that the whole has the unity of interest of a Greek drama.

All nations bore their part in this mighty tragedy. The Franks were there, under Godfrey of Bouillon and Raymond of Toulouse, in such strength as to have stamped their name in the East upon Europeans in general; the English nobly supported the ancient fame of their country under the lion-hearted King; the Germans followed the Dukes of Austria and Bavaria; the Flemings those of Hainault and Brabant; the Italians and Spaniards reappeared on the fields of Roman fame; even the distant Swedes and Norwegians, the descendants of the Goths and Normans, sent forth their contingents to combat in the common cause of Christianity. Nor were the forces of Asia assembled in less marvellous proportions. The bands of Persia were there, terrible as when they destroyed the legions of Crassus and Antony, or withstood the invasions of Heraclius and Julian; the descendants of the followers of Sesostris appeared on the field of ancient and forgotten glory; the swarthy visages of the Ethiopians were seen; the distant Tartars hurried to the theatre of carnage and plunder; the Arabs, flushed with the conquest of the Eastern world, combated, with unconquerable resolution, for the faith of Mahomet. The arms of Europe were tested against those of Asia, as much as the courage of the descendants of Japhet was with the daring of the children of Ishmael. The long lance, ponderous panoply, and weighty war-horse of the West, was matched against the twisted hauberk, sharp sabre, and incomparable steeds of the East; the sword crossed with the cimeter, the dagger with the poniard; the armour of Milan was scarce proof against the Damascus blade; the archers of England tried their strength with the bowmen of Arabia. Nor were rousing passions, animating recollections, and charmed desires awanting to sustain the courage on both sides. The Christians asserted the ancient superiority of Europe over Asia; the Saracens were proud of the recent conquest of the East, Africa, and Southern Europe, by their arms; the former pointed to a world subdued and long held in subjection—the latter to a world newly reft from the infidel, and won by their sabres to the sway of the Crescent. The one deemed themselves secure of salvation while combating for the Cross, and sought an entrance to heaven through the breach of Jerusalem; the other, strong in the belief of fatalism, advanced fearless to the conflict, and strove for the houris of Paradise amidst the lances of the Christians.

When nations so powerful, leaders so renowned, forces so vast, courage so unshaken in the contending parties, were brought into collision, under the influence of passions so strong, enthusiasm so exalted, devotion so profound, it was impossible that innumerable deeds of heroism should not have been performed on both sides. If a poet equal to Homer had arisen in Europe to sing the conflict, the warriors of the Crusades would have been engraven on our minds like the heroes of the Iliad; and all future ages would have resounded with their exploits, as they have with those of Achilles and Agamemnon, of Ajax and Ulysses, of Hector and Diomede. But though Tasso has with incomparable beauty enshrined in immortal verse the feelings of chivalry, and the enthusiasm of the Crusades, he has not left a poem which has taken, or ever can take, the general hold of the minds of men, which the Iliad has done. The reason is, it is not founded in nature—it is the ideal—but it is not the ideal based on the real. Considered as a work of imagination, the Gerusalemme Liberata is one of the most exquisite conceptions of human fancy, and will for ever command the admiration of romantic and elevated minds. But it wants that yet higher excellence, which arises from a thorough knowledge of human nature—a graphic delineation of actual character, a faithful picture of the real passions and sufferings of mortality. It is the most perfect example of poetic fancy; but the highest species of the epic poem is to be found not in poetic fancy, but poetic history. The heroes and heroines of the Jerusalem Delivered are noble and attractive. It is impossible to study them without admiration; but they resemble real life as much as the Enchanted Forest and spacious battle-fields, which Tasso has described in the environs of Jerusalem, do the arid ridges, waterless ravines, and stone-covered hills in the real scene, which have been painted by the matchless pens of Chateaubriand and Lamartine.

