were obliged to sue for peace. The templars entered into a treaty with the emir of Karac, while the hospitallers made an alliance with the sultan of Egypt. In the mean time, the English nobility, inflamed with warlike zeal, had taken the cross. They landed in Syria, in the following year, under the command of Richard, earl of Cornwall, and were surprised to find that the conquests of the former crusaders were once more reduced to a few fortresses. The earl marched to Jaffa, in order to concentrate his forces, but the sultan of Egypt, who was now at war with his brother of Damascus, sought terms of peace, which he willingly granted, upon receiving Jerusalem, Beritus, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Mount Tabor, and a large portion of the Holy Land. Palestine again belonged to the Christians. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt, its churches reconsecrated, and the usual rites of religion administered in the Holy City for two years. At the end of that time, however, a more formidable enemy than even the Saracens appeared on the fields of Palestine, which led to the ninth crusade. LAMBS AT PLAY. If there be a scene in nature that sets forth, in a more striking manner than another, that jubilee of joy which reigns in the animated world, when the winter is passed, and spring and sunshine walk abroad, it is the scene of lambs at play; simple, pure, and joyous, it acts as a cordial to the heart of the spectator. This scene I have just been gazing on. In a retired green field, half a dozen frisky lambs were racing to and fro round a high heap of earth, which had been piled up at no great distance from the hedge. The poor silly creatures were content to be happy, without thinking what simpletons they were making of themselves, and how they were being laughed at for their pains. They seemed to have nothing else to do in the world but to enjoy themselves. Not understanding their game, their running, frisking, leaping, stopping, and starting, appeared to me to be without an object. Now they clambered up the heap of earth, cutting a caper with their uncouth, thick, hind legs at the top of it, and then stopped and looked round as though they had done something uncommonly clever; and now they leaped down from the summit, and began to race after one another without the slightest regard to propriety and decorum. As I stood laughing to myself at their simple faces, their strange antics and fitful sports, a comfortable, staid, matronlylooking old sheep, who had for some time been a witness of their gambols, walked up with rather a stately air, saying to them, as plainly as the looks of a sheep, and a low baa, could speak, "You silly young creatures, why cannot you be quiet and conduct yourselves like well-behaved lambs? You do not see me forget myself, and race and romp about as you do, just as though nobody belonged to you! And you young blockheads," turning her head to the end of the heap of earth where two of the wildest among them for the moment were standing, "I should have thought that you would have known better." The only answer given to the old sheep was, that four of the lambs leaped up in the air, then began playfully to push one another with their heads, and at last set off all of a scamper down the field, as much as to say, "We really are so happy in our hearts, legs, heads, and tails, that we cannot help it." As for the two young blockheads, who ought to have known better, they plunged down at once, neck or nothing, from the heap of earth, and running, one on each side, under the belly of the old sheep, began to supply themselves with her milk, knocking her with their heads, and wriggling their tails, the very picture of delight. As I looked at them, it really would have been a difficult matter to decide which was the most happy, the staid, matronly old sheep, her light-hearted young ones, or the observer of their enjoyments. These scenes of joy in God's lower Both young men and maidens, Let them praise the name of the Lord, PSA. cxlviii. 12, 13. LABOURS OF AUTUMN. Hop Grounds. AUTUMN, according to one of our poets, is the Season of mirth and mellow fruitfulness, To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees, cells. The season now referred to is one of great activity among those whose subsistence depends on rural toil. Waked by the gleamings of the morn, Around them falls in rows the severed corn, But when high noon invites to short repast The time of hop gathering is also a season of great interest and activity; it is known by the plants giving a strong scent, and the seeds becoming firm and of a brown colour. Men, women, and boys are employed at the same time. greatest part of the hops, cultivated in England, is picked by people who come from Wales for this purpose every year. The Various, indeed, are the fruits of the earth; the garden, the orchard, the field, yield richly their produce; would that He whose sun sheds far and wide its influence, and whose rains fall so richly and freely, received the tribute that is due to His name! Z THE CRUSADES.