se my lecture.

Thus the Crusades are really worthy to be chronicled by historians above
anything else which took place in the Middle Ages, since they gave birth
to mighty agencies, which still are vital forces in society,--even as
everything in American history pales before that awful war which
arrayed, in our times, the North against the South in desperate and
deadly contest; the history of which remains to be written, but cannot
be written till the animosities which provoked it have passed away. What
a small matter to future historians is rapid colonization and
development of material resources, in comparison with the sentiments
which provoked that war! What will future philosophers care how many
bushels of wheat are raised in Minnesota, or car-loads of corn brought
from Illinois, or hogs slaughtered in Chicago, or yards of cloth woven
in Lowell, or cases of goods packed in New York, or bales of carpets
manufactured in Philadelphia, or pounds of cotton exported from New
Orleans, or meetings of railway presidents at Cincinnati to pool the
profits of their monopolies, or women's-rights conventions held in
Boston, or schemes of speculators ventilated in the lobbies of
Washington, or stock-jobbing and gambling operations take place in every
large city of the country,--compared with the mighty marshalling of
forces on the banks of the Potomac, at the call of patriotism, to
preserve the life of the republic? You cannot divest war of dignity and
interest when the grandest results, which affect the permanent welfare
of nations, are made to appear.

The Crusades, as they were historically developed, are mixed up with the
religious ideas of the Middle Ages, with the domination of popes, with
the feudal system, with chivalry, with monastic life, with the central
power of kings, with the birth of mercantile States, with the fears and
interests of England, France, Germany, and Italy, for two hundred
years,--yea, with the architecture, commerce, geographical science, and
all the arts then known. All these principalities and powers and
institutions and enterprises were affected by them, so that at their
termination a new era in civilization began. Grasp the Crusades, and you
comprehend one of the forces which undermined the institutions of the
Middle Ages.

It is not a little remarkable that the earliest cause of the Crusades,
so far as I am able to trace, was the adoption by the European nations
of some of the principles of Eas