The love of Tancred, the tenderness of Erminia, the heroism of Rinaldo, are indelibly engraven in the recollection of every sensitive reader of Tasso; but no man ever saw such characters, or any thing resembling them, in real life. They are aËrial beings, like Miranda in the "Tempest," or Rosalind in the forest; but they recall no traits of actual existence. The enchantment of Armida, the death of Clorinda, belong to a different class. They rise to the highest flights of the epic muse; for female fascination is the same in all ages; and Tasso drew from the life in the first, while his exquisite taste and elevated soul raised him to the highest moral sublimity and pathos which human nature can reach in the second. Considered, however, as the poetic history of the Crusades, as the Iliad of modern times, the Jerusalem Delivered will not bear any comparison with its immortal predecessor. It conveys little idea of the real events; it embodies no traits of nature; it has enshrined no traditions of the past. The distant era of the Crusades, separated by three centuries from the time when he wrote, had come down to Tasso, blended with the refinements of civilization, the courtesy of chivalry, the graces of antiquity, the conceits of the troubadours. In one respect only he has faithfully portrayed the feelings of the time when his poem was laid. In the uniform elevation of mind in Godfrey of Bouillon; his constant forgetfulness of self; his sublime devotion to the objects of his mission, is to be found a true picture of the spirit of the Crusades, as it appeared in their most dignified champions. And it is fortunate for mankind that the noble portrait has been arrayed in such colours as must render it as immortal as the human race.

If poetry has failed in portraying the real spirit of the Crusades, has history been more successful? Never was a nobler theme presented to human ambition. We may see what may be made of it, by the inimitable fragment of its annals which Gibbon has left in his narrative of the storming of Constantinople by the Franks and Venetians. Only think what a subject is presented to the soul of genius, guiding the hand, and sustaining the effort of industry! The rise of the Mahometan power in the East, and the subjugation of Palestine by the arms of the Saracens; the profound indignation excited in Europe by the narratives of the sufferings of the Christians who had made pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre; the sudden and almost miraculous impulse communicated to multitudes by the preaching of Peter the Hermit; the universal frenzy which seized all classes, and the general desertion of fields and cities, in the anxiety to share in the holy enterprise of rescuing it from the infidels; the unparalleled sufferings and total destruction of the huge multitude of men, women, and children who formed the vanguard of Europe, and perished in the first Crusade, make up, as it were the first act of the eventful story. Next comes the firm array of warriors which was led by Godfrey of Bouillon in the second Crusade. Their march through Hungary and Turkey to Constantinople; the description of the Queen of the East, with its formidable ramparts, noble harbours, and crafty government; the battles of Nice and Dorislaus, and marvellous defeats of the Persians by the arms of the Christians; the long duration, and almost fabulous termination of the siege of Antioch, by the miracle of the holy lance; the advance to Jerusalem; the defeat of the Egyptians before its walls, and final storming of the holy city by the resistless prowess of the crusaders, terminate the second act of the mighty drama.

The third commences with the establishment, in a durable manner, of the Latins in Palestine, and the extension of its limits,—by the subjection of Ptolemais, Edessa, and a number of strongholds towards the east. The constitution of the monarchy by the "Assizes of Jerusalem," the most regular and perfect model of feudal sovereignty that ever was formed; with the singular orders of the knights-templars, hospitallers, and of St John of Jerusalem, which in a manner organized the strength of Europe for its defence, blend the detail of manners, institutions, and military establishments, with the otherwise too frequent narratives of battles and sieges. Next come the vast and almost convulsive efforts of the Orientals to expel the Christians from their shores; the long wars and slow degrees by which the monarchy of Palestine was abridged, and at last its strength broken by the victorious sword of Saladin, and the wood of the true cross lost, in the battle of Tiberias. But this terrible event, which at once restored Jerusalem to the power of the Saracens, again roused the declining spirit of European enterprise. A hero rose up for the defence of the Holy Land. Richard Coeur de Lion and Philip Augustus appeared at the head of the chivalry of England and France. The siege of Ptolemais exceeded in heroic deeds that of Troy; the battle of Ascalon broke the strength and humbled the pride of Saladin; and, but for the jealousy and defection of France, Richard would have again rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the infidels, and perhaps permanently established a Christian monarchy on the shores of Palestine.

