converted to the faith of the country, may be found in every town and village between Antioch and Ascalon. Jerusalem was fallen, and the kingdom of the Christians was at last at an end. It had lasted eighty-eight years. It had seen the exploits of six valiant, prudent, and chivalrous kings. It was supported during all its existence solely by the strength and ability of its kings ; it fell to pieces at once when its king, a poor leper, lost his authority with his strength. Always corrupt, always self-seeking, the Christians of the East became a by-word and proverb at last for treachery, meanness, and cowardice. It was time that a realm so degraded from it3 high and lofty aims should perish; there was no longer any reason why it should continue to live ; the Holy City might just as well be kept by the Saracens, for the Christians were not worthy. They had succeeded in trampling the name of Christian in the dust ; the Cross which they protected was their excuse for every treachery and baseness which a licentious priest could be bribed to absolve. The tenets and preaching of their faith were not indeed forgotten by them, for they had never been known ; there was nothing in their lives by which the Saracens could judge the religion of Christ to be aught but the blindest worship of a piece of wood and a gilded cross; while the worst among them —the most rapacious, the most luxurious, the most licentious, the most haughty, the most perjured—were the very men, the priests and the knights of the orders, sworn to chastity, to self-denial, to godliness. It appears to us that Christianity might have had a chance in the East against Islam but for the Christians ; and had men like Saladin been able to comprehend what was the religion which, like an ancient painting begrimed and overladen with dirt and dust, lay under all the vices and basenesses of the Christianity they witnessed, the world would at least have been spared some of the bitterness of its religious wars.