the
Italians and the Germans, and even between the Danes and Swedes; but it
is only that which divided the two nations whom one island bred, and who
seemed more animated against each other for the very reason, that our
narrative is principally concerned with.

Of all the English nobles who had followed their King to Palestine,
De Vaux was most prejudiced against the Scottish. They were his near
neighbours, with whom he had been engaged during his whole life in
private or public warfare, and on whom he had inflicted many calamities,
while he had sustained at their hands not a few. His love and devotion
to the King was like the vivid affection of the old English mastiff to
his master, leaving him churlish and inaccessible to all others even
towards those to whom he was indifferent--and rough and dangerous to
any against whom he entertained a prejudice. De Vaux had never observed
without jealousy and displeasure his King exhibit any mark of courtesy
or favour to the wicked, deceitful, and ferocious race born on the
other side of a river, or an imaginary line drawn through waste and
wilderness; and he even doubted the success of a Crusade in which they
were suffered to bear arms, holding them in his secret soul little
better than the Saracens whom he came to combat. It may be added that,
as being himself a blunt and downright Englishman, unaccustomed
to conceal the slightest movement either of love or of dislike, he
accounted the fair-spoken courtesy which the Scots had learned, either
from imitation of their frequent allies, the French, or which might
have arisen from their own proud and reserved character, as a false and
astucious mark of the most dangerous designs against their neighbours,
over whom he believed, with genuine English confidence, they could, by
fair manhood, never obtain any advantage.

Yet, though De Vaux entertained these sentiments concerning his Northern
neighbours, and extended them, with little mitigation, even to such as
had assumed the Cross, his respect for the King, and a sense of the duty
imposed by his vow as a Crusader, prevented him from displaying them
otherwise than by regularly shunning all intercourse with his Scottish
brethren-at-arms as far as possible, by observing a sullen taciturnity
when compelled to meet them occasionally, and by looking scornfully upon
them when they encountered on the march and in camp. The Scottish barons
and knights were not men to bear his scorn unobserved or