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however much our mortal reason may be led into error as to the proper way of acknowledging him.

excitement. Disorderly bands of hooded maniacs, under the different appellations of White Hoods and Flagellants, swept over the land, like scourges of God, tracing their But when the ardour and brilliancy of mad career with fagots and scaffolds. The western valour breathed a new life in the dark satellites of the inquisition awoke the contemplative and ascetic virtues of eastern terrified cities with the red glare of their Christianity, when the red cross shone on the ominous pyres, while, under the shade of breast-plate of the European warriors, and mystery, bound by the celebration of awful their lance was couched in a war that was rites, secret sects and tribunals weighed the called holy, and the church of Christ asdestiny of powerful lords, and the devoted sumed the attitude, as it had the name, of victim fell under their daggers, within the the militant church, it gave rise, or develstronghold of his inaccessible walls, among oped, or perhaps only perfected, that spirit the joys of his hospitable feasts. In the which the soothing influence of a religion of midst of such scenes of horror it must be love strove to substitute to the violated emconfessed that the multiplication of convents pire of the law, and to the loosened disciand nunneries, the rights of asylum granted pline of social order-the spirit of chivalry. to their sanctuaries, were hardly to be ac- Chivalry, an institution naturally arising counted as an evil; and the institution of from feudalism, and an antidote against its processions and jubilees, the worship of re-evils-that mixture of enthusiasm and exlics and images, inasmuch as they afforded travagance that made the cause of the weak an easy gratification for that mixture of fair and sacred in the eyes of the brave, that curiosity and bigotry which men mistook made of loyalty and truth, of devotion and for religion, may be considered as a harm gallantry, of humanity and liberality, an inless diversion, as an instrument of gradual separable appendage of genuine valour, that civilisation. tended to purify love from its earthly alloy, and raised an altar to woman, chivalry was the right arm of Christianity in its sacred mission of peace and justice. It was among the best miracles of a religion which, unable for a long period to disarm the ferocity of those warlike ages, pointed out to it a nobler end, and turned it by inscrutable ways into one of its most efficacious instruments. Chivalry was the alliance of force with right.

of the undertaking, as if it had not, like all human transactions, been predisposed and directed by that sovereign hand that is often pleased to derive from our very errors and follies the most salutary results.

Sad that many of such institutions should be seen flourishing at an epoch so far remote from the middle ages! But let it not be forgotten that southern races are more under the control of imagination than reason; that more may be hoped by impressing their senses than by improving their judgment; that religion, there, is love, and, like love, it wants expansion, correspondence of warm feeling, movement, rapture, enthusiasm; that the periodical celebration of an- It has long been fashionable in more sonual festivities tends to refresh a zeal which, ber ages to declaim against the pious folly in the daily routine of daily occupations, is that drove our forefathers by millions to find but too apt to relent; that the recurrence of a premature death in the unhealthy plains of universal penances and jubilees, by bring- Palestine. The long tale of consternation ing nations into contact, contributes to re- and woe that has been transmitted to poskindle in the human heart the torch of cha-terity from the fatal success of the crusades rity, which the collision of civil interests is seems to have entitled us to doubt the rightever extinguishing; that in the universal at-eousness of their cause, as well as the policy tendance of a whole community to a single form of worship, the individual reads, as it were, the confirmation of his own belief, and feels as if heaven could not refuse to smile on prayers sent up with such unanimity of hearts. Certainly, when we see numberless The Crusades brought a temporary peace crowds fall prostrate as if struck by light- to Europe. For the first time it united all ning, at the first appearing of a priest hold- Christendom into a single people. It brought ing up the holy host; when the strains of into communication all brotherly races, that unearthly music, issuing from an invisible climate, or ignorance, or rivalry kept asunchoir, wind their lingering way through the der. It was a family meeting, in which echoes of the immortal dome of Michael ancient feuds were abjured or adjourned, Angelo; when, in the mute sweetness of and all animosities turned against a coman Italian sunset, the solemn peals of the mon enemy. Pope Urban opened a wide Ave Maria come suddenly on the wings of field for ambition. The restless spirit of adthe western breeze; even when in the still-venture, the thirst for combat, for worldly ness of midnight, in eastern climes, the voice renown, for earthly dominion-avarice, emof the Muezzin, deep, sonorous, oscillating, ulation, curiosity-all the best and worst rings through the air, "waking the sons of passions innate in the human bosom, conIshmael to prayer;" in that thrilling sensa-spired to the advancement of an expedition tion which pervades our whole being, there upon which the clergy invoked all the blessarises a conviction that God is with all who ings of Heaven. Europe was gradually rid lift up their hearts to him, that the smoke of our incense and the melody of our hymns can find their way to the foot of his throne, 44

