Mi \rs^ anks, which were fortified with great skill, and need indeed succumb to nothing short of famune. AH this, however far short it fell of a well-administered state or well-regulated camp, was still a strong power when the fatal quarrels in the West, the downfall of the Hohenstaufen, the wicked policy of Charles of Anjou, the rivalry of the Venetians and the Genoese, combined to bring about the end. Acre held out almost to the last; Antioch had fallen in 1268 ; all Palestine proper, save Acre and the road to Nazareth, had been surrendered in 1272 ; Tripoli was lost in 1289. Dependent on Acre were Tyre, Sidon, and Berytus, and a few straggling forts that must fall when Acre fell. That was on the i8th of May, 1291. The King of Jerusalem and Cyprus at the time was Henry H, the second son of Hugh HI, who had succeeded his brother John in 1285, and had been duly crowned in 1286. i The recovery of Acre from the forces of the King of Naples, which was effected before he could duly receive the crown of E 2 [ 28 ] Jerusalem, was the one brilliant exploit of a long and other- wise unhappy reign. The assistance which the military orders afforded him on the occasion caused the regent of Naples to confiscate all the estates of those orders within the kingdom of Naples, which formed a precedent for the atrocious measures of Philip the Fair against the Templars. Five years afterwards the Sultan Khalil Ashraf besieged Acre : King Henry brought his forces to the rescue, but, on the day of the assault by the Mussulmans, lost heart and sailed away. For three days the luckless defenders struggled and perished, and on the fourth day the city was taken. I shall not dwell on the valour of the knights or on the atrocities of the captors. The same day at evening the Franks of Tyre embarked and set sail for the West. The Templars left Sidon and went to Cyprus ; and the people of Berytus surrendered. The break up of the great camp was followed by a dispersion of the forces of the Cross. The kingdom of Armenia began to falter in its obedience to the Roman Church. The Armenian Catholicos had to flee from Mesopo- tamia to Sis in 1292; and about the same time the relics of Antiochene chivalry took service under the Armenian king. The military orders were only kept in Cyprus by the gift of ] Limasol, which King Henry bestowed on them conjointly; but ' soon the Templars sought their Western preceptories, within a very few years to perish utterly; the Teutonic knights found work in the conversion of the North ; the Hospitallers, maintain- ing a better heart, fitted out a new Crusade, and in 1 308 seized the island of Rhodes, whence for two hundred and fifteen years they made the Mediterranean too hot to hold a Turkish fleet. The rest of the unattached Franks found a home in Cyprus. Amongst these was one little known and obscure knightly order, which Englishmen need not be ashamed to recognise ; the Order of the Knights of S. Thomas of Acre. This was a little body of men who had formed themselves into a semi- religious order on the model of the Hospitallers. In the third Crusade, one William, an English priest, chaplain to Ralph de [ 29 ] DIceto, Dean of S. Paul's, had devoted himself to the work of burying the dead at Acre, as the Hospitallers had given them- selves at first to the work of tending the sick. He had built himself a little chapel there, and bought ground for a cemetery ; like a thorough Londoner of the period, he had called it after S. Thomas the Martyr ; and, somehow or other, as his design was better known, the family of the martyr seem to have approved of it ; the brother-in-law and sister of Becket became founders and benefactors, and a Hospital of S. Thomas the Martyr of Canterbury, of Acre, was built in London itself on the site of the house where the martyr was born \ Little indeed is known of the early days of the knights ; they were not numerous, and probably poor ; but when Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester and ex-justiciar, was in Palestine in 1231, he placed them in a new church and under the rule of the Templars, giving them also in his will a legacy of 500 marks ^. They had their proper dress and cross : according to Favin their habit was white, and the cross a full red cross charged^ with a white scallop ; but the existing cartulary of the order describes the habit simply as a mantle with a cross of red and white ^ They were building a new church when Edward was at Acre ; and in 1278 we find him writing to the King of Cyprus on their behalf*. The Chronicle of the Teutonic knights, in relating the capture of ^ In the ninth year of John, Oct. 13, 1207, messengers of the house of S. Thomas at Acre, being canons, had a safe-conduct. They had come to England to seek alms for the redemption of captives ; Rot. Pat. ed. Hardy, i. 76. The " Terra Sancti Thomae " abutted on the land of the Temple at Casale Album, near Coquet ; Paoli, Cod. Dipl. S. Joh., i. 468. Richard, the English tanner, at Acre, in 1273 sold two houses in the Street of the Tannery to the Hospitallers ; ib. 195, 196. 2 Matthew Paris, ed. Wats, p. 472. ' MS. Cotton, Tiberius C. V. * Mas-Latrie, Hist, de Chypre, ii. 81, 82, where two documents are printed from the letters of Edward in the Public Record Office. In one of these the king com- mends Ralph de Coumbe, master of the Hospital of S. Thomas, to the good offices of Hugh of Lusignan, in Cyprus ; in another, dated Sept. 15, 1279, Ralph de Cardoho and the brethren write to the king on the misfortunes of Palestine, and urge that the master of the Order should be sent into Syria. See the 7th Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Records, App. II. No. 2252 ; Royal Letters, MS. (Chancery), No. 4260. \ [ 30 ] Acre, places the knights of S. Thomas at the head of the 5000 soldiers whom the king of England had sent to Palestine^, and Hermann Corner, who however wrote a century later, mentions them amonest the defenders of Acre. We know from their cartulary that they had lands In Yorkshire, Middlesex, Surrey, and Ireland^ ; their Master was