eligion, capable of surviving the
fate of empires. His schemes were always laid with the truest
wisdom. He lived among a people celebrated for subtlety and
genius: he never laid himself open to detection. His eloquence
was specious, dignified, and persuasive. And he blended with it
a lofty enthusiasm, that awed those, whom familiarity might have
emboldened, and silenced his enemies. He was simple of
demeanour, and ostentatious of munificence. And under these
plausible virtues he screened the indulgence of his
constitutional propensities. The number of his concubines and
his wives has been ambitiously celebrated by Christian writers.
He sometimes acquired them by violence and injustice; and he
frequently dismissed them without ceremony. His temper does not
seem to have been naturally cruel. But we may trace in his
conduct the features of a barbarian; and a part of his severity
may reasonably be ascribed to the plan of religious conquest
that he adopted, and that can never be reconciled with the
rights of humanity."

After the victories of Omar, and the other successors of Mahomet had in
a manner stripped the court of Constantinople of all its provinces, the
Byzantine history dwindles into an object petty and minute. In order to
vary the scene, and enhance the dignity of his subject, the author
occasionally takes a prospect of the state of Rome and Italy, under the
contending powers of the papacy and the new empire of the West. When the
singular and unparalleled object of the Crusades presents itself, the
historian embraces the illustrious scene with apparent eagerness, and
bestows upon it a greater enlargement than might perhaps have been
expected from the nature of his subject; but not greater, we confidently
believe, than is calculated to increase the pleasure, that a reader of
philosophy and taste may derive from the perusal. As the immortal
Saladin is one of the most distinguished personages in this story, we
have selected his character, as a specimen of this part of the work.

"No sooner however was the virtuous Noureddin removed by death,
than the Christians of the East had their attention still more
forcibly alarmed by the progress of the invincible Saladin. He
had possessed himself of the government of Egypt; first, under
the modest appellation of vizier, and then, with the more august
title of soldan. He abolished t