VOL. VIII.

of some millions of her turbulent sons, who carried their aspiring hopes into a field where their wildest dreams seemed to fall

short of reality. That blind necessity of bleeding which the human families obey nearly every quarter of a century, was, in this occurrence at least, effected with the least consciousness of fratricide. The crusades were a folly indeed, but the Christians only recovered from it to plunge into the equally fatal_but less pious follies of the wars of the Roses, of the Armagnes and Burgundians, of the Huguenots and the League, of Cromwell and Napoleon. They ceased from their design of rescuing from profane hands the cradle of our Saviour and his tomb, but only to hunt down in his name the helpless tribes of America, or to forge chains for the innocent hordes of Africa. However severe the losses that Europe had to endure in her long struggles in Asia, we could not easily point out another epoch to which she may look back with less regret and remorse. The crusades were the forerunners of the liberties of Europe. Rights and privileges were sold, charters granted at auction to raise money for those venturous pilgrimages, slaves were manumitted, duties of vassalage, old debts, and tributes, legally abolished, or wilfully forgotten, or settled by death. The magna charta of England and the parliaments of France date from that epoch of general convulsion.

purposes were blended with the primitive aim of those holy expeditions, while French and German barons founded their ephemeral principalities of Edessa, Jerusalem, and Antioch, those republicans laid those bases of more solid settlements in their colonies and factories, that established in their hands the monopoly of commerce, and the sceptre of the seas. The crusades led the way to India and America. They roused an air of enterprise and curiosity that was never to rest until there should be space to run, and elements to subdue. It revealed the existence of boundless regions and inexhaustible treasures. It brought into contact the two opposite ends of the globe. It made man acquainted with the full extent of its appointed abode. The luxuries of the East were spread before the enraptured adventurers of Europe; the soil itself of the West teemed with the development of eastern seeds, and unknown harvests smiled on the Lombard and Neapolitan plains.

The human mind advanced with gigantic strides. The secrets of ancient Grecian lore followed the crusaders in their retreat, the light of Arabian science dawned on the night of the middle ages, and the dreams of Eastern poetry dazzled the obtuse fancies of the North. The softness and languor of Asiatic luxury spread its soothing influence on the fierce spirits of the warriors of Europe. Their armour was loosened and dropped from their breast as if by a magic spell, and their nerve was broken as if under a shower of roses. The refinement of manners educated a general taste for intellectual enjoyments, and mental power gradually assumed its ascendency over bodily strength.

But the best advantages were to be reaped by Italy. Italian independence, already so far advanced, received its last sanction by the diversion of Palestine. The dispersed nobility abandoned the ill-disputed ground before prevailing democracy, and rode to the East to repair their losses, or to hide the shame of their discomfiture. The Cæsars of Germany were forced to take the cross, and Italy was rid of their presence. The hor- Such were the direct and immediate conrors of civil war and the disorders of anar-sequences of the crusades on the progress chy were more than once suspended or of European civilisation; but the indefinite averted by the truce of the cross. The impression they left on the minds of posteriItalians played a brilliant part in the wars ty had more lasting and more magical reof Palestine. The flower of the Milanese sults. For the human mind, when abating youth, under the guidance of their warlike by degrees from its primitive energy, and archbishop, and Tancred of Apulia at the sinking into more tame and homely pur head of his Normans, followed Godfrey of suits, is apt to return with restless regret to Bouillon to the conquest of Zion. Amalfi the romance of past ages; and the good old gave origin to the hospital and military or- times of the crusades, generally considered der of St. John of Jerusalem. Barbarossa as the golden age of chivalry, haunted the and his grandson numbered many thousand imagination of all successive generations, as if Lombard freemen in their ranks, bound to to upbraid them with a sense of the deteriortheir standards by Christian alliance. Pisa, ation of their race. The spirit of chivalry Venice, and Genoa, furnished the best part did not die off with the striking of the last of the naval armaments; the warriors from Christian flag in Palestine, nor is it even in all countries of Europe rendezvoused in their our days hopelessly lying by the side of the ports. A hoary warrior with unbroken spi- tombs of our ancestors, together with their rits, the Doge Dandolo of Venice, was seen helmets and corslets of steel. It was the borne in triumph on the shields of his war- same spirit that swelled with faith and enriors, over the battered walls of Constanti-thusiasm the sails of those humble caravels nople, to share with a few French adventur. ers the ruins of an ancient empire. The Pisan and Genoese sailors were among the last to give way during the final siege of Acre, lavishing their blood from street to street and from house to house, with raging heroism, when the angel of Asia prevailed, and the Christian star faded in the East.

