their own opinion as not to be shaken by a ed out a tree called bori; it is small, its ropean is but a poor devil. I will return in perfidious insinuation against their neigh-bark and rugged; from them situation, and if he intends to continue to treat me in a manner so unworthy of my bour. A Poila, however, will not give his the people of the country extruer fits leaves, the evening to know if he has reflected on his daughter in marriage to a Diavando; neither a salt, which they use in their food. ter in the natives of the different king-panied by a troop of ill-looking attendants, I cannot help reciting a fact, which has clined to doubt. The water of this place, which may be drunk by man, is poison to horses and cat tle, from the vicinity of a tree called tali, It is one of the most beautiful trees I have met with in this part of Africa; it is very large and high, and its foliage very thick. The negroes make no use of the wood. The following is also a doubtful "What dost thou demand then?" cried I * A village situated at Rio-Nunez, where the Europeans carry on considerable traffic. on "thou mayst depart; I will even give thee a guide." In this country iron is wrought by a primitive process. by the public, has on a former occasion I had no other than the sufferer's part, tried the flight of his muse in didactic And griefs lay close, and heavy at my heart. poetry, so that the present work is, A stifled heart my life's unceasing foe, we presume, sanctioned by the success of social bearing little did I know; Most of the inhabitants are proprietors of of its predecessor. It is the story of a No timely respite from the book and pen furnaces for smelting iron; it is an employ-natural child; an enthusiast from in- For on that day, which gave each fellow boy My youth had blended with the ways of men. ment to which the Serracolets most cheer- fancy upwards, and finally a maniac. To blithe abandonment, a home of joy, fully apply themselves. metal they use fragments of granite of a found in a rival whom he combats for 1, mid the general-mirth and eager stir To hammer this Educated by peasants, his father is only That happy day, long-seen, and hail'd afar, rounded form, encircled by a leather band; the sake of his love, Leola; his mother, Sadly remain'd, perpetual pensioner. Kiss-worn, in every stripling's calendar, this band is fastened to leather thongs, which the workman holds in his hands. He raises in a wretched camp follower, who To childish ways and lonely thought inclined, the stone, and lets it fall on the iron, which comes to strip him among the dead I seem'd a schoolboy with a hermit's mind. is placed on a very low anvil fixed in the and wounded in a field of battle; and sand. By this rude and tedious process, the adored Leola herself turns out to be they forge the iron, and form it into bars his sister. The narrative is naturally eight inches long. We know not what credit may be disastrous and romantic. sombre and melancholy, as the tale is given to the two following stories, quote a few of the passages which please We shall which Mr. Mollien repeats upon hear-us best, to show how far the comic say; for our own parts, though we dramatist has succeeded in pathetic might be credulous enough to believe composition. in monkey-battles, we are quite sceptical about whipped lions. A woman going with millet and milk to a vessel from St. Louis, which had stopped before a village in the country of Galam, was attacked by a troop of apes, from three to four feet high; they first threw stones at her, on which she began to run away; they ran after her, and having caught her, they beat her with sticks until she let go what she was carrying. Bruised by the blows she had received, she returned to the village and related her adventure to the principal inhabitants, who mounted their horses, and followed by their dogs, went to the place which served as a retreat to this troop of apes; they fired at them, killed ten, and" wounded others which were brought to them by their dogs, but several negroes were severely wounded in this encounter, either by the stones hurled at them by the apes, or by their bites; the females especially, were most furious in revenging the death of their young ones, which they carried in their arms. Camelopards are common in the country of Galam, it is even said that the Moors have herds of them; the Serracolets frequently offer their skins to travellers. Lions are numerous; the herdsmen, I am told, employ the whip alone to drive them away; thus the king of animals often runs from a child. The negroes assert, that if they had a gun in their hands, the lion would prepare for the combat, and dispute the victory in a manner worthy of his courage, several have even assured me, that they have often passed near this terrible animal, without his even deigning to cast a look at them. The forests are filled with wild boars of prodigious size. (To be concluded in our next.) Valdi; or the Libertine's Son, a Poem. By James Kenney. London 1820. 