pointed Professor of the French Language and Literature in the College of France. He has since published Alfred le Grand, ou L'Angleterre sous les Anglo-Saxons.

EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES.

The principal effect of the crusades was a great step toward the emancipation of the mind, a great progress toward enlarged and liberal ideas. Though begun under the name and influence of religious belief, the crusades deprived religious ideas, I shall not say of their legitimate share of influence, but of their exclusive and despotic possession of the human mind. The result, though undoubtedly unforeseen, arose from various causes. The first was evidently the novelty, extent, and variety of the scene which displayed itself to the crusaders; what generally happened to travellers happened to them. It is mere commonplace to say that travelling gives freedom to the mind; that the habit of observing different nations, different manners, and different opinions enlarges the ideas and disengages the judgment from old prejudices. The same thing happened to those nations of travellers who have been called the crusaders; their minds were opened and raised by having seen a multitude of different things, by having become acquainted with other manners than their own. They found themselves also placed in connection with two states of civilization, not only different from their own, but more advanced-the Greek state of society on the one hand, and the Mussulman on the other. There is no doubt that the society of the Greeks, though enervated, perverted, and decaying, gave the crusaders the impression of something more advanced, polished, and enlightened than their own.

The society of the Mussulmans presented them a scene of the same kind. It is curious to observe in the chronicles the impression made by the crusaders on the Mussulmans, who regarded them at first as the most brutal, ferocious, and stupid barbarians they had ever seen. The crusaders, on their part, were struck with

the riches and elegance of manners which they observed among the Mussulmans. These first impressions were succeeded by frequent relations between the Mussulmans and Christians. These became more extensive and important than is commonly believed. Not only had the Christians of the East habitual relations with the Mussulmans, but the people of the East and the West became acquainted with, visited, and mingled with each other. Mongol ambassadors were sent to the kings of the Franks, and to St. Louis among others, in order to persuade them to enter into alliance, and to resume the crusades for the common interests of the Mongols and the Christians against the Turks. And not only were diplomatic and official relations thus established between the sovereigns, but there was much and varied intercourse between the nations of the East and West.

There is another circumstance which is worthy of notice. Down to the time of the crusades the court of Rome, the centre of the Church, had been very little in communication with the laity unless through the medium of ecclesiastics, either legates sent by the Court of Rome, or the whole body of the bishops and clergy. There were always some laymen in direct relation with Rome; but upon the whole, it was by means of churchmen that Rome had any communication with the people of different countries. During the crusades, on the contrary, Rome became a halting place for a great portion of the crusaders, either in going or returning. A multitude of laymen were spectators of its policy and its manners, and were able to discover the share which personal interest had in religious disputes. There is no doubt that this newly acquired knowledge inspired many minds with a boldness hitherto unknown.

When we consider the state of the general mind at the termination of the crusades, especially in regard to ecclesiastical matters, we cannot fail to be struck with a singular fact religious notions underwent no change, and were not replaced by contrary or even different opinions. Thought, notwithstanding, had become free; religious creeds were not the only subjects on which the human mind exercised its faculties; without abandoning

them it began occasionally to wander from them, and to take other directions. Thus, at the end of the thirteenth century, the moral causes which had led to the crusades, or which, at least, had been their most energetic principle, had disappeared: the moral state of Europe had undergone an essential modification.

The social state of society had undergone an analogous change. Many inquiries have been made as to the influence of the crusades in this respect; it has been shown in what manner they had reduced the great number of feudal proprietors to the necessity of selling their fiefs to the kings, or to sell their privileges to the communities, in order to raise money for the crusades.

Even in those cases where small proprietors preserved their fiefs, they did not live upon them in such an insulated state as formerly. The possessors of great fiefs became so many centres around which the smaller ones were gathered, and near which they came to live. During the crusades small proprietors found it necessary to place themselves in the train of some rich and powerful chief, from whom they received assistance and support. They lived with him, shared his fortune, and passed through the same adventures that he did. When the crusaders returned home, this social spirit, this habit of living in intercourse with superiors, continued to subsist, and had its influence on the manners of the age. As we see that the great fiefs were increased after the crusades, so we see, also, that the proprietors of those fiefs held, within their castles, a much more considerable court than before, and were surrounded by a greater number of gentlemen, who preserved their little domains, but no longer kept within them.