But in later times, when more worldly

before which new worlds started into life from the bosom of the deep ;-the same that, independent of party spirit, and espousing all causes with the same faith and devotion, shone in later times among the warriors of Henry IV., or the cavaliers of Charles I. It was the same spirit that breathed its inspiration into the bosom of Gustavus Vasa, the same that sanctified the rights of Maria

Theresa in the eyes of the Hungarian nobil- Roman policy and ancient learning have ity. The martyrs of the Reformation and been withdrawn from utter ruin, even by the the Jesuits of the earliest missions were new religion, without the material element warmed by the same flame; to the same of northern strength; nor could the brute spirit we owe the fairest names shining force of the North have been softened even through the horrors of the French Revolu- by Christianity, unless enlightened by contion-Bailly, La Roche-Jacquelin, Madame trast with Roman refinement. Thus, in the Roland, and Charlotte Corday. It is the body politic that resulted from the chaos of same spirit that we have seen agonising on the middle ages, Rome gave the intelligence, the field of Warsaw, and at the foot of the Germany furnished the arm, and the Chrisscaffolds of Turin and Modena. The spirit tian religion formed the heart; and chivalry of chivalry is not dead. If its office was to the result of these three components, the fight until the reign of peace and justice representative of these three moral agents, should come-if its mission was to combat was, under different disguises and appellaall violence, and redress all wrongs, Hea- tions, the soul and mover of modern soven knows that mission is not yet accom-cieties.

of woman!

plished; and woe to us if the sword of chiv- But we have outlived the work of the midalry were too soon definitively laid aside- dle ages. The edifice of our forefathers, woe to the warriors of Poland and the mar-that composite of all orders of Roman and tyrs of Italy-woe to all that is generous and Gothic architecture, lies under our feet nearpure, that is enthusiastic and liberal-to the ly a heap of ruins, and we exult in the hope flame of religion and the charity of patriot- of its final demolition. The civil and sacred ism, to the charms of poetry, and the love institutions of Europe were undergoing the slow and melancholy process of a lingering autumn; but the last events of the French revolution were the north wind that was, at one blast, to hurry the work of desolation, and let in the horrors of winter. May we never have occasion to repent for our haste! May we not find it more difficult to rebuild than to destroy! May honour and loyalty not have been buried under the towers of the last feudal castle, and all faith and charity not sink under the ashes of the last convent! All orders and rights, all opinions and feelings, are laid to a common level in Italy. May that country find in her patriotism a nobler scope for the exploits of chivalry, in her Catholicism a basis for a more sound and enlightened Christianity!

Thus the feudal and monarchic institutions, which the Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish conquerors had brought upon Italy, were early at war against the democratic and aristocratic orders of ancient Rome, which the popular element in the Ita. lian republics endeavoured to revive. Christianity, which was providentially sent to conciliate all hostile principles, owing to the abuse of human perversity, became a new source of ambition and discord, of intolerance and oppression. From such elements, however, even from the jarring and clashing of such opposite elements, the new social order was to proceed in Italy as well as in all the rest of Europe; and things were so providentially disposed that neither could

TO THE ABSENT COLONNA.

(IMITATED FROM PETRARCH.)

RENOWN'D Colonna ! pillar of thy name!

Prop of our hopes! thy country's firmest stay!
May Jove keep back his thunders from thy way,
Chain up his winds, and bid the storm be tame!
Here, though no tower or pictur'd vista claim

The eye's deep homage, and her gaze repay,
Yet on yon cloudy steep the beechen spray
Lends its wild screen to shield my wearied frame.
Whilst the dark nightingale in yonder dell,

Pours to the list'ning shade her notes that move
My soul to thoughts of tenderness and love.

But these have lost their charm-their soothing spell;
They may not hear thy footsteps, and alone

I tread these once lov'd haunts, for thou art gone.

Queen's, Oxford.

W. T.

THE MISUNDERSTANDING.

