think him innocent or unscrupulous in his incidental methods;
but there is next to no doubt whatever that he did regard
himself not merely as conquering but as re-conquering a realm.
He was not like a man attacking total strangers on a hitherto
undiscovered island. He was not opening up a new country,
or giving his name to a new continent, and he could boast none
of those ideals of imperial innovation which inspire the more
enlightened pioneers, who exterminate tribes or extinguish
republics for the sake of a gold-mine or an oil-field. Some day,
if our modern educational system is further expanded and enforced,
the whole of the past of Palestine may be entirely forgotten;
and a traveller in happier days may have all the fresher sentiments
of one stepping on a new and nameless soil. Disregarding any dim
and lingering legends among the natives, he may then have the honour
of calling Sinai by the name of Mount Higgins, or marking on
a new map the site of Bethlehem with the name of Brownsville.
But King Richard, adventurous as he was, could not experience the full
freshness of this sort of adventure. He was not riding into Asia thus
romantically and at random; indeed he was not riding into Asia at all.
He was riding into Europa Irredenta.

But that is to anticipate what happened later and must be
considered later. I am primarily speaking of the Empire as a pagan
and political matter; and it is easy to see what was the meaning of
the Crusade on the merely pagan and political side. In one sentence,
it meant that Rome had to recover what Byzantium could not keep.
But something further had happened as affecting Rome than anything
that could be understood by a man standing as I have imagined
myself standing, in the official area of Byzantium. When I have
said that the Byzantian civilisation seemed still to be reigning,
I meant a curious impression that, in these Eastern provinces,
though the Empire had been more defeated it has been less disturbed.
There is a greater clarity in that ancient air; and fewer clouds of real
revolution and novelty have come between them and their ancient sun.
This may seem an enigma and a paradox; seeing that here a foreign
religion has successfully fought and ruled. But indeed the enigma
is also the explanation. In the East the continuity of culture
has only been interrupted by negative things that Islam has done.
In the West it has been interrupted by positive things that
Christendom itse