The fourth Crusade, under Dandolo, when the arms of the Faithful were turned aside from the holy enterprise by the spoils of Constantinople, and the blind Doge leapt from his galleys on the towers of the imperial city, forms the splendid subject of the fourth act. The marvellous spectacle was there exhibited of a band of adventurers, not mustering above twenty thousand combatants, carrying by storm the mighty Queen of the East, subverting the Byzantine empire, and establishing themselves in a durable manner, in feudal sovereignty, over the whole of Greece and European Turkey. The wonderful powers of Gibbon, the luminous pages of Sismondi, have thrown a flood of light on this extraordinary event, and almost brought its principal events before our eyes. The passage of the Dardanelles by the Christian armament; the fears of the warriors at embarking in the mighty enterprise of attacking the imperial city; the imposing aspect of its palaces, domes, and battlements; the sturdy resistance of the Latin squares to the desultory charges of the Byzantine troops; in fine, the storm of the city itself, and overthrow of the empire of the CÆsars, stand forth in the most brilliant light in the immortal pages of these two writers. But great and romantic as this event was, it was an episode in the history of the Crusades, it was a diversion of its forces, a deviation from its spirit. It is an ordinary, though highly interesting and eventful siege; very different from the consecration of the forces of Europe to the rescuing of the Holy Sepulchre.

Very different was the result of the last Crusade, under Saint Louis, which shortly after terminated in the capture of Ptolemais, and the final expulsion of the Christians from the shores of Palestine. Melancholy, however, as are the features of that eventful story, it excites a deeper emotion than the triumphant storm of Constantinople by the champions of the Cross. St Louis was unfortunate, but he was so in a noble cause; he preserved the purity of his character, the dignity of his mission, equally amidst the arrows of the Egyptians on the banks of the Nile, as in the death-bestrodden shores of the Lybian Desert. There is nothing more sublime in history than the death of this truly saint-like prince, amidst his weeping followers. England reappeared with lustre in the last glare of the flames of the crusades, before they sunk for ever; the blood of the Plantagenets proved worthy of itself. Prince Edward again erected the banner of victory before the walls of Acre, and his heroic consort, who sucked the poison of the assassin from his wounds, has passed, like Belisarius or Coeur de Lion, into the immortal shrine of romance. Awful was the catastrophe in which the tragedy terminated; and the storm of Acre, and slaughter of thirty thousand of the Faithful, while it finally expelled the Christians from the Holy Land, awakened the European powers, when too late, to a sense of the ruinous effect of those divisions which had permitted the vanguard of Christendom, the bulwark of the faith, to languish and perish, after an heroic resistance, on the shores of Asia.

Nor was it long before the disastrous consequences of these divisions appeared, and it was made manifest, even to the most inconsiderate, what dangers had been averted from the shores of Europe, by the contest which had so long fixed the struggle on those of Asia. The dreadful arms of the Mahometans, no longer restrained by the lances of the Crusaders, appeared in menacing, and apparently irresistible strength, on the shores of the Mediterranean. Empire after empire sank beneath their strokes. Constantinople, and with it the empire of the East, yielded to the arms of Mahomet II.; Rhodes, with its spacious ramparts and well-defended bastions, to those of Solyman the Magnificent; Malta, the key to the Mediterranean, was only saved by the almost superhuman valour of its devoted knights; Hungary was overrun; Vienna besieged; and the death of Solyman alone prevented him from realizing his threat, of stabling his steed at the high altar of St Peter's. The glorious victory of Lepanto, the raising of the siege of Vienna by John Sobieski, only preserved, at distant intervals, Christendom from subjugation, and possibly the faith of the gospel from extinction on the earth. A consideration of these dangers may illustrate of what incalculable service the Crusades were to the cause of true religion and civilization, by fixing the contest for two centuries in Asia, when it was most to be dreaded in Europe; and permitting the strength of Christendom to grow, during that long period, till, when it was seriously assailed in its own home, it was able to defend itself. It may show us what we owe to the valour of those devoted champions of the Cross, who struggled with the might of Islamism when "it was strongest, and ruled it when it was wildest;" and teach us to look with thankfulness on the dispensations of that over-ruling Providence, which causes even the most vehement and apparently extravagant passions of the human mind to minister to the final good of humanity.

