pation of burghs and the disrupture of serfdom. But he painted, in
colors vivid as if caught from the skies of the East, the great spread
of Mahometanism and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe, and drew
up the Godfreys and Tancreds and Richards as a league of the Age and
Necessity against the terrible progress of the sword and the Koran. "You
call them madmen," cried my father; "but the frenzy of nations is the
statemanship of fate! How know you that--but for the terror inspired by
the hosts who marched to Jerusalem--how know you that the Crescent had
not waved over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the Moor?
If Christianity had been less a passion, and the passion had less
stirred up all Europe, how know you that the creed of the Arab (which
was then, too, a passion) might not have planted its mosques in the
forum of Rome and on the site of Notre Dame? For in the war between
creeds,--when the creeds are embraced by vast races,--think you that the
reason of sages can cope with the passion of millions? Enthusiasm must
oppose enthusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Christ, but he
saved the life of Christendom."

My father paused. Squills was quite passive; he struggled no more,--he
was drowned.

"So," resumed Mr. Caxton, more quietly, "so, if later wars yet perplex
us as to the good that the All-wise One draws from their evils, our
posterity may read their uses as clearly as we now read the finger of
Providence resting on the barrows of Marathon, or guiding Peter the
Hermit to the battlefields of Palestine. Nor, while we admit the evil to
the passing generation, can we deny that many of the virtues that make
the ornament and vitality of peace sprang up first in the convulsion of
war!" Here Squills began to evince faint signs of resuscitation, when
my father let fly at him one of those numberless waterworks which his
prodigious memory kept in constant supply. "Hence," said he, "hence,
not unjustly has it been remarked by a philosopher, shrewd at least
in worldly experience [Squills again closed his eyes, and became
exanimate]: 'It is strange to imagine that war, which of all things
appears the most savage, should be the passion of the most heroic
spirits. But 't is in war that the knot of fellowship is closest drawn;
't is in war that mutual succor is most given, mutual danger run, and
common affection most exerted and employed: for heroism and philanthropy
are almost one and the same!'" (1)