8vo. pp. 128. Mr. Kenney, whose dramatic productions have been favourably received Child of the Libertine! be God thy Friend! Sad are thy greetings in this world of care; Thy joyous antics, and thy nestling wiles; This is natural colouring; nor do Search'd every secret of humanity, to trace morbid affections, which in We confess that we do not like much truth might often (out of poetical phraseology) be deemed sheer discontent, and social happiness; and therefore we operating to poison all the springs of life shall satisfy ourselves with only one further extract, apposite to the struggles of the Tyrolese (whom Valdi joins) for liberty, and to the strange perversion of mind which has led some of the admirers of that inestimable blessing to be the loudest panegyrists of its greatest foe. The sentiments are truly patriotic. Red are the streams their mountain channels The greensward darkens with a withering stain, vain. Scoffer the more at humbled truth's behest, And shall the bold enthusiast friend of man See levell'd thus the fabric he began Man's retribution, and the nations free! Lo! it is done-the bard hath lived to see Valdi's account of the desolateness of And shiver'd it-the talisman of blood! No fostering love I knew whose gentle sway, Who danger darkening, firmlier could dare, Heaven-favour'd land, thro' history's troubled Firm, steady, as thine own proud navies ride, Be not thy glories cited to thy shame, And tears and groans pronounce them but a name; And honest scorn awaits her remnant band. For all the heart-thorns thou hast grown for me Biest thy white frontier by the wild breeze fann'd, God prosper thee, my own beloved land!— We must, before we take leave of Mr. ordo enhances the interest of a narra- also its share in these long and dangerous Kenney, notice, that his verse is occa-per places; and as we do not find affairs sionally too careless. The occurrence of the verb "to come twice within three lines in the very first page, is an instance; the name of Leola (page 55) requiring in two adjoining lines to be pronounced Leola and Leola, is another; and the prosing couplet Thine interest shall I ever estimate THE FIRST CRUSADE. and, in this, and in the next Number of the Literary Gazette, confine ourselves Among the gracious moments of my fate-to what occupies about one third of the a third. We must also object to cital work, namely, for recital (page 45); and question the propriety of" mind's green expansion (31), and of such a description of himself as is put into Valdi's own mouth (page 29). With manly port, erect ingenuous air, Our last fault is with lines ending in trochaicks, of which there are several; After the accomplishment of prophecy in isin became the religion of Jerusalem, and the destruction of the second temple, Paganthe insulting and intolerant Romans dedicated to Venus and Jove the spots which had been hallowed by the Passion of our Saviour. But in the fourth century, the banners of the cross triumphed over polytheism, and Christian emperors erected churches on the ruins of the Heathen temples. In these sence. At the close of the tenth century, Pope Silvester II., the ornament of his age, entreated the church universal to succour the church of Jerusalem, and to redeem a sepulchre which the prophet Isaiah had said should be a glorious one, and which the sons roused to arms, and all her efforts were of the destroyer Satan were making inglorious. Pisa was the only city which was mere predatory incursions on the Syrian coast. In the next century, political events in the Grecian and Saracenian worlds occasion ed a renewal of the endeavour to arm Chris tendom against Islamism. Constantinople and these, we think, detract from the God was worshipped according to the true trembled for her safety, and the Emperor pathos of a tale which is altogether of an interesting order. faith, till the star of Islamism arose, and, in turn, subverted the holy city, which, for three ages, became subject in reciprocal The History of the Crusades, for the Re-succession to the caliphs of Bagdad, and to covery and Possession of the Holy Land. By Charles Mills. London, 1820. 