g morning source that is
attainable. They know not how, in reality, the natural world is rounded
upon itself, so that over every particular spot a continual morn, noon,
evening, and night are indeed breaking, and that only in this same station
should the life of each individual be best carried out, not leaving it,
but accepting there every quiet degree of heaven. At this period of which
I speak it became more and more the fashion of the Church, and of those
who made pictures or images for shrines, to represent the Saviour as a
young child in the arms of Mary his mother. For priests and grown men, the
patron was Madonna; whereas Jesus seemed to have himself become again a
little Child, appealing finally to the hearts of children. When the Holy
City and its land were relapsing once more into the hands of Moslems, many
beheld visions and dreams of the Virgin, who, with a sad and pleading
face, held out her son, or appeared to be vainly attempting to approach
his grave. In France, Italy, and the south of our own German land,
children and young people, as if without conference between each other,
began very generally to imitate that desire which was already passing away
from older persons. They took vows, and banded themselves together to
deliver the Holy Land from bondage; nor were there wanting monks and
priests who encouraged this emotion, proclaiming that God had chosen the
weak things of this earth to confound the strong; and out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings would perfect praise. Sometimes you might have seen
parents, who in their ignorance partook of this enthusiasm, yoking their
oxen to rude carts, and, with their children seated on their household
goods, leaving home to find out the Holy Land; and at every city which
they came in sight of, the children would shout joyfully, asking if that
were Jerusalem. But in one part of Germany at least those vague wishes
were drawn out at last into action by the mysterious visits of one,
attired like a palmer, with staff and scallop-shell, who passed from house
to house, declaring the Divine call. At his voice, the group playing
merrily by the wayside was changed into a throng of serious figures:
fathers and mothers who returned from church or market found that this
strange wayfarer, during their absence, had stood at their hearth. In
their longing to be concerned in some behest more pure and worthy than
those which were enjoined by earthly friends, the young regarded all
c