called Master of the whole Order of the Knighthood of S. Thomas the Martyr, In the kingdom of Cyprus, Apulia, Sicily, Calabria, Brunduslum, England, Flanders, Brabant, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Cornwall. Some few noble names of the masters have been preserved ; Ralph of Coumbe was master In or about 1278 ^, Henry de Bedford In 1323, and Robert de Kendale In 1344. In 1350 the order was recog- nised as still existing by the German traveller Ludolf of Suchen. ^ Matthaei, Vet ^vi Analecta, x, 182 ; Eccard, Scriptores, i. 942. ^ At Wapping, Plumstead, Coulsdon, and Doncaster. The estate at Wapping was the gift of Tierri of Alegate ; MS. Cott. fo. 156. Coulsdon was confirmed to the master of the knights by a charter of Henry III, in 1261 ; fo. 236 : the Hospital of S. James, at Doncaster, was given by Peter de Mauley : " Deo et militiae beati Thomce martyris de Aeon ;" fo. 258 : the benefactors in Ireland are enumerated by Edward I in a grant of confirmation, 5th June, A^. 17 ; Fulk de Villars, John de la Zouche, Edmund Bret, Gilbert Marshall, Walter Marshall, and PhiHp Horsey. James Butler, Earl of Ormond, was another at a later date. ^ Frater Radulfus preceptor fratrum Sancti Thomas de Aeon in Anglia ; A.D. 1.249. Wilham of Huntingfield "magister miHticC hospitalis B. Thomse Martyris de Aeon Londini ;" MS. Cotton, fo. 166. Richard of Southampton was master of the Hospital, II Edw. II ; Thomas de Sallowe, "magister domus," 40 Edw. III. Aug. 7, 1323, Henry de Bedford, master general of the order, creates John de Paris prior and custos of the Chapel of S. Nicholas of Nicosia ; seahng with his seal for Cyprus. June 17, 1324, William de Glastingebury, preceptor of the house of S. Thomas of Acre, in the diocese of Nicosia, with consent of the chapter of the house, to wit, Nicolas Clifton, John of Paris, and William of S. Bartholomew, appoints Nicolas Clifton proctor against a brother Henry, who calls himself master ; "actum Nicosiae in capella Sancti Nicolai presentibus Henrico et Thoma presbyteris Anglicis et prsedicto Johanne priore dictae capellae." Aug, 30, 1344, Robert Kendale, master of the whole order, appoints Henry of Colchester and WiUiam of Brunill to collect money for the order ; " dat. Nicosiae " in the house of Guddefrid, archdeacon of the church of Famagosta, vicar of Philip, arch- bishop of Nicosia. Feb. 2, 1357, Hugh Curteys invests Richard of Tickhill ; "actum in regno Cypri in Nicosia intra ecclesiam Beati Nicolai Angficorum, prassentibus Francisco de Gave burgensi Nicosiae, domino Rob. de SwiUington canonico, domino Ricardo de Chatesby presbytero Anglico ; Guillelmo Gaston de Anglia Turcopolo regis et pluribus aliis." [ 31 ] In 1357 Hugh de Curteys, the preceptor of Cyprus, invested one Richard of Tickhill with the habit of the order, in the presence of Robert SwilHngton, canon, Sir Richard Chatesby, an EngHsh priest, and WilHam Gaston of England, TurcopoHer to the king of Cyprus. The ceremony was performed in the church of S. Nicolas of the English in the city of Nicosia ; one of the many churches which formerly, according to Father Stephen of Lusignan, adorned that city, but of which any relic would now, since the Venetians destroyed 130 in the process of fortification, scarcely be looked for. The hospital in London became, probably at the fall of the Templars, a mere Augustinian Hospital. Its church, or one built on the site of it, is now the chapel of the Mercers' Company^ England had not, with all her business under Henry III and Edward I, forgotten Palestine : some of her sons fell at Acre, and the remnant of the little order found a home at Nicosia. But the great king himself never forgot his first love ; in fact all the nobler Plantagenets, Richard of Cornwall, Edward I, Henry of Lancaster, Henry of Bolingbroke, tienry V, and Cardinal Beaufort, all either made the pilgrimage or looked forward to a great crusade. To Edward I, in or about 1303, was addressed the very amusing ''Libellus de recuperatione Terrae Sanctse^," the work of an ecclesiastical judge in Aquitaine, whose name is unknown, but who speculates like a special correspondent of the period ; a book which shows a just sense of the evils which had rendered the united action of Christendom impossible; points out ways in which all political dangers in Europe can be avoided ; stigmatises the crime of war between Christian princes, the ruinous discord between Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, and pro- poses to settle the military orders chiefliy in Cyprus, and employ ^ The history of the London house may be read in Newcourt, Repertorium, i. 553 ; and Mon. Angl. vi. 645 : it must be carefully distinguished from the Hospital of S. Thomas the Martyr in Southwark, the germ of the present S. Thomas's Hospital, See also Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, praef pp. cxii-cxiii. ^ Printed at the end of the second volume of Bongars' Gesta Dei per Fra7tcos. [ 32 ] them in the recovery of the holy places. Curiously enough, one of the remedial measures proposed by the writer, who is especi- ally strong on the subject of natural science, is that girls should be taught to practise medicine and surgery; they are to learn grammar, and logic also, natural principles, and mathematics, but it is that they may qualify as wives for the Oriental princes. But to return to Cyprus : Edward, as I said, was not the only one of his family who remembered it : Henry III had proposed to the Bishop of Bethlehem a marriage between his son Edmund and the queen-mother Placentia in 1256; the young king was also to marry one of his daughters ^ The records however both of that reign and the next contain more references to Armenia than to Cyprus ; thus in 1260 Alexander IV exhorts Edward to , defend Armenia against the Tartars; in 1280 the Bishop of Hebron, vicegerent of the patriarch, sends the thanks of the Franks, and adds that Armenia and Cyprus have been laid waste by a plague of locusts^; the same intelligence is sent by the master of S. Thomas from Acre ; the wars of Charles of