BY MRS. EDWARD THOMAS.

to fulfil Charles's wish of going to college. Mrs. Granville and her daughters soon became reconciled to the outward change in their circumstances, their minds, as heretofore, furnishing all their actual enjoyment. Mr. Faulkner generously resolved, from the first, that the change of fortune should not make any difference in the intimacy, but, despite his good resolution, it did. He struggled to behave just the same, but it was attended with a painful degree of restraint, which made visiting them irksome; insensibly, too, his language about them changed; he was frequently heard to speak of those

THE Faulkners and the Granvilles were the two most considerable families in one of the largest market towns in the county of Sussex. Mr. Faulkner derived his property from a good landed estate, left him by his father, free from all embarrassment. He was a widower with an only child, a daughter. Mr. Granville's wealth, which was considerable, had been made by an industrious and strictly honourable man, a merchant, his mother's brother, who made him his heir. He had four children, one son and three" poor creatures the Granvilles," till at last daughters, and a most amiable, accomplished wife.

his daily visits became, indeed, like "angels', few and far between." Ellen went on with them the same as ever, and was a great comfort to them all; but as her father's wealth increased, and she began to be sought after also, from the extreme beauty of her person and amiable manners, the neighbourhood grew jealous of her being so entirely monopolized by the Granvilles, and hinted to Mr. Faulkner that if he wished her to make a match suitable to her expectations, he ought really to insist on her visiting more generally. It was a great grief to Ellen to see less of such dear friends, but Mrs. Granville herself enforced the necessity of entire obedience to her father.

The two families were inseparable; and as Mrs. Granville superintended the education of her children with the aid of masters, she was delighted to let the pretty little motherless Ellen Faulkner have the same opportunity of improvement as her own children, so that, to casual observers, they all appeared as one family, and the happiest and most united that could possibly be imagined; Ellen literally living with them, which was very natural, it being so much more cheerful than her own home, with no other companion than her father, who, although most indulgent, was still more intent on her future greatness than her present About this time Charles came home from happiness, improving his estate in every pos- Cambridge very ill, with every symptom of sible way, and boasting that she would one a rapid decline. It was imputed to grief and day be the richest heiress in the neighbour-over-exertion in study. Whatever it was hood. Ellen's sweet, natural, and rather he kept most profoundly to himself, and humble disposition, was not in the slightest degree affected by the magnificence of her prospects; on the contrary, they seemed even to have a tendency to make her more kind-hearted and considerate towards all those who were not so fortunate; and her only pleasure was expending all her pocket-ration among them, and death came in his money among the indigent and necessitous. Thus she became a perfect idol with every person who knew her.

seemed quite indifferent about his recovery. As soon as Ellen heard the sad news, she determined to share the fatigue of nursing him, in common with his own family, who were overwhelmed at this addition to their sorrows. It was the first prospect of a sepa

bitterest, most trying form. Her father did not object to her showing every attention in her power under this affliction. Indeed, he Things went on in a state of uninterrupted had some painful misgivings lately about and calm happiness several years, till the gratitude and Christianity of his conduct Charles Granville was old enough to go to towards them; and the sentence, "do unto college, having chosen the church for a pro- others as ye would they should do unto you," fession, and the girls emerging simultane- actually seemed to be engraven on his very ously into womanhood, when a cloud passed brain, to haunt him every moment, either over the sunshine of their prosperity, in the sleeping or waking; he felt himself getting fatal and unexpected discovery that Mr. an old man, and knew there was another Granville had been speculating for a long account to be rendered, besides the accumulatime, and was all but ruined. It was a tion of pounds, shillings, and pence;—in fact, dreadful blow to the family; but as they that he might soon be summoned where the had never been insolent or arrogant in their just man would have greater weight than behaviour, the sympathy was universal for the rich one; and where the only money their sudden distress. Mrs. Granville set which would bear any interest there, was about instantly retrenching all expenses, in that which had been expended on the poor which she was cheerfully and ably assisted and needy. "For he who giveth to the poor by all her family, it having been the strong-lendeth to the Lord, and He will repay him est point in her system of education to im- thereof."

press on their minds the transitory nature "Go, Ellen, go! say all that is kind from of riches, and the necessity of self-exertion me to them, poor things! and mind you send and resignation under reverse of fortune. for everything that may be wanted for the Mr. Granville immediately joined a bro-comfort and accommodation of the invalid; ther, in a good way of business in London, and tell him I will come and see him as the proceeds of his share enabling him still soon as he is well enough to bear a visitor.

