s the moderns visit Italy or
Switzerland now, because it was the fashion, and because they might please
their vanity by retailing, on their return, the adventures they had met
with. But the really pious formed the great majority. Every year their
numbers increased, until at last they became so numerous as to be called
the "armies of the Lord." Full of enthusiasm, they set the dangers and
difficulties of the way at defiance, and lingered with holy rapture on
every scene described by the Evangelists. To them it was bliss indeed to
drink the clear waters of the Jordan, or be baptised in the same stream
where John had baptised the Saviour. They wandered with awe and pleasure
in the purlieus of the Temple, on the solemn Mount of Olives, or the awful
Calvary, where a God had bled for sinful men. To these pilgrims every
object was precious. Relics were eagerly sought after; flagons of water
from Jordan, or panniers of mould from the hill of the Crucifixion, were
brought home, and sold at extravagant prices to churches and monasteries.
More apocryphal relics, such as the wood of the true cross, the tears of
the Virgin Mary, the hems of her garments, the toe-nails and hair of the
Apostles--even the tents that Paul had helped to manufacture--were
exhibited for sale by the knavish in Palestine, and brought back to Europe
"with wondrous cost and care." A grove of a hundred oaks would not have
furnished all the wood sold in little morsels as remnants of the true
cross; and the tears of Mary, if collected together, would have filled a
cistern.

For upwards of two hundred years the pilgrims met with no impediment in
Palestine. The enlightened Haroun Al Reschid, and his more immediate
successors, encouraged the stream which brought so much wealth into Syria,
and treated the wayfarers with the utmost courtesy. The race of Fatemite
caliphs,--who, although in other respects as tolerant, were more
distressed for money, or more unscrupulous in obtaining it, than their
predecessors of the house of Abbas,--imposed a tax of a bezant for each
pilgrim that entered Jerusalem. This was a serious hardship upon the
poorer sort, who had begged their weary way across Europe, and arrived at
the bourne of all their hopes without a coin. A great outcry was
immediately raised, but still the tax was rigorously levied. The pilgrims
unable to pay were compelled to remain at the gate of the holy city until
some rich devotee arriving with his train, paid the ta