leave the spot when the hour of prayer arrived, and the caliph declared his intention of retiring to perform his religious duties. The patriarch invited him to pray where he stood, in the church itself. This Omar refused to do, and was next led to the church of Constantine, where a sejjadeh, or prayer mat, was spread for him. Declining this accommodation also, the caliph went outside the church, and prayed alone upon the door-steps. When asked the reason for his objection to pray within the church, he told the patriarch that he had expressly avoided doing so, lest his countrymen should afterwards make his act a precedent and an excuse for confiscating the property. So anxious was he not to give the least occasion for the exercise of injustice, that he called for pen and paper, and then and there wrote a document, which he delivered to the patriarch, forbidding Moslems to pray even upon the steps of the church, except it were one at a time, and strictly prohibiting them from calling the people to prayer at the spot, or in any way using it as one of their own mosques. This honourable observance of the stipulations contained in the treaty, and careful provision against future aggression on the part of his followers, cannot but excite our admiration for the man. In spite of the great accession to our knowledge of the literature of this period which has been made during the last century, we doubt if the popular notions respecting the Saracen conquerors of Jerusalem have been much modified, and many people still regard them as a fierce and inhuman horde of barbarous savages, while the Crusaders are judged only by the saintly figures that lie cross-legged upon some old cathedral brasses, and are looked upon as the beau-ideals of chivalry and gentle Christian virtue. But we shall have occasion to recur to this subject further on. Leaving the church of Constantine they next visited that called Sion, which the patriarch again pointed out