For a long period after their termination, the Crusades were regarded by the world, and treated by historians, as the mere ebullition of frenzied fanaticism—as a useless and deplorable effusion of human blood. It may be conceived with what satisfaction these views were received by Voltaire, and the whole sceptical writers of France, and how completely, in consequence, they deluded more than one generation. Robertson was the first who pointed out some of the important consequences which the Crusades had on the structure of society, and progress of improvement in modern Europe. Guizot and Sismondi have followed in the same track; and the truths they have unfolded are so evident, that they have received the unanimous concurrence of all thinking persons. Certain it is, that so vast a migration of men, so prodigious a heave of the human race, could not have taken place without producing the most important effects. Few as were the warriors who returned from the Holy Wars, in comparison of those who set out, they brought back with them many of the most important acquisitions of time and value, and arts of the East. The terrace cultivation of Tuscany, the invaluable irrigation of Lombardy, date from the Crusades: it was from the warriors or pilgrims that returned from the Holy Land, that the incomparable silk and velvet manufactures, and delicate jewellery of Venice and Genoa, took their rise. Nor were the consequences less material on those who remained behind, and did not share in the immediate fruits of Oriental enterprise. Immense was the impulse communicated to Europe by the prodigious migration. It dispelled prejudice, by bringing distant improvement before the eyes; awakened activity, by exhibiting to the senses the effects of foreign enterprise; it drew forth and expended long accumulated capital; the fitting out so vast a host of warriors stimulated labour, as the wars of the French Revolution did those of the European states six centuries afterwards. The feudal aristocracy never recovered the shock given to their power by the destruction of many families, and the overwhelming debts fastened on others, by these costly and protracted contests. Great part of the prosperity, freedom, and happiness which have since prevailed in the principal European monarchies, is to be ascribed to the Crusades. So great an intermingling of the different faiths and races of mankind, never takes place without producing lasting and beneficial consequences.

These views have been amply illustrated by the philosophic historians of modern times. But there is another effect of far more importance than them all put together, which has not yet attracted the attention it deserves, because the opposite set of evils are only beginning now to rise into general and formidable activity. This is the fixing the mind, and still more the heart of Europe, for so long a period, on generous and disinterested objects. Whoever has attentively considered the constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed it in others,—whether as shown in the private society with which he has mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,—will at once admit that SELFISHNESS is its greatest bane. It is at once the source of individual degradation and of public ruin. He knew the human heart well who prescribed as the first of social duties, "to love our neighbour as ourself." Of what incalculable importance was it, then, to have the mind of Europe, during so many generations, withdrawn from selfish considerations, emancipated from the sway of individual desire, and devoted to objects of generous or spiritual ambition! The passion of the Crusades may have been wild, extravagant, irrational, but it was noble, disinterested, and heroic. It was founded on the sacrifice of self to duty; not on the sacrifice, so common in later times, of duty to self. In the individuals engaged in the Holy Wars, doubtless, there was the usual proportion of human selfishness and passion. Certainly they had not all the self-control of St Anthony, or the self-denial of St Jerome. But this is the case with all great movements. The principle which moved the general mind was grand and generous. It first severed war from the passion of lust or revenge, and the thirst for plunder on which it had hitherto been founded, and based it on the generous and disinterested object of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre. Courage was sanctified, because it was exerted in a noble cause: even bloodshed became excusable, for it was done to stop the shedding of blood. The noble and heroic feelings which have taken such hold of the mind of modern Europe, and distinguish it from any other age or quarter of the globe, have mainly arisen from the profound emotions awakened by the mingling of the passions of chivalry with the aspirations of devotion during the Crusades. The sacrifice of several millions of men, however dreadful an evil, was a transient and slight calamity, when set against the incalculable effect of communicating such feelings to their descendants, and stamping them for ever upon the race of Japhet, destined to people and subdue the world.

Look at the mottoes on the seals of our older nobility, which date from the era of the Crusades, or the ages succeeding it, when their heroic spirit was not yet extinct, and you will see the clearest demonstration of what was the spirit of these memorable contests. They are all founded on the sacrifice of self to duty, of interest to devotion, of life to love. There is little to be seen there about industry amassing wealth, or prudence averting calamity; but much about honour despising danger, and life sacrificed to duty. In an utilitarian or commercial age, such principles may appear extravagant or romantic; but it is from such extravagant romance that all the greatness of modern Europe has taken its rise. We cannot emancipate ourselves from their influence: a fountain of generous thoughts in every elevated bosom is perpetually gushing forth, from the ideas which have come down to us from the Holy Wars. They live in our romances, in our tragedies, in our poetry, in our language, in our hearts. Of what use are such feelings, say the partisans of utility? "Of what use," answers Madame De StaËl, "is the Apollo Belvidere, or the poetry of Milton; the paintings of Raphael, or the strains of Handel? Of what use is the rose or the eglantine; the colours of autumn, or the setting of the sun?" And yet what object ever moved the heart as they have done, and ever will do? Of what use is all that is sublime or beautiful in nature, if not to the soul itself? The interest taken in such objects attests the dignity of that being which is immortal and invisible, and which is ever more strongly moved by whatever speaks to its immortal and invisible nature, than by all the cares of present existence.