8vo. 2 vols. A History of the Crusades, the most important subject in the middle ages, whether regarding its connection with the religion, with the literature, with the arts, with the superstitions, with the chivalry, or with all the feelings and manners of mankind, was a great desideratum in English letters; and it is a very fortunate thing that it has been executed by so competent a person as the well-known author of the History of Muhammedanism. In France, Mr. Michaud has been bringing out, by volumes, a work under the same title: but without wishing to draw invidious comparisons, we must be allowed to say, that what we have seen of it is far exceeded by Mr. Mills's production, which, for intelligence, compression, arrangement, and clearness, approaches very nearly to what we consider the requisites of perfection in this species of composition. The lucidus Manuel VII. about the year 1073, supplicated the aid of Pope Gregory VII.; expressed deep respect for his Holiness, and attachment to the Latin church. The spithose of Cairo. At length the commanders ritual sovereign immediately commanded the of the Egyptians prevailed, and, in 969, patriarch of Venice to proceed to Constantitheir dominion over Palestine was finally es- and reunion. An encyclical letter was scut nople, and arrange the terms of friendship tablished. The irruption of the Turkmans, (called the Seljuk Turks) from the borders from Rome to the states and princes of the of the Caspian, once more changed the or-west, acquainting them with the melancholy der of things, and from about 1038 to 1092, Christians. The people of Christ had been fact, that the pagans were overcoming the all Persia, Arabia, and most of Syria, own- slain like sheep, and their remorseless mured their sway. Jerusalem had several masters; and, at length, anno 1094, rested a de- derers had carried their devastations even to pendancy of Egypt. the walls of the Imperial city. The faithLong previous to this epoch, and, indeed, ful ought to lament for the misfortunes of from the period immediately succeeding the the empire, and the miseries of their brecrucifixion, it had been the object of Chris-thren: they should not, however, lament tian pilgrimages, as Mecca and Medina are now visited by Moslems. Of the nature of many of these pilgrimages authors give us a very strange account, from which it appears tered into their motives as penitence, and a profligacy and dissoluteness as often enresolution to sin no more.* Commerce had that only: but, following the example of their divine master, they should give up their lives for their friends. Accordingly, 50,000 men prepared themselves to rescue the Christians of the east, and to arrest the march of Islamism. These preparations, however, died away, and it was not till Peter the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in France, returned from a Rome and other places, was often urged by the corn. The discovery that the locusts were the forerunners of the Europeans was an ingenious interpretation of the sign; but the diviners, with more nationality than truth, compared the corn with the sobriety of the eastern christians, and the vines with the licentiousness of the Saracens. Man fully responded to the supposed calls of God. The moral fabric of Europe was convulsed; the relations and charities of life were broken ; society appeared to be dissolved. Persons of every age, rank, and degree, assumed the cross. The storm of public feeling was raised, and neither reason nor authority could guide its course. The prohibition of women from undertaking the journey was passed over in contemptuous silence. They separated themselves from their husbands, where men wanted faith, or resolved to follow them with their helpless infants. Monks, not waiting for the permission of their superiors, threw aside their black mourning gowns, and issued from their cloisters full of the spirit of holy warriors. They who had devoted themselves to a solitary life mistook the impulses of passion for divine revelations, and thought elements of combustion, turned the people that Heaven had annulled their oaths of reof the west from intestine discord to foreign tirement. A stamp of virtue was fixed upon war, from dull superstition to furious every one who embraced the cause; and zeal. The military enthusiast heard the many were urged to the semblance of religion voice of Charlemagne calling the French to by shame, reproach, and fashion. The nuglory. The religious fanatic eagerly and merous cases of hypocrisy attested the comcredulously listened to tales of visions and manding influence of the general religious dreams. Every wonderful event in the na- principle. They who had been visited by tural world was regarded as an indication of criminal justice were permitted to expiate, in the divine wiH. Meteors and stars pointed at the service of God, their sins against the and fell on the road to Jerusalem. The world. The pretence of debtors was adinitskies were involved in perpetual storms; ted, that the calls of heaven were of greater and the blaze and terror of anxious and dis-obligation than any claims of man. Murordered nature shewed the terrific harmony derers, adulterers, robbers, and pirates, of heaven with the sanguinary fury of earth. quitted their iniquitous pursuits, and declared Prodigies were not confined to the west. In that they would wash away their sins in the the states of Greece a marvellous number blood of the Infidels. In short, thousands of locusts destroyed the vineyards, but spared and millions of armed saints and sinners frequently placed on the top of the