the Sultan of Egypt, they too departed. Then twenty years of expectation and fear pass away: Europe looks with indifference upon the Holy Land : Laodicea is taken : Tripoli is taken : and lastly, Acre itself is taken. The siege of this, the last place held by the Christians, lasted a month, when the Mohammedans entered the city after a furious assault. They were driven back by arrows and stones hurled from the houses : day after day they came on, were repelled with slaughter, and every day the Christians saw their camp .growing larger and larger. The military orders fought with a heroism which caused the Saracens to think that two men were figbting in every knight. But the end came at length, with a great and terrible carnage. The nuns, trembling, and yet heroic, actually preserved their honour by cutting off their noses, so that the Saracens only killed them. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was put on board a ship, entreating to be allowed to die with his flock. The ship sank and he was drowned, so that his prayer was granted. A violent storm was raging. Ladies rushed to the port, offering the sailors all they had, diamonds, pearls, and gold, to be put on board. Those who had no money or jewels were left on the shore to the mercies of the victors. The Templars held out in their castle a few days longer and then fell. All were killed. So ended, after two hundred years of continued fighting, the Christian settlements in Palestine* The West heard the news of the fall of Acre with a sort of unreasoning rage, and instantly set about mutual accusations as to the cause of its fall. And the wretched Pullani, the Syrian Christians, who had survived the taking of Acre, dropped over one by one to Italy and begged their bread in the streets while they told the story of their fall. * In the same year the house of the Virgin was miraculously transferred from Nazareth to a hill in Dalmatia ; whence, by another miracle, it came to Loretto. - Why did not the Holy Sepulchre come too ?