When such is the magnificence and interest of the subject of the Crusades, it is surprising that no historian has yet appeared in Great Britain who has done justice to the theme. Yet unquestionably none has even approached it. Mill's history is the only one in our language which treats of the subject otherwise than as a branch of general history; and though his work is trustworthy and authentic, it is destitute of the chief qualities requisite for the successful prosecution of so great an undertaking. It is—a rare fault in history—a great deal too short. It is not in two thin octavo volumes that the annals of the conflict of Europe and Asia for two centuries is to be given. It is little more than an abridgement, for the use of young persons, of what the real history should be. It may be true, but it is dull; and dulness is an unpardonable fault in any historian, especially one who had such a subject whereon to exert his powers. The inimitable episode of Gibbon on the storming of Constantinople by the Crusaders, is written in a very different style: the truths of history, and the colours of poetry, are there blended in the happiest proportions together. There is a fragment affording, so far as description goes, a perfect model of what the history of the Crusades should be; what in the hands of genius it will one day become. But it is a model only so far as description goes. Gibbon had greater powers as an historian than any modern writer who ever approached the subject; but he had not the elevated soul requisite for the highest branches of his art, and which was most of all called for in the annalist of the Crusades. He was destitute of enlightened principle; he was without true philosophy; he had the eye of painting, and the powers, but not the soul of poetry in his mind. He had not moral courage sufficient to withstand the irreligious fanaticism of his age. He was benevolent; but his aspirations never reached the highest interests of humanity,—humane, but "his humanity ever slumbered where women were ravished, or Christians persecuted."[6]

Passion and reason in equal proportions, it has been well observed, form energy. With equal truth, and for a similar reason, it may be said, that intellect and imagination in equal proportions form history. It is the want of the last quality which is in general fatal to the persons who adventure on that great but difficult branch of composition. It in every age sends ninety-nine hundreds of historical works down the gulf of time. Industry and accuracy are so evidently and indisputably requisite in the outset of historical composition, that men forget that genius and taste are required for its completion. They see that the edifice must be reared of blocks cut out of the quarry; and they fix their attention on the quarriers who loosen them from the rock, without considering that the soul of Phidias or Michael Angelo is required to arrange them in the due proportion in the immortal structure. What makes great and durable works of history so rare is, that they alone, perhaps, of any other production, require for their formation a combination of the most opposite qualities of the human mind, qualities which only are found united in a very few individuals in any age. Industry and genius, passion and perseverance, enthusiasm and caution, vehemence and prudence, ardour and self-control, the fire of poetry, the coldness of prose, the eye of painting, the patience of calculation, dramatic power, philosophic thought, are all called for in the annalist of human events. Mr Fox had a clear perception of what history should be, when he placed it next to poetry in the fine arts, and before oratory. Eloquence is but a fragment of what is enfolded in its mighty arms. Military genius ministers only to its more brilliant scenes. Mere ardour, or poetic imagination, will prove wholly insufficient; they will be deterred at the very threshold of the undertaking by the toil with which it is attended, and turn aside into the more inviting paths of poetry and romance. The labour of writing the "Life of Napoleon" killed Sir Walter Scott. Industry and intellectual power, if unaided by more attractive qualities, will equally fail of success; they will produce a respectable work, valuable as a book of reference, which will slumber in forgotten obscurity in our libraries. The combination of the two is requisite to lasting fame, to general and durable success. What is necessary in an historian, as in the Élite of an army, is not the desultory fire of light troops, nor the ordinary steadiness of common soldiers, but the regulated ardour, the burning but yet restrained enthusiasm, which, trained by discipline, taught by experience, keeps itself under control till the proper moment for action arrives, and then sweeps, at the voice of its leader, with "the ocean's mighty swing" on the foe.

