became his friend, and of his subsequent meeting with the king, is very interesting. Louis at length obtained his liberty and that of his army, on the payment of 800,000 besants. His high conscientiousness is forcibly shown in this transaction:—

'Before it was all paid, there were some who advised the king to withhold it until the Saracens had delivered up his brother; but he replied, that since he had promised it, he would pay the whole before he quitted the river. As he said this, Sir Philip de Montfort told the king that the Saracens had miscounted one scale weight, which was worth 10,000 livres. The king was greatly enraged at this, and commanded Sir Philip, on the faith he owed him as his liege man, to pay the Saracens then. He added that he would not depart until the uttermost penny was paid.'

Louis retired to Acre, where he continued nearly four years, repairing its fortifications, and strengthening the neighbouring ports, but he was unable to gain any permanent advantage over the Moslem.

'During the king's stay at Jaffa, he was told that the Sultan of Damascus would allow him to visit Jerusalem. The king would most willingly have gone thither, but his great council dissuaded him from it, as it would leave the city in the hands of the enemy. Moreover, they told him of King Richard, who, when one of his officers cried out, Sir, sir, come hither and I will show you Jerusalem,' threw down his arms, saying, with tears, 'Ah, Lord God! I pray thee, let me not see thy holy city of Jerusalem, since I cannot deliver it from the hands of thine enemies.' This example was laid before St. Louis because he was the greatest monarch in Christendom, and if he should perform a pilgrimage to Jerusalem without delivering it from the enemies of God, every other king who might wish to make a similar pilgrimage, would think he had amply performed it, without seeking to do more than the King of France had done.'

This argument was quite sufficient for the conscientious king, who ere long set forth on his return. On the vigil of St. Mark, they set sail, when the king telling Joinville that he was born on St. Mark's day, I replied, that he might well say he had been born again on St. Mark's day, in thus escaping from such a pestilent land, where he had remained so long. Indeed, the worthy seneschal hints, tolerably plainly, that the vocation of the Croise had no great charms for him.

But the time was at hand when these wild expeditions were to cease. The ninth and last crusade was conducted by a prince whose only claim to the honour, was unquestioned bravery. This was our ruthless king,' Edward the First; and his ferocious massacre at Nazareth, was but a foreshadowing of his after-conduct in Wales and Scotland. Louis, though an aged man, however,

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again responded to the call of Palestine, and again grasping the sacred oriflamine with feeble hand, set out. But he, tempted to land on the coast of Africa, breathed his last on its sands; and the old defenders of the Holy Land, the Templars and Hospitallers, had now, unsustained, to endure the shock of Moslem warfare. Driven from every stronghold, save Acre, there they determined to make their last defence. In April, 1291, Sultan Khalil, with 200,000 troops, beleagured that doomed city. Marvellous was the valour displayed by the besieged; and stern, we think, must be the prejudices of the reader, who can trace the story of their energy, and their self-devotion, without sorrow for their fate. After fierce and gallant resistance, for fifty days, the defenders of the last tower agreed to an honourable capitulation; but the gate being opened, their perfidious foemen rushed in; the tower, already undermined, gave way, flames burst forth, and the gallant Templars and their foemen were buried together in the smoking

An indiscriminate massacre followed, unexampled in extent, and after one hundred and ninety-four years' contest, Palestine again became the prey of the infidel.

In the foregoing sketch, illustrated by extracts from contemporary writers alone, our chief aim has been to illustrate 'the crusade spirit,' a spirit which, as we have remarked, some writers have almost denied, and which many have, we think, greatly mistaken. That these great expeditions did not originate in 'deep policy,' as Fuller asserts, is obvious, because we do not find either monarchs or pontiffs unremittingly affording them aid. In some instances, it is true, the preaching of the crusade followed the mandate of the pope, but in more instances it preceded. Men in arms against their liege sovereign, too, have led their vassals to the Holy Land, and monarchs actually under the ban of the pontiff have fought there; indeed, the policy of the Vatican, so far from holding itself pledged to one line of action, repeatedly played fast and loose with the affairs of Palestine. Nor was it desire of plunder that impelled the vast myriads who went forth. From the poor husbandman of the first crusade, who abandoned all that he might go, down to Joinville in the eighth, who mortgaged his patrimony, we have proof that gain was not sought. Indeed to the rapacious spirit of their more worthless followers, the chroniclers repeatedly point as the chief cause of the disasters and defeats of the army of God.' What were the crusades, then, but a mighty popular movement, originating in the peculiar circumstances of Christian Europe, and carried on by appeals to that devotional spirit, which, though debased by superstition, flowed warmly in the breasts of a rude, but impulsive race?

And benefits, great benefits, did the crusades confer on Europe. There was marvellous unselfishness in the very principle of this mighty movement, and with what beneficial effect this told on the as yet unformed character of European society, the gentle spirit of chivalry alone will show. Then there was a subject of intense excitement presented to the popular mind, just when beginning to arouse itself,-a subject that drew it from the contemplation of the narrow round of every-day life, to far off lands, and lofty objects, and thus enlarged and invigorated it. And then-more important than all-the voluntary principle came forth, with a might, which the ancient world never saw. The right of self-government was constantly kept in view by the Croises, and the pope himself saw his mandates oftentimes rejected by the free soldier of the cross, long ere his power was questioned at home. Now all these benefits were the gain of that long and bitter strife on the frontiers of Christendom, which for almost two centuries kept the Moslem power at bay.

