the prestige of the Christians should have sunk lower, and the dread which the Saracens still felt for the strongarmed knights in steel should have wholly, or in great measure, passed away. Early in the following year Amaury called a council of his barons to deliberate on the precarious state of the kingdom. Every day the number of the enemy increased, every day their own resources diminished. There was, of course, but one way to meet the dangers which menaced them, the only way which the kingdom had ever known, the arrival of aid from Europe. It was resolved to send ambassadors with the most urgent letters to all the powers, and to Constantinople a special ambassador begging for instant aid. Who was to go ? The king, after a short parley with his advisers, declared that he would go himself. The barons cried out, on hearing this announcement, that they could not be deprived of their king, that the realm would fall to pieces without him—to all appearance seriously alarmed at the prospect of being left alone, or else every man hoping himself to be appointed as ambassador. But Amaury terminated the discussion in a manner characteristic of himself. " Let the Lord," he said, " defend His own kingdom. As for me, I am going." It is tolerably clear that the sovereign who could permit himself to have doubts on the subject of a future world, might well have doubts as to whether a kingdom, so harassed as his own, so devoured by greed, selfishness, and ambition, so corrupted by lust and licence, was really the kingdom of the Lord. If it was, of course the Lord would look after His own ; if not, why then Amaury s hands were well washed of the responsibility. He went to Constantinople, where, he was received with every demonstration of friendship, and William of Tyre exhausts himself in describing the favour tdiown to him. One thing is noticeable, that the splendour of the Greek emperor rivalled that of the caliph. On the occasion of the first