Michaud is, in many respects, an historian peculiarly qualified for the great undertaking which he has accomplished, of giving a full and accurate, yet graphic history of the Crusades. He belongs to the elevated class in thought; he is far removed, indeed, from the utilitarian school of modern days. Deeply imbued with the romantic and chivalrous ideas of the olden time, a devout Catholic as well as a sincere Christian, he brought to the annals of the Holy Wars a profound admiration for their heroism, a deep respect for their disinterestedness, a graphic eye for their delineation, a sincere sympathy with their devotion. With the fervour of a warrior, he has narrated the long and eventful story of their victories and defeats; with the devotion of a pilgrim, visited the scenes of their glories and their sufferings. Not content with giving to the world six large octavos for the narrative of their glory, he has published six other volumes, containing his travels to all the scenes on the shores of the Mediterranean which have been rendered memorable by their exploits. It is hard to say which is most interesting. They mutually reflect and throw light on each other: for in the History we see at every step the graphic eye of the traveller; in the Travels we meet in every page with the knowledge and associations of the historian.

Michaud, as might be expected from his turn of mind and favourite studies, belongs to the romantic or picturesque school of French historians; that school of which, with himself, Barante, Michelet, and the two Thierrys are the great ornaments. He is far from being destitute of philosophical penetration, and many of his articles in that astonishing repertory of learning and ability, the Biographie Universelle, demonstrate that he is fully abreast of all the ideas and information of his age. But in his history of the Crusades, he thought, and thought rightly, that the great object was to give a faithful picture of the events and ideas of the time, without any attempt to paraphrase them into the language or thoughts of subsequent ages. The world had had enough of the flippant persiflage with which Voltaire had treated the most heroic efforts and tragic disasters of the human race. Philosophic historians had got into discredit from the rash conclusions and unfounded pretensions of the greater part of their number; though the philosophy of history can never cease to be one of the noblest subjects of human thought. To guard against the error into which they had fallen, the romantic historians recurred with anxious industry to the original and contemporary annals of their events, and discarded every thing from their narrative which was not found to be supported by such unquestionable authority. In thought, they endeavoured to reflect, as in a mirror, the ideas of the age of which they treated, rather than see it through their own: in narrative or description, they rather availed themselves of the materials, how scanty soever, collected by eyewitnesses, in preference to eking out the picture by imaginary additions, and the richer colouring of subsequent ages. This is the great characteristic of the graphic or picturesque school of French history; and there can be no question that in regard to the first requisite of history, trustworthiness, and the subordinate but also highly important object, of rendering the narrative interesting, it is a very great improvement, alike upon the tedious narrative of former learning, or the provoking pretensions of more recent philosophy. Justice can never be done to the actions or thoughts of former times, unless the former are narrated from the accounts of eyewitnesses, and with the fervour which they alone can feel—the latter in the very words, as much as possible, employed by the speakers on the occasions. Nor will imagination ever produce any thing so interesting as the features which actually presented themselves at the moment to the observer. Every painter knows the superior value of sketches, however slight, made on the spot, to the most laboured subsequent reminiscences.

But while this is perfectly true on the one hand, it is equally clear on the other, that this recurrence to ancient and contemporary authority must be for the facts, events, and outline of the story only; and that the filling up must be done by the hand of the artist who is engaged in producing the complete work. If this is not done, history ceases to be one of the fine arts. It degenerates into a mere collection of chronicles, records, and ballads, without any connecting link to unite, or any regulating mind to arrange them. History then loses the place assigned it by Mr Fox, next to poetry and before oratory; it becomes nothing more than a magazine of antiquarian lore. Such a magazine may be interesting to antiquaries; it may be valuable to the learned in ecclesiastical disputes, or the curious in genealogy or family records; but these interests are of a very partial and transient description. It will never generally fascinate the human race. Nothing ever has, or ever can do so, but such annals as, independent of local or family interest, or antiquarian curiosity, are permanently attractive by the grandeur and interest of the events they recount, and the elegance or pathos of the language in which they are delivered. Such are the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the annals of Sallust and Tacitus, the narratives of Homer, Livy, and Gibbon. If instead of aiming at producing one uniform work of this description, flowing from the same pen, couched in the same style, reflecting the same mind, the historian presents his readers with a collection of quotations from chronicles, state papers, or jejune annalists, he has entirely lost sight of the principles of his art. He has not made a picture, but merely put together a collection of original sketches; he has not built a temple, but only piled together the unfinished blocks of which it was to be composed.

