een on the wane in other countries. They were sunk at that time in a
deeper slough of barbarism than the livelier nations around them, and
took, in consequence, a longer period to free themselves from their
prejudices. In fact, the second Crusade drew its chief supplies of men
from that quarter, where alone the expedition can be said to have
retained any portion of popularity.

Such was the state of the mind of Europe when Pope Eugenius, moved by
the reiterated entreaties of the Christians of Syria, commissioned St.
Bernard to preach a new crusade. St. Bernard was a man eminently
qualified for the mission. He was endowed with an eloquence of the
highest order, could move an auditory to tears, or laughter, or fury,
as it pleased him, and had led a life of such rigid and self-denying
virtue, that not even calumny could lift her finger and point it at
him. He had renounced high prospects in the church, and contented
himself with the simple abbacy of Clairvaux, in order that he might
have the leisure he desired, to raise his powerful voice against abuses
wherever he found them. Vice met in him an austere and uncompromising
reprover; no man was too high for his reproach, and none too low for
his sympathy. He was just as well suited for his age as Peter the
Hermit had been for the age preceding. He appealed more to the reason,
his predecessor to the passions; Peter the Hermit collected a mob,
while St. Bernard collected an army. Both were endowed with equal zeal
and perseverance, springing, in the one, from impulse, and in the other
from conviction, and a desire to increase the influence of the church,
that great body of which he was a pillar and an ornament.

One of the first converts he made was in himself a host. Louis VII. was
both superstitious and tyrannical, and, in a fit of remorse for the
infamous slaughter he had authorised at the sacking of Vitry, he made a
vow to undertake the journey to the Holy Land. [The sacking of Vitry
reflects indelible disgrace upon Louis VII. His predecessors had been
long engaged in resistance to the outrageous powers assumed by the
Popes, and Louis continued the same policy. The ecclesiastical chapter
of Bourges, having elected an Archbishop without his consent, he
proclaimed the election to be invalid, and took severe and prompt
measures against the refractory clergy. Thibault, Count de Champagne,
took up arms in defence of the Papal authority, and intrenched himself
in the town of Vit