Anjou cut off all hope of succour, and the king of the Tartars had demanded provisions from Acre. Boniface VIII was un- wearied in impressing on England the importance of these regions; in 1298 he urges the sending of a subsidy to Sembat king of Armenia"; in 1300 he is negotiating a general con- federacy which will include the princes of Armenia and Georgia. Edward cannot do much, but if he cannot send knights he will send missionaries. The king of the Tartars sends envoys to him, and one of them is baptized. The last measures of Edward I and the first of Edward 1 1 are to the same purpose. Edward I issues safe-conduct to the bishop of Lydda and other Dominicans who are going to convert the heathen; Edward II sends a warning to the king of the Tartars against Mahometanism. The kings of Armenia, who have apparently little else to do, send constant appeals for money. Faithful Armenia, says Sanuto, ^ Feed. i. 341. 2 lb. 402, 586. ^ lb. 900, 742, 749, 902, 919. [ 33 ] writing in 1321, lies among the wild beasts ; on one side the lion, the Tartar ; on another the leopard, the Sultan ; on a third the wolf, the Turks ; on the fourth the serpent, the Corsairs. But these I must notice by and by. Henry II of Cyprus reigned nominally from 1285 to 1324; but during great part of the time he was superseded by one or other of his brothers : his quarrels with them form the whole history of his reign ; at one time he was a prisoner in Armenia, whither his brother, Amalric, the prince of Tyre, had sent him ; another brother, Guy, the constable of Cyprus, was put to death by his orders for a conspiracy against him. The Popes were much exercised by this fraternal strife ; but it was not until after the death of Guy that Henry had peace. As so often happens after an unquiet reign, he outlived all his enemies, and died rather regretted than not. This was in 1324: he was buried in the church of the Franciscans at Nicosia. When he had been able to exercise independent authority he had used it well ; he had welcomed the refugees from Acre and fortified Famagosta ; he contributed largely to the judicial decisions which form the supple- ment to the Assizes, and he established a strong judicature in Cyprus. But he was an epileptic, which perhaps accounts for his incapacity to retain the rule ; and he left no children. With the accession of his nephew, Hugh IV, begins a more stirring and, perhaps, the most interesting period of the Cypriot history. Before however entering on the outline of this portion of our subject, we may just look back to Armenia, where the native kingdom and the native dynasty were nearly coming to an end. Leo I, the first king, who was regarded by the Armenian writers as a really great and patriotic ruler, died in 1 2 19, leaving an infant daughter who carried the crown to her husbands in succession ; Philip of Antioch first, who, failing to make himself agreeable on the Church question to the native lords, especially a great lord called Constantius, or Constantine, I was put to death with his partisans. The second husband was Hayton, the son of Constantius, who reigned for nearly fifty F -I [ 34 ] years, at first under his father s directions, and after the year 1237 independently. Hayton was thus king during the whole of the crusading period of the thirteenth century, and had dealings with Lewis IX in his first Crusade, and with Edward of England during his stay in Palestine. He was moreover the king of Armenia in whose time Marco Polo set out on his travels in Asia ; and it was through his means that the Western kings became acquainted with the Tartar dynasty at Samarcand and its tendencies to favour Christianity. For the Tartar rulers during this period were far from being committed to Islam; they received and favoured missions and protected Christian ' doctrines in a liberal fashion, without understanding or finally committing themselves \ Hayton may possibly have the credit of having stirred up the Mongols against the Khalifate of Bagdad, which Hulaku brought to an end in 1259. The ' alliance with the Tartars brought down the Sultan of Egypt on Armenia ; and, after the capture of Antioch, Hayton resigned his ^ throne and retired to a monastery, where he took the name of ' Macarius, and died soon after. His brother, the constable of Armenia, Sempad, Sembat, or Sinibald, was the author of an Armenian chronological history of authority. A better known 1 person, also of the royal house, was the monk Hayton, who? about the year 1305 wrote a history called the Flower of the 5 Histories of the East. Hayton's career is curious. He had' been lord of Gorigos, or Corycus, on the Mediterranean coast, and had both fought in Palestine and negotiated among the Tartars, where the Armenian princes were constantly tantalised with the hope of converting the khans. About 1290 he went to Cyprus and became a Praemonstratensian canon, as Brother ^ Mosheim in his " Historia Tartarorum " has collected all the notices accessible in his time of the attempts to convert the Tartars, which for a long time had a show of success. After dallying with Christianity, the Khans seem to have become finally Mahometan and hostile at the beginning of the 14th century. But the subject, since the publication of the Armenian authorities, has become susceptible of much more elucidation. [ 35 ] Antony. From Cyprus he turned westward and came to France, where the Pope was. It was at Poictiers that he dic- tated his history, which accordingly was written in Latin. It has been printed both in Latin and in a French translation of the same century, but contains more about the Tartars than about the Franks. It is not improbable that to Hayton's influence we may trace some of the interest shown in Armenia by Edward I and Edward II. King Hayton, however, who died in 127 1, was succeeded on the Armenian throne by his son Leo II, who seems to have clung to the Tartar alliance as against Egypt, and to have come to an open rupture with the Pope on the other side. He was likewise in close alliance with Byzantium, and, although his history is