This is the great fault into which Barante, Sismondi, and Michelet have fallen. In their anxiety to be faithful, they have sometimes become tedious; in their desire to recount nothing that was not true, they have narrated much that was neither material nor interesting. Barante, in particular, has utterly ruined his otherwise highly interesting history of the Dukes of Burgundy by this error. We have bulls of the Popes, marriage-contracts, feudal charters, treaties of alliance, and other similar instruments, quoted ad longum in the text of the history, till no one but an enthusiastic antiquary or half-cracked genealogist can go on with the work. The same mistake is painfully conspicuous in Sismondi's Histoire des FranÇais. Fifteen out of his valuable thirty volumes are taken up with quotations from public records or instruments. It is impossible to conceive a greater mistake, in a composition which is intended not merely for learned men or antiquaries, but for the great body of ordinary readers. The authors of these works are so immersed in their own ideas and researches, they are so enamoured of their favourite antiquities, that they forget that the world in general is far from sharing their enthusiasm, and that many things, which to them are of the highest possible interest and importance, seem to the great bulk of readers immaterial or tedious. The two Thierrys have, in a great measure, avoided this fatal error; for, though their narratives are as much based on original and contemporary authorities as any histories can be, the quotations are usually given in an abbreviated form in the notes, and the text is, in general, an unbroken narrative, in their own perspicuous and graphic language. Thence, in a great measure, the popularity and interest of their works. Michaud indulges more in lengthened quotations in his text from the old chronicles, or their mere paraphrases into his own language; their frequency is the great defect of his valuable history. But the variety and interest of the subjects render this mosaic species of composition more excusable, and less repugnant to good taste, in the account of the Crusades, than it would be, perhaps, in the annals of any other human transactions.

As a specimen of our author's powers and style of description, we subjoin a translation of the animated narrative he gives from the old historians of the famous battle of Dorislaus, which first subjected the coasts of Asia Minor to the arms of the Crusaders.

This extract gives an idea at once of the formidable nature of the contest which awaited the Christians in their attempts to recover the Holy Land, of the peculiar character of the attack and defence on both sides, and of the talent for graphic and lucid description which M. Michaud possesses. It is curious how identical the attack of the West and defence of the East are the same in all ages. The description of the manner in which the Crusading warriors were here drawn into a pursuit of, and then enveloped by the Asiatic light horse, is precisely the same as that in which the legions of Crassus were destroyed; and might pass for a narrative of the way in which Napoleon's European cavalry were cut to pieces by the Arab horse at the combat at Salahout, near the Red Sea; or Lord Lake's horse worsted in the first part of the battle of Laswaree in India, before the infantry came up, and, by storming the batteries, restored the combat. On the other hand, the final overthrow of the Saracens at Dorislaus was evidently owing to their imprudence in standing firm, and awaiting in that position the attack of the Christians. They did so, trusting to the strength of the rocky ridge on which they were posted; but that advantage, great as it was, by no means rendered them a match in close fight for the weighty arms and the determined resolution of the Europeans, any more than the discharges of their powerful batteries availed the Mahrattas in the latter part of the battles of Assaye and Laswaree, or, more recently, the Sikhs in the desperate conflict at Ferozepore in the Punjaub. The discovery of fire-arms, and all the subsequent improvements in tactics and strategy, though they have altered the weapons with which war is carried on, yet have not materially changed the mode in which success is won, or disaster averted, between ancient and modern times.

Our author's account of the storming of Jerusalem, the final object and crowning glory of the Crusades, is animated and interesting in the highest degree.

The number of the slain greatly exceeded that of the conquerors. In the mosque of Omar alone ten thousand were put to the sword.

