able extent of territory, and establishing itself as the dominant Religion, there was yet a circumstance connected with these triumphs which made them peculiarly painful to Christianity,—namely, that among the countries thus lost, there was that Land especially to which Christianity owed its birth, and towards which the romantic piety of the new Christians devoutly turned its regards. To indignation succeeded a burning desire of action; and with a free enthusiasm like what might have animated them in their native forests,—not as Citizens of this State or of that, but only as Christians,—hosts of the Germanic tribes precipitated themselves upon that Land to win it back from Saracen domination. However unsatisfactory may have been the result of these undertakings; whatever evil may have been said of the Crusades by critics who have never been able to forget their own Age, and to transplant themselves into the spirit of other times so as to obtain a complete survey of the whole; they still remain an ever-memorable manifestation of power on the part of a One united Christian World as such, wholly independent of the individuality of the several States into which it was broken up. The knowledge of many important peculiarities of these enemies, as well as observation of the crimes of which they were themselves accused, and accused others in return, was no unimportant fruit of the undertaking.
At a later period Mohammedanism, which had already in the early times of the Christian State penetrated into those countries which seemed to be set apart as the exclusive possession of Christianity, namely into Europe, and had been driven thence in feebleness, now reappeared there on another and more dangerous side, and amid a new nation,—the Turks,—with the undisguised purpose of its gradual conquest and subjugation. Then awoke again, for the last time, at least in discourses and public writings, the idea of Christians