obscure, he seems to have asserted an independent position for which his successors toiled in vain. He reigned eighteen years, and was followed by four of his sons in suc- cession. Of these Hayton II purchased the support of the West by reconciling himself and his people to Rome ; he was a poet and historian also, and ended in becoming a Franciscan as Friar John. With his brother, Thoros, who on his with- drawal became king, he went to Constantinople to obtain help from Andronicus Paleologus. On their return they found themselves unseated by a third brother, Sembat ; fled to Cyprus first and then to Tartary, but were taken ; Hayton was blinded and Thoros strangled. Sembat had thrown over the Roman alliance and been crowned by the Armenian Catholicos ; but, finding the Saracens still gaining ground, he changed his tactics, and obtained from Boniface VIII a bull for a subsidy, which was circulated in England in 1298^ He was supplanted in his turn by his brother Constantius. He, after a short reign, was succeeded by Leo III, son of Thoros, who reigned under the guardianship of his uncle, the blind brother John, who had been king as Hayton II. Both Leo and his uncle were put to death * Feed. i. 900. F 2 I [ 36 ] by a Tartar general, at the suggestion, according to the Roman writers, of the discontented Armenians, who had been again too summarily reconciled to the papacy in a council at Sis, in 1307. Oissim, who succeeded in 1308, was another son of Leo II. He was connected with the Cypriot history, taking part with the brothers of King Henry against him ; and he also obtained a confirmation of the union with the Roman Church in 1316. Leo IV, who was the last of the native dynasty, succeeded his father Oissim in 1320. His whole reign was a continued struggle against the Moslems, who were encroaching on every side, and his name became very well known in the West. It was in his defence that John XXII proclaimed a Crusade in 1333 ; and among other helps Edward III, in 1335, allowed his ambassadors ^40 from the London subsidy. Leo found him- self before his death reduced to the few mountain fortresses from which his ancestors had emerged two centuries before. He failed to gain the support of the Armenians, and was thus thrown on that of the Latins, who could really give him no aid. He was assassinated about 1342, and his dynasty ended with him. The five remaining Kings of Armenia sprang from a ^ branch of the Cypriot house of Lusignan, and were little more " than Latin exiles in the midst of several strange populations all alike hostile. We have now to return to Hugh IV, King of Cyprus, a prince who is known in literary history as the king to whom Boccaccio dedicated his genealogy of the gods. He reigned twenty-five years, and has the merit of setting on foot the great alliance between the Venetians, the Pope, and the Knights of Rhodes, to which the chief successes of his reign and that of his son were due. It is true that these successes wear to modern eyes the look of mere piratical exploits : but we have two points to remember in this connexion. All naval war, not only during the middle ages, but down to the seventeenth century, was more or less piratical ; and the war between the Christians and the Saracens, although interrupted now and then [ 37 ] by truces, which both parties felt ashamed to make and took the first opportunity of breaking, was really continuous and internecine. The coasts of Asia Minor had been gradually lost to the Christians ; the coasts of Egypt were to some extent open to reprisals. The fact that the coast of Syria and Palestine afforded so few harbours had, when once the fortified harbour of Acre had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the effect of removing the seat of war to the Asiatic and Egyptian coasts. That was the deliberate opinion of King Edward I, who had ruled that Egypt must be the first point of attack, then Palestine, and then Constantinople. Hence the two attacks on Damietta in 1219 and 1249. Now, after a long period of defence, the Christians took the initiative. The leaders and fighters in all this from 1308 to 1523 were the Knights of Rhodes, but Cyprus was very frequently the head-quarters and source of supplies, and the Western pilgrims were not chary of labour, blood, or treasure. In all the great achievements of the time too some English pilgrims were associated. The single exploit however of King Hugh's reign wars a descent on Smyrna in 1344. John of Biandra, Grand Prior of Lombardy, the head of the expedition, made himself master of the citadel ; and Smyrna remained in the hands of the knights until the close of the century. The King of Cyprus had contributed a contingent towards the fleet, but, except by weakening the Saracen power a little, he obtained no immediate benefit for his state ^. The great plague of 1 349 fell with especial fatality on Cyprus ; only one castle, that of Dieudamour, was safe for the king to dwell in ; and the island got such a reputation for unwholesome air that the trade almost ceased. The Frank population especially diminished. In 1349 the traveller, Ludolf of Suchen, described the ^ Paoli, Cod. Dipl. Ord. S. Joh. ii. 93, gives a commission from the Pope to the Archbishop of Candia to recover from the King of Cyprus, the Grand-Master of Rhodes and the Doge of Venice, the money covenanted for the defence of Smyrna. [ 38 ] barons of Cyprus as the richest in the world. After the plague Hugh had to recruit the ranks of the nobles by conferring titles on the merchant class. The succours sought in Europe were only scantily afforded. The King of Armenia cried louder and got more sympathy than the King of Cyprus. Still some brave men went out to the East. It is at least to this period that we have to refer the pilgrimage and warlike exploits of Henry of Lancaster, the great duke-palatine and father-in-law of John of Gaunt. He, according to his biographer Capgrave, about the year 1351 made his grand tour, and fought not only in Prussia, where he went first, but also in Rhodes, Cyprus and the East, ending