-No. VI. THE NINTH CRUSADE. Mourn! Salem, mourn! low lies thine humbled Thy glittering fanes are levell'd with the ground! Ar this period, 1244, the Moguls had left the pasturages of Tartary to overrun and spoil the natives of the west. They had invaded Muscovy and Poland, and had even penetrated into the dominions of the emperor Frederick. The Khorasmians were driven before them, from the east of the Caspian, as the Goths from the Huns in former days, and they flung themselves upon Syria. These were the foes that now appeared on the fields of Palestine; and so formidable were they, that the Saracens and Christians forewent their strife, and leagued against them; the cross and the crescent fought, for the first time, in alliance! They were unfortunate. The Khorasmians defeated them on the plains of Gaza, and the destruction of almost all the knights templars and hospitallers, with the massacre of all the Christians of Jerusalem, followed the victory, At the season of Christmas, it was the custom of great lords to distribute new dresses to their followers. Louis prepared a great number of such dresses, and, inviting his courtiers to attend mass with him before daybreak, they were distributed to them. When the day broke, each person was surprised to discover that the badge of the cross was attached to his mantle. Shame prevented them from tearing the sacred symbol off, and they were thus tricked into their warlike pilgrimage. It was in the year 1248 that the armies of Louis set forward on their enterprise. They wintered at Cyprus, and the next year, instead of disembarking in Palestine, Louis formed the project of attacking Egypt. This was a fatal step; for, after defeating the Saracens at Damietta and Manseurah, the Moslems, and a pestilence, cut off the flower of their hosts; and, soon after, those which remained, together with their chief, were made prisoners. Every Christian under the rank of knighthood had to choose between apostasy and death. He Notwithstanding, the sultan did not abuse his victory. He accepted a sum Christendom stood aghast at the tid- equivalent to 400,000 livres for the deings. Innocent Iv., however, suggested liverance of the army, and the town of another crusade, and summoned his Damietta as a ransom for the monarch. "faithful children " to take arms. He After this, Louis sailed for Palestine, wrote to Henry III., king of England, where he sojourned four years, endeainciting him to war with the Khoras-vouring to effect by policy that which he mians; but Henry would not listen to had failed to accomplish by arms. the summons, and but few of the English fortified Acre, Sidon, Jaffa, and other joined in the enterprize. towns held by the Latins, negotiated with the Arabs, and endeavoured to reconcile the differences betwixt the chiefs of Syria. At length, in 1254, having heard of the death of Queen Blanche, his mother, he returned home, bearing with him some pretended relics, which he purchased from the emperor of Constantinople.* He entered France in the deepest mood of melancholy. He turned a deaf ear to consolation, and It was not so, however, with France. At this time, Louis Ix. fell seriously ill at Pontoise, and was reduced to the last extremity. Some of his attendants, indeed, deemed him already dead; but he recovered, and his first words were a vow to take the cross, and lead a crusade against the infidels; a vow he would not forego even for the pontiff himself, who, bent on his own selfish schemes and the aggrandisement of the church, now sought to draw him into his party against the emperor of Germany. Louis induced a great number of his turbulent barons to accompany him, and, among the rest, Peter of Brittany, the count of Toulouse, and Thibaud count of Champagne. Many of these, however, did not join his ranks willingly. The devotional and chivalresque zeal which had furnished so many thousands to the earlier crusades had vanished, and Louis had recourse to artifice to enlist his followers. *These relics were: 1. The Saviour's crown of thorns; 2. Part of the true cross; 3. A cross called the cross of triumph; 4. Some of the Saviour's blood; 5. The chain with which he was bound; 6. The clothes he wore in infancy; 7. Some blood that infidel; 8. The holy table cloth; 9. A piece of the holy sepulchre; 10. Part of the head of the lance by which the Redeemer was pierced; 11. Some of the Virgin's milk; 12. The reed given to Christ as a mock sceptre; 13. Part of the purple robe; 14. Part of the sponge dipped in vinegar; 15. His flowed from a miraculous image when struck