Inexplicable as such contradictory conduct appears to those who "sit at home at ease," and are involved in none of the terrible calamities which draw forth the latent marvels of the human heart, history in every age affords too many examples of its occurrence to permit us to doubt the truth of the narrative. It is well known that during the worst period of the French Revolution, in the massacres in the prisons on Sept. 2, 1792, some of the mob who had literally wearied their arms in hewing down the prisoners let loose from the jails, took a momentary fit of compunction, were seized with pity for some of the victims, and after saving them from their murderers, accompanied them home, and witnessed with tears of joy the meeting between them and their relations. We are not warranted, after such facts have been recorded on authentic evidence in all ages, in asserting that this transient humanity is assumed or hypocritical. The conclusion rather is, that the human mind is so strangely compounded of good and bad principles, and contains so many veins of thought apparently irreconcilable with each other, that scarce any thing can be set down as absolutely impossible, but every alleged fact is to be judged of mainly by the testimony by which it is supported, and its coincidence with what has elsewhere been observed of that strange compound of contradictions, the human heart.

In the events which have been mentioned, the Crusaders were victorious; and the Crescent, in the outset of the contest, waned before the Cross. But it was only for a time that it did so. The situation of Palestine in Asia, constituting it the advanced post as it were of Christendom across the sea, in the regions of Islamism, perpetually exposed it to the attack of the Eastern powers. They were at home, and fought on their own ground, and with their own weapons, in the long contest which followed the first conquest of Palestine; whereas the forces of the Christians required to be transported, at a frightful expense of life, over a hazardous journey of fifteen hundred miles in length, or conveyed by sea at a very heavy cost from Marseilles, Genoa, or Venice. Irresistible in the first onset, the armament of the Christians gradually dwindled away as the first fervour of the Holy Wars subsided, and the interminable nature of the conflict in which they were engaged with the Oriental powers became apparent. It was the same thing as Spain maintaining a transatlantic contest with her South American, or England with her North American colonies. Indeed, the surprising thing, when we consider the exposed situation of the kingdom of Palestine, the smallness of its resources, and the scanty and precarious support it received, after the first burst of the Crusades was over, from the Western powers, is not that it was at last destroyed, but that it existed so long as it did. The prolongation of its life was mainly owing to the extraordinary qualities of one man.

It is hard to say whether the heroism of Richard Coeur de Lion has been most celebrated in Europe or Asia. Like Solomon, Alexander the Great, Haroun El Raschid, Charlemagne, and Napoleon, his fame has taken root as deeply in the East as in the West, among his enemies as his friends; among the followers of Mahomet as the disciples of the Cross. If he is the hero of European romance,—if he is the theme of the Troubadour's song, he is not less celebrated among the descendants of the Saracens; his exploits are not less eagerly chanted in the tents of the children of Ishmael. To this day, when an Arab's steed starts at a bush in the desert, his master asks him if he expects to see Richard issue from the covert. He possessed that surprising personal strength and daring valour which are so highly prized by warriors in all rude periods, and united with those qualities that singleness of heart and bonhommie of disposition, which, not less powerfully in the great, win upon the hearts of men. His chief qualities—those which have given him his deathless fame—undoubtedly were his heroic courage, extraordinary personal strength, and magnanimity of mind. But if his campaigns with Saladin are attentively considered, it will appear that he was also a great general; and that his marvellous successes were as much owing to his conduct as a commander as his prowess as a knight. This is more particularly conspicuous, in the manner in which he conducted his then sorely diminished army on Acre to within sight of Jerusalem, surrounded as it was the whole way by prodigious clouds of Asiatic horse, headed by the redoubtable Saladin. Beyond all doubt he would, but for the defection of Philip Augustus and France, have wrested Palestine from the Infidels, and again planted the Cross on Mount Calvary, despite the whole forces of the East, led by their ablest and most powerful sultans. His grief at not being able to accomplish this glorious object, is well described by Michaud—

"After a month's abode at Bethnopolis, seven leagues from Jerusalem, the Crusaders renewed their complaints, and exclaimed with sadness, 'We shall never go to Jerusalem!' Richard, with heart torn by contending feelings, while he disregarded the clamours of the pilgrims, shared their grief, and was indignant at his own fortune. One day, that his ardour in pursuing the Saracens had led him to the heights of Emmaus, from which he beheld the towers of Jerusalem, he burst into tears at the sight, and, covering his face with his buckler, declared he was unworthy to contemplate the Holy City which his arms could not deliver."—Hist. des Croisades, ii. 399.