the jealousy and defection of France, Richard
would have again rescued the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the
infidels, and perhaps permanently established a Christian monarchy on
the shores of Palestine.

The fourth Crusade, under Dandolo, when the arms of the Faithful were
turned aside from the holy enterprise by the spoils of Constantinople,
and the blind Doge leapt from his galleys on the towers of the imperial
city, forms the splendid subject of the fourth act. The marvellous
spectacle was there exhibited of a band of adventurers, not mustering
above twenty thousand combatants, carrying by storm the mighty Queen of
the East, subverting the Byzantine empire, and establishing themselves
in a durable manner, in feudal sovereignty, over the whole of Greece and
European Turkey. The wonderful powers of Gibbon, the luminous pages of
Sismondi, have thrown a flood of light on this extraordinary event, and
almost brought its principal events before our eyes. The passage of the
Dardanelles by the Christian armament; the fears of the warriors at
embarking in the mighty enterprise of attacking the imperial city; the
imposing aspect of its palaces, domes, and battlements; the sturdy
resistance of the Latin squares to the desultory charges of the
Byzantine troops; in fine, the storm of the city itself, and overthrow
of the empire of the Caesars, stand forth in the most brilliant light in
the immortal pages of these two writers. But great and romantic as this
event was, it was an episode in the history of the Crusades, it was a
diversion of its forces, a deviation from its spirit. It is an ordinary,
though highly interesting and eventful siege; very different from the
consecration of the forces of Europe to the rescuing of the Holy
Sepulchre.

Very different was the result of the last Crusade, under Saint Louis,
which shortly after terminated in the capture of Ptolemais, and the
final expulsion of the Christians from the shores of Palestine.
Melancholy, however, as are the features of that eventful story, it
excites a deeper emotion than the triumphant storm of Constantinople by
the champions of the Cross. St Louis was unfortunate, but he was so in a
noble cause; he preserved the purity of his character, the dignity of
his mission, equally amidst the arrows of the Egyptians on the banks of
the Nile, as in the death-bestrodden shores of the Lybian Desert. There
is nothing more sublime in history than the death of this truly
sai