mong the critics of the Crusaders.
Many sought God, some gold, some perhaps black magic. But whatever else
they were in search of, they were not in search of the picturesque.
They were not drawn from a drab civilisation by that mere thirst for
colour that draws so many modern artists to the bazaars of the East.
In those days there were colours in the West as well as in the East;
and a glow in the sunset as well as in the sunrise. Many of the men
who rode up that road were dressed to match the most glorious
orange garden and to rival the most magnificent oriental king.
King Richard cannot have been considered dowdy, even by comparison,
when he rode on that high red saddle graven with golden lions,
with his great scarlet hat and his vest of silver crescents.
That squire of the comparatively unobtrusive household
of Joinville, who was clad in scarlet striped with yellow,
must surely have been capable (if I may be allowed the expression)
of knocking them in the most magnificent Asiatic bazaar.
Nor were these external symbols less significant, but rather more
significant than the corresponding symbols of the Eastern civilisation.
It is true that heraldry began beautifully as an art and afterwards
degenerated into a science. But even in being a science it had
to possess a significance; and the Western colours were often
allegorical where the Eastern were only accidental. To a certain
extent this more philosophical ornament was doubtless imitated;
and I have remarked elsewhere on the highly heraldic lions
which even the Saracens carved over the gate of St. Stephen.
But it is the extraordinary and even exasperating fact that it was not
imitated as the most meaningless sort of modern vulgarity is imitated.
King Richard's great red hat embroidered with beasts and birds has not
overshadowed the earth so much as the billycock, which no one has yet
thought of embroidering with any such natural and universal imagery.
The cockney tourist is not only more likely to set out with
the intention of knocking them, but he has actually knocked them;
and Orientals are imitating the tweeds of the tourist more than they
imitated the stripes of the squire. It is a curious and perhaps
melancholy truth that the world is imitating our worst, our weariness
and our dingy decline, when it did not imitate our best and the high
moment of our morning.

Perhaps it is only when civilisation becomes a disease that it
becomes an infection. Possibly it