his military education with a campaign in Granada. William Lord Roos of Hamlake died in 1352, either in Palestine or in Cyprus, on a more distinctly religious pilgrimage : to 1357 we have referred our last glimpse of the English order and their church at Nicosia. In 1352 Henry Lord Percy left by will 1000 marks sterling in florins of Florence for his son Henry to make the pilgrimage. But the French war in the West, and the struggles of the Venetians with the Genoese, prevented anything like national or united expe- ditions. In the midst of turmoil King Hugh died in 1359, and was buried in the Blackfriars' church at Nicosia. His eldest son, Guy, prince of Galilee and constable of Cyprus, had died before him, leaving a son, Hugh of Lusignan. He on his grandfather's death went into the West to obtain some support in his claim on the crown, which, owing to the fact that representation was not allowed by the laws of Cyprus, failed to obtain recognition. This is that Hugh of Cyprus whom the Pope in 1360 made sena- tor of Rome, and who really ruled there from January to August 1 36 1. He has been confounded by some of the Cypriot his- torians with his grandfather, who accordingly is made to abdicate and die at Rome. Hugh, having failed to find employment for his military genius at Rome, resigned the senatorship, and we hear no more of him ^ ^ Gregorovius, Gesch. d. St. Rom., vi. 393 ; Theiner, Diplom. S. Sedis, ii. 391. [ 39 ] The crown of Cyprus had been secured by Hugh IV to his second son Peter, whom he had had crowned, before his death, at Nicosia. Peter, with apparently some characteristics of genius, had several more or less allied to insanity. He had made a vow of slaughter against all Mussulmans generally, and, for the purpose of keeping it, wore his naked sword hung round his neck. Our acquaintance with him is largely due to Froissart, who follows his exploits with some minuteness ; but we have a more valuable record in the work written by Philip de Mazzeriis, chancellor of Cyprus, on the life of the legate Peter Thomas, whose period of activity nearly coincides with the reign of King Peter, 1361-- 1369 ^ Peter Thomas was a native of Guienne, a born subject of Edward HI, and was probably instrumental personally in creating the interest felt in England and Guienne in the plans of the King of Cyprus. He crowned Peter at Famagosta, and made an attempt to bring over the Greek population of Cyprus to the Roman obedience. The first exploit of King Peter was the voyage across the enchanted gulf to Satalia, stnd the capture of the place, where, as Froissart tells us, he slew without excep- tion all the inhabitants of both sexes whom he found there. In this expedition he was assisted not only by the Catalans and the fleet of Rhodes, but by an English force, or a force under an English knight, whom the Italian historians name Robert of Toulouse ^, and describe as sent into Armenia to demand tribute from the princes. If Robert of Toulouse was engaged in the sack of Satalia, we must hope for our national credit's sake, that he was only an Englishman by courtesy, a Knight of Rhodes of the langue of England, which would contain knights drawn from the continental estates of the Plantagenets. Having fleshed his maiden sword at Satalia, King Peter set out on a mission west- ward, a general canvass of Christendom. Having gone by way ^ Acta Sanctorum Boll. Jan, ii. 995-1023. ^ The name is variously given : Dulaurier reads it Lusugnan ; it also appears as Julassan, which looks like a corruption of an English name. [ 40 ] of Rhodes to Venice, the legate, making known the approach of the king, appHed for succour to the '' communitates, dominos et tyrannos " of Lombardy, and then passed on to Avignon. In March 1363, King Peter himself reached Avignon, where the Pope gladly received him, and determined to preach a new Crusade, of which King John of France, who had just emerged from his prison in England, should be the leader. After settling this, the king went to Prague, where he saw the emperor Charles IV, and so to Juliers, Brussels and Bruges. Every- where he was received with suppers and tournaments, in both of which he seems to have played his part. Whilst he was enjoying himself, the legate was negotiating, and it was deter- mined that the Crusade under King John should start from Marseilles in the following March. Froissart follows the move- ments of King Peter through Picardy to Calais, and on to London. At London he was well entertained ; Queen Philippa made him handsome presents ; King Edward gave him a ship named the Catharine. The mayor, Henry Picard, gave him a dinner, and allowed him to win fifty marks at play : but as the poor king did not lose with a good grace, the mayor gave him his money back again. Of substantial aid he got little ; and Edward was not liberal even with promises ; he himself was too old to go, but his sons and nobles might. Peter went ; back therefore to France. Before he went he was robbed by some English highwaymen ; as however Edward paid all his expenses, he was probably no great loser. King John had during this time returned to England, where he took part in the festivities, but died soon after, in April 1364, thus putting an end to one part of the great design ; and one of Peter's first acts after returning through Guienne to Paris, was to attend King John's funeral. May 7, 1364, and the coronation of his successor. He seems then to have revisited the emperor and the kings of Hungary and Poland, a route which hindered him from reaching Venice until the legate had left. The legate had been called away to Cyprus to settle a quarrel between the [ 41 ] Genoese and King Peter's officers. Peter appeared at Venice rather forlorn ; but he had obtained the support of some EngUsh lords, one of whom, the Earl of Warwick, must, If the traditions of the Beauchamps are to be trusted, have gone on before him ; for in the great battle in Turkey, fought Nov. i, 1364, he took prisoner a son of the King of Lithuania, whom he brought back to England and made a Christian. Two other