r by the destruction of many
families, and the overwhelming debts fastened on others, by these costly
and protracted contests. Great part of the prosperity, freedom, and
happiness which have since prevailed in the principal European
monarchies, is to be ascribed to the Crusades. So great an intermingling
of the different faiths and races of mankind, never takes place without
producing lasting and beneficial consequences.

These views have been amply illustrated by the philosophic historians
of modern times. But there is another effect of far more importance than
them all put together, which has not yet attracted the attention it
deserves, because the opposite set of evils are only beginning now to
rise into general and formidable activity. This is the fixing the mind,
and still more the heart of Europe, for so long a period, on _generous
and disinterested objects_. Whoever has attentively considered the
constitution of human nature as he feels it in himself, or has observed
it in others,--whether as shown in the private society with which he has
mingled, or the public concerns of nations he has observed,--will at
once admit that SELFISHNESS is its greatest bane. It is at once the
source of individual degradation and of public ruin. He knew the human
heart well who prescribed as the first of social duties, "to love our
neighbour as ourself." Of what incalculable importance was it, then, to
have the mind of Europe, during so many generations, withdrawn from
selfish considerations, emancipated from the sway of individual desire,
and devoted to objects of generous or spiritual ambition! The passion of
the Crusades may have been wild, extravagant, irrational, but it was
noble, disinterested, and heroic. It was founded on the sacrifice of
self to duty; not on the sacrifice, so common in later times, of duty to
self. In the individuals engaged in the Holy Wars, doubtless, there was
the usual proportion of human selfishness and passion. Certainly they
had not all the self-control of St Anthony, or the self-denial of St
Jerome. But this is the case with all great movements. The principle
which moved the general mind was grand and generous. It first severed
war from the passion of lust or revenge, and the thirst for plunder on
which it had hitherto been founded, and based it on the generous and
disinterested object of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre. Courage was
sanctified, because it was exerted in a noble cause: even bloodshed
beca