by an grave clothes; 16. The towel with which he wiped his disciples' feet; 17. The top of the head of St. John the Baptist; 18. The rod of Moses; 19. The skulls of St. Baise, St. Clement, and St. Simon. Such was the superstition of the age of the Crusades !! would not listen to music or gaiety. He still retained on his habit the symbol of a crusader, thus marking that he deemed his vow unaccomplished. He reproached himself with his want of success as with a crime, and expressed his hope that one day he might be judged worthy of achieving the redemption of Palestine from the hands of the infidel. Louis renewed his enterprise before he died. In 1261, the Latin empire of Constantinople was no more, the Greeks having retaken that city. The templars and hospitallers in Syria, also, had taken up arms against each other, and a battle fought between them was so fearful, that scarcely a single templar escaped alive. Profiting by these circumstances, the sanguinary Bibars, the Memlouk sovereign of Egypt, made rapid conquests in Palestine. Cesarea, Jaffa, and Antioch fell into his hands in succession. In the latter of these towns, forty thousand Christians were put to the sword, and nearly thrice the number were carried into a hopeless captivity. Bibars declared his full purpose of exterminating all those who professed the gospel, throughout the East, and he extended the ascendancy of the koran from the Nile to the mountains of Armenia. These tidings reached Europe, and Louis, after going on a pilgrimage to the principal churches of his kingdom, again took the cross. Accompanied by Edward, prince of England, the earls of Warwick and Pembroke, the lords of Brittany, Flanders, and Champagne, and sixty thousand soldiers, he spread his sails for the Holy Land in the spring of 1270. But adversity waited on his steps. His fleet was driven into Sardinia, and it was there resolved that the troops should land in the neighbourhood of Tunis, to assist the Christians to extend their faith in opposition to the propagators of the Koran. They landed over against the ruins of Carthage, and they besieged and took Tunis; but a plague, the scourge of those shores, soon spread death among his ranks. Louis himself was struck with it, at the end of a month's inaction, and died, leaving his army to prosecute the war, or to return home without honour. The general voice was for returning home, but prince Edward, with a thousand men, passed from Africa into Sicily, resolved to enter Ptolemais. Accordingly, in the early part of next year, he set sail for that city, and so high was his reputation among the Latins of Palestine, that several thousands flocked to his standard. Thus strengthened, he besieged and took Nazareth, and soon after surprised a large body of Turkish soldiers, whom he destroyed. The Moslems concluded that another Cœur de Lion had appeared from England, and had recourse to treachery to stop his progress. A Saracen struck him as he was delivering letters from the governor of Jaffa, with a poisoned dagger, and it was only by means of surgical skill, aided by the resources of a strong mind and vigorous constitution, that he was restored to health.* It was soon discovered that no lasting impression could be made upon the Moslem power in Syria. Accordingly, in 1272, the ruler of Egypt having made offers of peace, wherein he engaged to withdraw his troops from Palestine, Edward accepted them, and returned to England. This was the last crusade; but the hope of final success was not abandoned. Gregory IX. influenced the king of France, Charles of Anjou, and Michael Palæologus, emperor of the East, to raise armies for another crusade, and a council held at Lyons, in 1274, sanctioned the obligations of such a war, and imposed upon the church and other estates such taxes as were deemed sufficient to ensure success; but the death of the pope defeated the project, and it was never resumed. The powers of Christendom could never again be re-united in such a cause. The Christians who had established themselves in Palestine, were abandoned to their fierce Moslem foes, and they melted away before them. In April, 1291, a force of two hundred thousand men issued from Egypt, and encamped on the plains of Acre, and their operations were irresistible. The Holy Land, which Christendom had spent so much blood and treasure to obtain, was for ever lost. Thus the eastern world was still left in the darkness of infidelity, when the western world laid down the sword. But the shades of superstition were about to *The chivalrous fiction of that romantic age has ascribed his recovery to the devotion of his wife Eleanora, upon which Fuller quaintly remarks: poison out of his wounds, without doing any harm "It is storied how Eleanor, his lady, sucked all the to herself. So sovereign a remedy