Englishmen of distinction are known to have followed Peter ; John Lord Grey of Codnor, and a knight of the house of Stapylton, who had been especially Impressed by the virtues of the legate. Having got together as many volunteers as he could, and a considerable fleet. King Peter sailed from Venice and joined the fleet of the Hospitallers. The great stroke to be made was the capture of Alexandria. This was effected with no small blood- shed and very rich spoils. Alexandria taken, the next object was to strengthen the fortifications and make It the head-quarters of a Crusade. But here the English auxiliaries objected. There can be no doubt that the story Is true, for it Is from the pen of the legate himself : they refused even to stay all night In Alexandria, and having conspired with a certain prince, whose name the legate feels bound to keep secret, set sail for Cyprus. They sent word home too that the city was only half taken ^ It was a great disappointment to the ardent crusaders ; but no doubt the English lords who had had experience In foreign war- fare saw that Alexandria was untenable, and the season, for It was now the loth of October, 1365, was too far advanced. The failure of the Crusade was bitterly commented on by Petrarch, who in a letter to Boccaccio writes, at the time, in the severest way of the greediness and irresolution of the Transalplnes ^, ^ " Recesserunt Anglici qui videbantur fortiores, facta conspiratione cum principe cujus ex parentela et dolosa sequela nomen tacere debeo ;" P. de Mazz. AA. SS. 1. c. p. 1016. ^ " Siquidem Petrus Cypri rex Alexandriam cepit in Egypto, magnum opus et me- morabile nostraeque religionis in immensum amplificandae fundamentum ingens, si quantum ad capiendam tantum ad servandam urbem animi fuisset ; qui certe non defuit, ut fama, nisi comitatus ejus ex transalpinis maximc gentibus collectus, meliori- c; [ 42 ] and many years after laments, in an epistle to Philip de Mazzeriis, the loss to Christendom, and the wretched effect produced, by the failure, on the character and fate of the king \ The English lords seem to have stayed sometime longer in Cyprus : the legate died at Famagosta in January, 1366, and they brought back to England the biography by Philip the Chancellor, which has furnished the most certain details of the story. After the Alexandrian expedition the Venetians, whose commerce was suffering, prevailed on Peter to treat for a peace with Egypt, which was to establish Cypriot consulates and reduce the customs in the ports of the Levant ; but the attempt failed. The next year, with the Genoese and the Hospitallers, he ravaged the Syrian coast, but again had to make peace. He then visited Rome in search of succour, and returned finally to Cyprus in September 1368. The rest of King Peter's life was very wretched : he had left his queen during his long visit to the West, and she had proved faithless : he retaliated on the nobles who had been her favourites, and gave rein to his cruelty and lasciviousness. If he were not mad, as seems most probable, he was desperate ; and his family took the lead in getting rid of him. He was assassinated by a body of nobles, who acted with the concurrence of his brother John, the prince of Antioch, on the i6th of January, 1369. His wife was Eleanor of Aragon ; and it was this connexion, no doubt, that gave him a higher place than his predecessors had enjoyed in the estimation of the Western kings. Peter H, who succeeded him, was a boy of thirteen ; his uncle John acted as regent. Peter reigned till 1382. He avenged his father's death by murdering his uncle in 1375. His reign witnessed a fatal rupture between the Venetians and Genoese, which accelerated the fate of Cyprus. The representatives of bus semper ad principia rerum quam ad exitus, ilium in medio praestantissimi operis deserentes, ut qui pium regem non pietate sed cupiditate sequentes, collectis spoliis abiere piique voti impotem avari voti compotes fecere ; " Petrarch, Opp. p. 843 ; Ep. Senil. lib. 8. ep. 8. _ ^ lb. Lit. 13. ep. 2: " Petrus rex Cypri, indigni vir exitus sed sacrae memoriae nisi," &c. [ 43 ] the two republics quarrelled about precedence at the corona- tion : the court decided in favour of Venice. This was compli- cated by a quarrel between the queen-mother and the prince of Antioch. The Genoese took up arms and overran the whole island. The boy king was taken prisoner, and to secure his ransom had to pledge Famagosta to the Genoese. This great city and the port, which Sir John Mandeville thought the finest in the world, was permanently lost to the kings, for it was subse- quently made over to the Genoese altogether in order to obtain the release of James, the king's uncle and successor, who had been detained as a hostage by the admiral Fregoso. The particular interest which attaches to the struggle of Venice and Genoa, a struggle which only ended when the Levant was left to the Turks, and was one great cause of the abridgment of Christendom at the close of the middle ages, and the glorious exploits of the knights of Rhodes, however close to our subject, are far too wide and engrossing topics to be discussed inciden- tally. But the fate of Armenia, where the very succession of the kings is very obscure, demands a word. The first Latin king, according to the native historians, was John of Lusignan, also called Constantine, who reigned only a year ; his brother, Guy of Lusignan, who succeeded in 1343, was connected by mar- riage with the Cantacuzenes, and even addressed Edward III as cousin \ Both the brothers were little else than adventurers. Guy reigned for only three years. In 1347 his successor Con- stantius, or Constantine, was, through an envoy of the same name, collecting money in England by virtue of a brief issued by Clement V P. He seems to be identical with Constantine, who, in 1 351, was on the throne ; in his favour also alms were collected in England. He died in 1 361. After an interval of three years, during which the crown was offered to Peter of Cyprus, and an unknown fourth king may possibly have