As to the inhabitants of the towns, a result of the same nature may easily be perceived. The crusades created great civic communities. Petty commerce and petty industry were not sufficient to give rise to communities such as the great cities of Italy and Flanders. It was commerce on a great scale-maritime commerce, and especially the commerce of the East and West, which gave them birth; now it was the crusades which gave to maritime commerce the greatest impulse it had yet received. On the whole, when we survey the state of so

ciety at the end of the crusades, we will find that the movement tending to dissolution and dispersion, the movement of universal localization (if I may be allowed such an expression), had ceased, and had been succeeded by a movement in the contrary direction, a movement of centralization. All things tended to mutual approximation; small things were absorbed in great ones, or gathered round them.

Such, in my opinion, are the real effects of the crusades; on the one hand the extension of ideas and the emancipation of thought; on the other, a general enlargement of the social sphere, and the opening of a wider field for every sort of activity; they produced, at the same time, more individual freedom, and more political unity. They tended to the independence of man and the centralization of society. Many inquiries have been made respecting the means of civilization which were directly imported from the East. It has been said that the largest part of the great discoveries which, in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, contributed to the progress of European civilization— such as the compass, printing, and gunpowder-were known in the East, and that the crusades brought them into Europe. This is true to a certain extent, though some of these assertions may be disputed. But what cannot be disputed is this influence, this general effect of the crusades upon the human mind on the one hand, and the state of society on the other. They drew society out of a very narrow road, to throw it into new and infinitely broader paths; they began that transformation of the various elements of European society into governments and nations, which is the characteristic of modern civilization.-History of Civilization in Europe.

PRE-HISTORIC GAUL.

If one were suddenly carried twenty or thirty centuries backward, into the midst of what was then called Gaul, he would not recognize France. The same mountains reared their heads; the same plains stretched far and wide; the same rivers rolled on their course. There is no alteration in the physical formation of the country,

but the aspect was very different. Instead of fields all trim with cultivation, and all covered with various produce, one would see inaccessible morasses, and vast forests, as yet uncleared, given up to the chances of primitive vegetation, and peopled with bears, and even the urus or wild ox, and with elks too-a kind of animal that one finds no longer nowadays save in the colder regions of northeastern Europe, such as Lithuania and Courland. Then wandered over the champagne great herds of swine, as fierce almost as wolves, tamed only so far as to know the sound of their keeper's horn. The better sorts of fruit and vegetables were quite unknown; they were imported into Gaul-the greatest part from Asia, a portion from Africa and the islands of the Mediterranean. Cold and rough was the prevailing temperature. Nearly every winter the rivers froze sufficiently hard for the passage of cars. And three or four centuries before the Christian era, on that vast territory comprised between the ocean and the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean, the Alps, and the Rhine, six or seven millions of men lived a bestial life, enclosed in dwellings dark and low, the best of them built of wood and clay, covered with branches or straw, made in a single round piece, open to daylight only by a door, and confusedly huddled together behind a rampart, not inartistically composed of timber, earth, and stone, which surrounded and protected what they were pleased to call a

town.

Of even such towns there were scarcely any as yet, save in the most populous and least uncultivated portions of Gaul; that is to say, in the southern and eastern regions, at the foot of the mountains of Auvergne. and the Cevennes, and along the coasts of the Mediterranean. In the north and the west were paltry hamlets, as transferable almost as the people themselves; and on some islet amidst the morasses, or in some hidden recess of the forest, were huge entrenchments formed of felled trees, where the population ran to shelter themselves, at the first sound of the war-cry, with their flocks and all their movables; and the war-cry was often heard. Men living grossly and idly are very prone to quarrel and fight.

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