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"Would to God, my child, I could feel and act as you do; but Mr. Granville's reverse of fortune blighted one of the dearest hopes I had. I used to picture the possibility of you and Charles one day being united, till it became the only subject on which I could dwell with delight. Poor Charles! I always loved him, and even now, if it were to please the Almighty to restore him, and he could get into the church, I do not know that I should even now object to the match —that is, if you both wished it; for I begin to think that money is not so essential to happiness as I once did; but, unfortunately, we never find out anything likely to be really conducive to our earthly enjoyment until it is almost too late to benefit by the discovery, which, alas! is but too truly the case just now; or how opportunely does the living offer itself for a purchaser, and who so able to buy it as myself, and who so truly deserving of it as Charles Granville? but it is too late-he is dying-and you are both indifferent to each other."

Charles had had a very bad night, was in a high state of fever, and his family absorbed_in_the_most agonizing grief, when Ellen arrived. Doctor Thornton, who had been in attendance all night, was taking a cup of coffee in the little back parlour previous to giving the opinion so fearfully anticipated by his sorrowing family, and yet, which he felt it imperative to pronounce.

most forlorn. Oh, Doctor Thornton-dear, kind Doctor Thornton-Charles Granville was all the world to me."

"How do you mean?-you surely do not love him?"

"Since he is dying, alas! I am not ashamed to confess, that since I first knew what it was to love anything in this world, I have loved only him. Oh! I pray and weep for his recovery, till Heaven is weary of my sorrow."

"You never told him of your affection?" "He never asked me, and let me entreat that you never mention what only escaped me in the inadvertency of excessive grief. I should not like Charles, dying as he is, to have any reason to think ill or meanly of me. Oh! I could not endure it—indeed, I could not-it would kill me quite."

"Oh, my dear child," said the doctor, affectionately taking her hand, "if this had but been known sooner, what misery might have been spared to all parties! My dear, sweet Miss Faulkner, poor Charles is actually dying of what he considers a hopeless attachment. He told me so only last night in the strictest confidence, enjoining me to reveal it to you after he was no more, as the idea even of your pity and regret was consolatory to his poor heart."

"Oh, Doctor Thornton, save him—save him if possible! Surely it cannot be too late-he is so young, he must recover. Oh, why did he not tell me he loved! He might have known from every action of mine to him and his family, how truly, how deeply I loved and venerated them. Would I had guessed his secret! But how could I, alas! so cold, so reserved in his manner to me, so different to what he was when we were all happy children together! how have I deplored the change! I thought I had almost become an object of aversion to him."

"Shame sealed his tongue-the dread of The moment the physician is called upon being thought mercenary. How could he to give a candid but unfavourable opinion indeed aspire to the hand of the wealthy is a moment of extreme mental suffering to Miss Faulkner ?-the richest heiress in him, however he may professionally be en- the neighbourhood-the lovely, the courted abled to disguise it. The earnest, anxious the poor, the dependent Charles Graneyes fixed on his face, the tremulous grasp of the hand, the voice faltering between hope and despair, all tend to unman his resolution, and he feels that he is considered by every member of the family as if he sentenced the sufferer to death, when he might have pronounced a reprieve. Such was the position of the kind-hearted Doctor Thornton when Ellen hurriedly entered the room, where he was seated in thoughtful meditation.

ville. Who would have given him credit for the purity, the disinterestedness of that love, which was the first and will be the last wish of his heart, which has 'grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength, which has wasted his youth, and conducted him to an untimely grave? Had your father been equally unfortunate in his affairs, or had you never been born to more wealth than the lavish hand of na"They have sent me," and her voice ture bestowed upon you, then, indeed, he faltered with strong emotion," to learn your would proudly have offered, in exchange decision, because they said I possessed so for the loss of fortune, a gift that money much fortitude. Oh! Doctor Thornton, cannot purchase-the affection of a warm, you see their mistake; it is only before honourable, and sincere heart, and toiled him I try to command myself, but it nearly with unabated delight for the support and breaks my heart. Oh! it is too much!" she comfort of his idolized wife. These are exclaimed, bursting into a passion of tears; his sentiments, these are the feelings of a "I feel it will kill me. Would to God it man, an ornament to the world, an exammay! If he dies, they will all have some-ple of everything that is noble and exalted, thing to love still; but I-oh! I shall be and yet one whom (were it to please the

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