reigned, Leo V appears on the throne in 1365. He had a hard fight for it; from 13 71 to ^ Foed. ii. 1220. ^ lb. 1234 ; iii. 103. G 2 [ 44 ] 1373 he was lost to his people, concealed In a mountain fortress where he had been obliged to take refuge. A new king was sought for, a husband for the supposed widow, and Gregory XI offered the crown to Otto of Brunswick. He, however, preferred to marry Johanna of Naples, and Leo emerged from seclusion. But with little better prospects ; taken prisoner by the Egyptian sultan in 1375, he was released in 1382, to be thenceforth a wanderer and a pensioner on the Western princes. After his release he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and went thence to Avignon and so to Spain. In Spain he obtained a provision. King John of Castille gave him three lordships, one of them Madrid ; and as lord of Madrid King Leo granted a charter to the burghers of the town. But he did not stay in Spain. In 1384 he was in France offering his services as a mediator between Charles VI and Richard II. His offers were not welcome to the English lords, who then held the king in tutelage. They refused him in the first instance his passport — said that ■ though he proffered peace he only wanted money; he was an illusor, and they would have nothing to do with him. Notwith- standing this he not only obtained a safe-conduct but a permit for a cargo of French wine to be brought to England for him ; ^ he made an eloquent speech before the king and council at the ji palace of Westminster ; and received a pension of ^1000 a year; i the first instalment of which was paid into his own hands in gold nobles. He had a passport again in 1392, a few months before his death. His pension was still paid in 1391, in the fifteenth year of the unlucky king : at that time Leo, it was said, had been driven from his dominions ; the pension was to be continued until he regained them. Fortunately for the English exchequer, it was not required, for according to the epitaph of King Leo in the Church of the Celestines at Paris, the very noble and very excellent Prince Lyon of Lusignan, fifth Latin king of Armenia, rendered his soul to God Nov. 29, 1393. He left no legitimate issue, and his claims devolved on his cousin of Cyprus. The name of the kingdom of Armenia was thus familiar in [ 45 ] English ears at this time. EngHsh sympathy had not flagged during these years. In 1383 another lord de Roos, Thomas, son of the lord who died in 1352, had set out for the East, but died before he left England ; his son John fulfilled the vow, and having reached Cyprus, died at Paphos in 1393. A large party of English visitors had appeared there in that year. James I, the uncle and successor of Peter II, reigned from 1382 to 1398, and was on excellent terms with England. There is a letter addressed by him to Richard II, in July 1393 ^ in w^hich he acknowledges the receipt of the epistle of com- mendation brought by Lord de Roos, and tells him that it was needless, because all the King of England's friends were wel- come. He thanks him too for the message which he had received by his most noble cousin. Sir Henry Percy. We learn from this that Hotspur had made Cyprus a part of his great tour ; and, as the same year is fixed for the pilgrimage of Henry of Bolingbroke, we may surmise that they came in company. Henry of Bolingbroke, having sailed in July from Lynn, went by way of Prussia, Poland, Hungary, and Venice* to Jerusalem ; on his return he visited Cyprus, and so back by Italy and Bohemia^. King James was a kindly old man, but much tied up between the Venetians and the Genoese. He had accumu- lated three crowns; he had received that of Jerusalem at Nico- sia, as Famagosta was now lost; in 1393 he received that of Armenia, which he handed on to his successors. James had been a hostage or prisoner at Genoa when the Cyprian crown fell to him ; he had been sent thither when the perfidious Admiral Fregoso had seized the island ; and at Genoa his son. King Janus or John II, was born. The reign of Janus, thirty-four years long, was one sad struggle, with the Genoese on the one hand and the Turks on the other. The main features of the story are these. ^ Raine, Extracts from Northern Registers, p. 425. ^ Capgrave, Illustrious Henries, p. 100. [ 46 ] King Janus, with a very natural ambition, stimulated more- over by hereditary and personal enmity, made it the first object to recover Famagosta from Genoa, and for this end, in the year 1402, prepared a force and fleet to besiege the Genoese there. The days of Genoese greatness were over. In 1396 the Doge Adorno had submitted to Charles VI of France, and Genoa had become a F'rench dependency. Fama- gosta had been won by the Fregosi, the opposite faction to that of Adorno, but the French were, as usual, ready to maintain their claim to conquests under whatever regime they were acquired. On the alarm of war in Cyprus, they sent Marshal Boucicault with a small fleet into the Levant. King Janus prepared for resistance, but the Grand-M aster of Rhodes, Philebert of Naillac, interposed as mediator, and a collision was avoided ; the poor king had to pay 150,000 ducats for the expenses of the expedition. Peace was however made, and both parties turned their arms against the Mahometan neigh- bours. The Genoese ravaged the Syrian coast; King Janus plundered the shore of Egypt. Booty was abundant, but the I inexorable vengeance of the Sultans was aroused ; the ravaging ] of Syria ended in the loss of the last fragments of Armenian sovereignty ; and the plundering of Egypt drew down the ' Mameluke Sultan on Cyprus. Truces and treaties were made, but were kept on neither side. In the midst of war Cyprus was again, for the third time since the Black Death, devastated by the plague; and the Sultan saw his opportunity; in 141 7 he took and wrecked Limasol. In 1420 he swore the entire destruction of the Cypriots, and prepared for a final conquest. Four years after, during which King Janus, although he con- tinued his policy of piratic expeditions, had made scarcely any