is a woman's tongue, anointed with the virtue of loving affectrue, (with all the miracles in love's legends,) and tion! Pity it is that so pretty a story should not be sure he shall get himself no credit who undertaketh to confute a passage, so sounding to the honour of the sex. Yet can it not stand with what others have written." disperse from Christendom, and the crusades appear to have had no small share in producing this glorious result. The knight and the soldier who returned from them, having experienced the generosity and hospitality of the Moslems, comparing their conduct with that they themselves were compelled to adopt towards the vanquished, exchanged their blind submission to the Romish church, for meditation and independent reflection. They dared to think; and, in one or two centuries after the crusades, Europe was filled with religious sceptics as regards the infallibility of the Romish church, and | the torture was prepared for them accordingly. But tortures were despised, and there were a few bold and holy men, as Huss, Wickliffe, Luther, and others, who dared to be religious reformers. These enlightened the world by their preaching, and to outweigh all harm, the sacred book In dusty sequestration wrapt too long, Assumed the accents of our native tongue; upon which, the darkness of superstition, which for ages had surrounded Christendom, broke, and unfolded to our wondering eyes the true way of salvation. May its scattered clouds never again coalesce, nor again obscure the eye of faith; for he who guides the plough, or wields the crook, With understanding spirit now may look And sift her laws-much wondering that the wrong Which faith has suffered, Heaven would calmly brook.-WORDSWORTH. F. THE TEMPER IN WHICH KNOWLEDGE SHOULD BE SOUGHT. I MUST say a few words, before I conclude, as to the temper in which pursuits of this kind* should be undertaken. Like every thing else that we engage in, we may go about them lawfully or unlawfully. We may be expecting too much from this particular mode of selfimprovement, and so may be remiss in the use of others which are more important and more necessary. If God has given us quicker parts than most, there may be a lurking desire to exhibit them on a wider field, and our wish to learn may be prompted too much by vanity. Or, like our brethren of all times, we may be tempted to make an idol of the thing we love, and so forget the wide Pursuits connected with the Mechanics' Institute. 66 distinction between the learning which informs, and the truth which sanctifies. Well and wisely therefore, like himself, has that prince among philosophers, lord Bacon, summed up, in a few weighty sentences, the limitations or conditions which we should take along with us, if we desire to give our minds to study safely and innocently. "These limitations," he says in his advancement of learning, are three the first, that we do not so place our felicity in knowledge as to forget our mortality; the second, that we make application of our knowledge to give ourselves repose and contentment, and not distaste or repining; the third, that we do not presume by the contemplation of nature to attain to the mysteries of God." We must remember that all the revelations of science, while they give us glimpses of our Maker's "eternal power and Godhead," will teach us nothing of the justice which threatens the guilty, or of the mercy which spares the penitent. We may open our ears to the thrilling notes of eloquence, or hear how philosophers dis coursed in ancient times to the crowd who knew not where else to go to for wisdom, or fill our minds with images of beauty culled from poets of all countries and all times; but we must take care to put in a very different place, and to ponder with a far deeper reverence, the records of our holy faith, all that was written for our learning by men who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Though the course of events, for thousands of years back, should be familiar to us as the news of the week, from the men who built the pyramids, or ruled in Babylon, or fell at Thermopylæ, or reared the mighty fabric of Roman greatness, down to him who wasted Europe from end to end in our own day; when we have learned all, in fact, that history can teach us, have mastered all its facts, and studied all its lessons,-our store will be but so much useless lumber, if it be weighed against the simple record, contained in a few pages, of Him who was born at Bethlehem and died upon the cross. Other books may make us more knowing than our neighbours; but the Book of God must make us truly wise. It contains the truest history, the soundest philosophy, the most inspiring eloquence, the loftiest poetry. But, besides and beyond all this, it is the record of eternal life. It tells us of Him who died for |