o; but no man ever saw such characters, or any thing resembling
them, in real life. They are aerial beings, like Miranda in the
"Tempest," or Rosalind in the forest; but they recall no traits of
actual existence. The enchantment of Armida, the death of Clorinda,
belong to a different class. They rise to the highest flights of the
epic muse; for female fascination is the same in all ages; and Tasso
drew from the life in the first, while his exquisite taste and elevated
soul raised him to the highest moral sublimity and pathos which human
nature can reach in the second. Considered, however, as the poetic
history of the Crusades, as the Iliad of modern times, the _Jerusalem
Delivered_ will not bear any comparison with its immortal predecessor.
It conveys little idea of the real events; it embodies no traits of
nature; it has enshrined no traditions of the past. The distant era of
the Crusades, separated by three centuries from the time when he wrote,
had come down to Tasso, blended with the refinements of civilization,
the courtesy of chivalry, the graces of antiquity, the conceits of the
troubadours. In one respect only he has faithfully portrayed the
feelings of the time when his poem was laid. In the uniform elevation of
mind in Godfrey of Bouillon; his constant forgetfulness of self; his
sublime devotion to the objects of his mission, is to be found a true
picture of the spirit of the Crusades, as it appeared in their most
dignified champions. And it is fortunate for mankind that the noble
portrait has been arrayed in such colours as must render it as immortal
as the human race.

If poetry has failed in portraying the real spirit of the Crusades, has
history been more successful? Never was a nobler theme presented to
human ambition. We may see what may be made of it, by the inimitable
fragment of its annals which Gibbon has left in his narrative of the
storming of Constantinople by the Franks and Venetians. Only think what
a subject is presented to the soul of genius, guiding the hand, and
sustaining the effort of industry! The rise of the Mahometan power in
the East, and the subjugation of Palestine by the arms of the Saracens;
the profound indignation excited in Europe by the narratives of the
sufferings of the Christians who had made pilgrimages to the Holy
Sepulchre; the sudden and almost miraculous impulse communicated to
multitudes by the preaching of Peter the Hermit; the universal frenzy
which seized all classe