arm. Red ranged themselves to fight the battles of the was for a long while, even till the time of Richard Lord. All nations were enveloped in the I. king of England, the general colour of this whirlwind of superstition. It was people, cross. The materials of the cross were silk, or and not merely armies, countries, and not gold, or cloth and the most frenzied of the only their military representatives, that The pilgrims on their return to Europe general-mand to unsheath the sword of the Almighty, crusaders cut the holy sign on the flesh itself. thought they had received the divine comly placed the cross on the back. and to redeem the sepulchre of Christ. pilgrimage, during which he had witnessed | Cardinal Gregory poured forth in their name had their war cries. In an army, therefore, there were as many cries of war as there were banners. There was a general cry also, which was usually the name of the commander, or the cry of the king. + In imitation of Christ, who carried a cross on his shoulders to the place of execution, the cross was generally worn on the right shoulder, or on the upper part of the back; it was also Malmsbury's observations are highly curious. "The report of the council of Clermont It was in the year 1096 that the first body wafted a cheering gale over the minds of chris- of European rabble, styling themselves tians. There was no nation so remote, no peo- Champions of the Cross, swept along from ple so retired, as did not respond to the papal France to Hungary. They amounted to 20,000 wishes. This ardent love not only inspired the foot, and only eight horse; and were led by continental provinces, but the most distant is- Walter, a poor gentleman of Burgundy. lands and savage countries. The Welshman left These, except a few refugees, perished misehis hunting; the Scotch his fellowship with ver-rably in conflicts in Bulgaria: those who min; the Dane his drinking party; the Norwe-escaped, reached Constantinople, and found gian his raw fish." Malmsbury, p. 416. Robert refuge with the Greek Emperor Alexius, of Gloucester, after mentioning in general terms the contributions of men which France and England made to the holy war, thus curiously mixes other nations: "Of Normandy, of Denmark, of Norway, of Bretagne, "Of Wales and of Ireland, of Gascony and of Spain, "Of Provence and of Saxony, and of Allemagne, Chron. p. 393, edit. Hearne. The second undisciplined division, accompanied by the Hermit himself, pursued the same route. Their atrocities roused the indignation of the people through whose territories they marched, and after the most dreadful deeds, and sanguinary actions, they were ultimately exterminated in Bithynia, "A lamentable case," as Fuller says, "that the devil's blackguards should be Cod's soldiers." > with the exception of three or four thousand. | the wall of the town. The ruin of the "Before Europe glittered with the pomp and splendour of chivalry, another herd of wild and desperate savages scourged and devastated the world. They issued from England, France, Flanders, and Lorraine. Their avowed principle of union was the redemption of the holy sepulchre. History is silent on the subordinate modes and bands of con (To be concluded in our next.) very artful, cunning, and treacherous females of the present day. If, however, he get married, it shall be regarded as a sufficient punishment. Sir Clement Cornice, baronet, not contented with having built a splendid villa, invites all the world to see it, and gives miscellaneous dinners every Sunday, so that it has become a cakehouse, Ordered, by the President, and Committee, that he pay a fine of one guinea for every such dinner to the poor of his parish. On non-compliance, he is requested to send in his resignation as a member of the Club. Lord Arab, who boasts of his gains in keeping a race-horse, is requested to present to the Committee an exact accompt of his profit and loss. N. B. No errors excepted. Mr. Plod Furret, who is always dabbling sales of old and scarce books, though he can scarcely read his mother tongue in the common Roman letter, is ordered, on pain of expulsion for such useless expence, to bring his only Caxton to the Club, and to Lessons of Thrift, published for the Ge-at pre The censure withdrawn, and the menber re-instated. nection, except the horrible superstition of following a goat and a goose, which they believed to be filled with the divine spirit: and if such were their religion, we cannot wonder at the brutality of their manners. We know not how we can better de-read two pages thereof aloud. Besides their fanaticism was the height of The honourable member has presented a fury, for these ministers of the devouring scribe this work, cleverly ornamented petition, stating that his only view in such flame nearly trebled their precursors. Their with a dozen of caricature prints, by purchases is to lay by money in a very sure zeal was guided by envy and