t may
show us what we owe to the valour of those devoted champions of the
Cross, who struggled with the might of Islamism when "it was strongest,
and ruled it when it was wildest;" and teach us to look with
thankfulness on the dispensations of that over-ruling Providence, which
causes even the most vehement and apparently extravagant passions of the
human mind to minister to the final good of humanity.

For a long period after their termination, the Crusades were regarded by
the world, and treated by historians, as the mere ebullition of frenzied
fanaticism--as a useless and deplorable effusion of human blood. It may
be conceived with what satisfaction these views were received by
Voltaire, and the whole sceptical writers of France, and how completely,
in consequence, they deluded more than one generation. Robertson was the
first who pointed out some of the important consequences which the
Crusades had on the structure of society, and progress of improvement in
modern Europe. Guizot and Sismondi have followed in the same track; and
the truths they have unfolded are so evident, that they have received
the unanimous concurrence of all thinking persons. Certain it is, that
so vast a migration of men, so prodigious a heave of the human race,
could not have taken place without producing the most important effects.
Few as were the warriors who returned from the Holy Wars, in comparison
of those who set out, they brought back with them many of the most
important acquisitions of time and value, and arts of the East. The
terrace cultivation of Tuscany, the invaluable irrigation of Lombardy,
date from the Crusades: it was from the warriors or pilgrims that
returned from the Holy Land, that the incomparable silk and velvet
manufactures, and delicate jewellery of Venice and Genoa, took their
rise. Nor were the consequences less material on those who remained
behind, and did not share in the immediate fruits of Oriental
enterprise. Immense was the impulse communicated to Europe by the
prodigious migration. It dispelled prejudice, by bringing distant
improvement before the eyes; awakened activity, by exhibiting to the
senses the effects of foreign enterprise; it drew forth and expended
long accumulated capital; the fitting out so vast a host of warriors
stimulated labour, as the wars of the French Revolution did those of the
European states six centuries afterwards. The feudal aristocracy never
recovered the shock given to their powe