At the close of the eleventh century, when Malek Shah contemplated the descent of his myriads upon Europe, how, had they once crossed that narrow strait, could they have been driven back? The Greeks had already fled before them; Sicily and Southern Italy had already been colonized by them; the rising cities of Northern Italy were at war among themselves; the more warlike Gothic kingdoms of Spain, with the enemy in their very midst, must have found their ancient valour unavailing against foemen both within and without. And, the Pyrenees once passed,—they had once before been overpassed by the Moslem-there was France, a collection of small and almost independent states, so was Germany; while the cities of the Netherlands were sternly wresting their freedom from their lords, and England was chafing under the yoke of her Norman sovereigns.

Where was unity to be found? where the one leader, the one war-cry which could alone afford chance of successful resistance? Now this was wonderfully provided for by the crusades. While the Moslem hosts marched under one banner, and with one war-cry, so did the army of Christendom. The distinctions of race and country were postponed, in the holy war,' for the one name of soldier of the cross;' and the native of France or England, of Germany or Italy, went forth, not to uphold his national banner, but that standard which bore the patriarchal cross of Jerusalem, the mother of us all.'

For more than six generations did that unexampled warfare continue, though disaster and defeat tracked its progress, and marked its end. But the victory of Christendom was won, even when the Croises were driven from every inch of ground in the

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Holy Land. If they retreated, still the paynim had been kept from advancing, and, during that long strife, the communities of Western Europe had acquired strength, and power, and consolidation. Make way for liberty!' cried Arnold von Winkelreid, and the spears were buried in his breast; but over their dead leader the troops passed onward to victory. So, the serried hosts of the Croises-the devoted Croises-kept back, at the cost of their lives, that fierce inundation of eastern barbarism, holding out until the danger that menaced Western Europe had passed away, and she was free to pursue her onward career-to fling defiance at St. Peter's chair, even as she had flung defiance at the Moslem host, and to become the centre of learning, of science, of civilization to the whole world.

ART. IV.—(1.) A Treatise on Electricity in Theory and Practice. By AUG. DE LA RIVE, Ex-Professor in the Academy of Geneva, &c., &c. (2.) The Soul in Nature; with Supplementary Contributions. By HANS CHRISTIAN OERSTED. Translated from the German by LEONORA and JOANNA B. HORNER. Hans Christian Oersted. Et Mindeskrift, lost i det Kongelige danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Möde, den 7de November, 1851, af G. FORCHHAMmer. (3.) Magnetical Investigations. By the Rev. WILLIAM SCORESBY, D.D., &c.

(4.) Lectures on Electricity and Therapeutical Relations. F.R.S.

Galvanism, in their Physiological and
By GOLDING BIRD, A.M., M.D.,

(5.) On Animal Electricity: being an Abstract of the Discoveries of Emil du Bois-Reymond. Edited by H. BENCE JONES, M.D., A.M. Cantab., F.R.S.

(6.) Elements of Electro-Biology, or the Voltaic Mechanism of Man ; of Electro-Pathology, especially of the Nervous System, and of Electra-Therapeutics. By ALFRED SMEE, F.R.S.

THE age in which we live deals, in a peculiar manner, with the utilities of science, and is too commonly disposed to reject as worthless those discoveries to which a practical application cannot immediately be given. Man commonly overlooks the steps by which he has advanced to a certain end, in his admiration of the advantages which are derived by the race from the realization of that end. He sees some great power of Nature chained in obedience to human will, and compelled to do the biddings of humanity: he becomes proud of human intelligence,

and in his eager desire to add to the list of useful applications, rushes into hasty generalisations.

In the hurry which characterises the great movements of society, it may be doubted if the sum of human knowledge is largely increased. The diffusion of the knowledge already possessed over a wider surface, and the great moral advantages which have arisen from that diffusion, are results that will not be questioned. The very facilities, however, by which, without any great toil of thought, a large amount of information can be gained, have not been favourable to those concentrated efforts of mind, by which alone the new can be added to the old. Happily, great and quiet minds' have existence amongst us-which, while their brother men rush to and fro in eager uncertainty, pursue their path, and know how to wait.

Amongst the most striking applications of science to the uses of mankind, those of Electricity will peculiarly distinguish, as an epoch, the middle of the nineteenth century. It will be instructive, therefore, to study its history-to mark its slow but steady progress to note how fact was added to fact, each one appearing in the highest degree abstract—and all of them very far removed from any apparent utility, until a culminating point is attained, when the world is surprised at finding a host of useful purposes to which the subtile agency can be applied. By this we shall be taught several lessons of high import. From the discoveries of inductive science, we are enabled to establish guiding laws; and by the study of them, we may deduce the probability of a grand law of human progress, and proclaim that the periods appointed for truths to be born into the world are amongst the established ordinances of Heaven. Again, we shall be taught that man cannot create, but that he is gifted with powers by which he can employ everything which is created; that he may almost mould the organic kingdoms to his will; that he may fashion the inorganic masses to his desire-employ alike the grossest and the most subtile forms of matter, and bring under his control the vast phenomena of physical energy-Phenomena which appear to link the earthly with the spiritual, which we know only by their manifestations of power, by effects of which the causes will probably remain for ever mysteries, on which the speculative thinkers may exert their ingenuity and fashion their hypotheses.

We learn from Theophrastus and from Pliny that a Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, had observed, that, when amber was rubbed it attracted straws. The greatest of naturalists, Aristotle, describes the torpedo, and its power of benumbing fish, which swim over it, when desiring to seize them for its prey. The earliest poets clearly indicate their knowledge of the magnet