malignity, and Cruikshank, than by informing our way, and at a great interest, as such articles they pretended that it was unjust that any readers, that it is the pouring out of always increase in value; that in this view, foes of God should enjoy temporal prospe- the Common-place Book of an intelli- far from any attachment to any letter, wherity. The Jews enriched the towns on the gent and humourous person, whose di-ther black, white, brown, or yellow, he rebanks of the Moselle and of the Rhine, and ligence in collecting anecdotes, jests, ceived great comfort in the conflagration of communicated to France and Germany the a gentleman's library, which contained five products of each respective country. The stories, &c. seems to entitle him city of Cologne was the first city which was eminently to the character of a Member Caxtons, as thereby the value of his was greatly increased; and that he consults peostained with their blood. The sanctity of of the Save-all Club. His economy has ple of skill in his purchases. the archiepiscopal palace at Mayence, the indeed been carried very far, for many sacred presence of the venerable metropolitan, of his jokes are exceedingly ancient and could not shield seven hundred of the chil- well-known. But pretty general readSome rich save-thrifts mix cider with port dren of Israel from the swords of men, who ing and observation have enabled him wine for their servants; others choose coachprofessed a religion of mercy and love. The to vary his lucubrations with a consider horses that match with those of a gouty fended the Jews in his city, but the genero-able portion of novelty in matter and neighbour, so that if a horse be sick another can be borrowed without inconvenience; for sity of the bishops of Treves and Worms was in manner he has thrown a still strong- those animals are subject, if my memory not equally pure and meritorious, if it be er cast of freshness over his olla po- servé, to one hundred and thirty diseases, true that they compelled the objects of their drida. As for the lessons of thrift, and four are often necessary in reserve for a protection to change their religion. Many they are the flimsiest of possible links carriage drawn by two. It is a great breach firm and noble spirits disdained apostacy. to connect a volume, from which the of economy to have a villa near town, where Some of them retired to a chamber of the abundance of its materials banishes all friends are so happy to arrive just at dinner bishop at Worms, on pretence of deliberattime. You may, however, take your hat, ing on the renunciation of their faith. Deli- but very partial arrangement. Upon as running out to see a neighbour taken vioberation produced virtue, and by self-slaugh- the whole, an entertaining miscellany lently ill, or fall upon the sofa yourself in a ter they disappointed the cruelty of their has been produced; and for a chaise-violent fit of the cholic. If, however, you enemies. More appalling spectacles were pocket, or a breakfast-room window- admit a friend or two, follow the maxim of witnessed at Treves. Mothers plunged the seat, this will be found one of the plea- Socrates to his wife, "Why increase our fathers and sons destroyed each other, and which it pertains, dagger into the breasts of their own children; santest companions of the class to dinner? If the company be real friends there is enough: if not, too much." med-winter, to profit by the light of his neighAn ingenious member has contrived, in boura most innocent theft, which does harm to none. There being only a thin wall, or rather partition, between his chamber and that of a tailor, often occupied to a late hour, he contrived a hole, by which he can see to read and to go to bed. This invention saves him three or four pounds a year (generally about 37. 78. 24d.) and is honourably mentioned in the records of the club, women threw themselves into the Moselle. "When the measure of murder and rob bery was full, the infernal multitude proceeded on their journey. Two hundred thousand people, of whom only three thousand were horsemen, entered Hungary. They hurried on to the south in their usual career of carnage and rapine; but when they came to Mersbourg, their passage was opposed by an Hungarian army. Their requests to the king's general for provisions and a free passage were denied; but they forced a bridge over the Danube; and, gathering strength from the desperateness of their situation, they succeeded in making some breaches in We insert a few specimens ; a Thomas Sprightly is a constant frequenter His remonstrance, that it is in the view of a good marriage, has been duly considered, but has made little impression on the old ones of the Club, who are rather apprehensive, from his simple manners and goodness of heart, that he will become the prey of the But the fashionable world is in the dream of Richard III. A light! a light! my kingdom for a light. |