preparation for defence, he attacked the island, including Cypriots and Genoese in a common purpose of extirpation. Famagosta was taken and pillaged. Two years later the king was defeated and taken prisoner, and Nicosia was sacked. The king's imprisonment lasted fifteen months ; during which an [ 47 ] attempt was made by an Italian, Sforza Pallavicino, to seize the government. In this he was defeated by the Queen Charlotte of Bourbon, who sent against him Carion of Ibelin, one of the last. If not the last of that great house, of whom any- thing historical is recorded. Ransomed at an enormous cost, Janus returned in 1427, but thoroughly broken in spirit and despairing of the fortunes of his house. One of his last acts was to marry his daughter Anne to Lewis of Savoy, a connexion which, in the next generation helped to place the nominal crowns of Cyprus, Armenia and Jerusalem, among the honours of that aspiring house. He died In 1432, and with him the last sunset gleams of Cypriot glory vanished. The native historians date the beginning of the downfall to the murder of King Peter In 1369 ; and if that date be taken we must allow that Petrarch, who thought that that event determined the loss of the East, was gifted with somewhat of prophetic spirit. But I think that, unfortunate as that event was foi» the Lusignan house, the doom of the Levantine principalities was already sealed. The great plague had swept off the old acclimatised Franks, especially those nobles who, like the lords of Ibelin, had Increased and multiplied in the land. With all their faults these nobles were bona fide Crusaders ; men who, like the first champions, were ready to cast In their lot in a Promised Land, and not, like the later adventurers, anxious merely to get all they could out of it, to make their fortunes. They were swept away. Then there was the antagonism of Genoa and Venice, a piece of history which, so long as history Is read in books written in direct hostility to Venice, will be read two ways. Genoa had from the very early Crusades been the ally of France, as Pisa had been the ally of England. Venice had succeeded to the political connexions of Pisa ; the tower of the English at Acre abutted on the ward of the Venetians and the Hospitallers; not that during these ages the English national power was of any weight in the Mediterranean, but a good deal of national piety and knight-errantry found expression in pilgrimages which now were I [ 48 ] conducted by way of Venice, In alliance with the Teutonic knights and the Hospitallers. The final acquisition of Cyprus by Venice, and the extremely unfair way in which it was acquired, seem to have afforded the grounds for supposing that the republic had long coveted the island, and that her policy had been for several generations directed to that end. This crooked policy is contrasted by the hostile writers with the open violence of the Genoese exemplified in the war of 1374, ^^^ the seizure of Famagosta. But I confess that I see little to choose between the two, and that what little there is seems in favour of Venice. Neither republic looked at the defence of Christendom as the great thing to be sought. The trading interest, or terri- torial ambition complicated with trading interest, was the main thing. If Venice profited most by the common policy, it is not so much a proof of previous diplomacy as a result of her longer tenure of power. That the Venetians how^ever had an equal share with the Genoese in weakening the Frank kingdom it is impossible to prove : the Genoese hold on Famagosta was a fatal if not a mortal wound. But still more powerful agencies were at work. The hands of Christendom were paralysed, and the barbarians were gaining strength and unity. The close of the fourteenth century, an exceptional but a very critical era, seems to show us all nations, all royalties, churches, religions, civilised and barbarous, in a cauldron or a whirlpool from which there was very small chance of emerging whole. A madman on the throne of France, an impotent drunkard claiming the crown of the Caesars, a frantic absolutist overthrowing the constitution of England ; the see of S. Peter divided between two, three, four Popes ; the Emperor of Constantinople begging money openly in the courts of the West ; the three barbarian powers pitted against each other — providentially, we may say, for who could have resisted their united force — the Ottoman sultan the prisoner of Tamerlane ; the Mameluke sultan only sustained in independence by the contest between the Turks and the Tartars. Yet Europe does I [ 49 ] emerge ; the battle of Nicopolls puts an end to the Crusades ; the retreat of the Tartars enables the Ottomans to recover their ground; Byzantium has a respite of half a century, and Egypt of more than a hundred years of Mameluke tyranny. It takes a century more to constitute the great national factors of modern history. But out of the whirlpool little states like Cyprus do not emerge ; and after the death of King Janus, the causes that were at work worked quickly and steadily. The immediate cause of the break-up was connected with the same sort of religious disputes which, after occupying half the century in councils and debates, left the Byzantine empire defenceless before the Ottomans. King John III, who succeeded in 1432, took for his second wife, in 1435, Helena, the daughter of the despot of the Peloponnese, Theodore Paleologus. The house of Lusignan had been hitherto, as a matter of necessity, devotedly Catholic ; :the house of Paleologus was devotedly orthodox ; Cyprus was a I Catholic kingdom with an orthodox population; a Latin king iwith a Greek people ; the Latin Church was rich, and the Greek (Church was not poor, but the political power was* engrossed by tthe former. Helena would not see this. She determined, if she [Could, to make Cyprus orthodox ; she, through her husband, who ^was a weak and vicious man, refused the papal nominee to the ; archbishopric of Nicosia, imprisoned him, and was accused of ] poisoning him. The grand-master of Rhodes came in, as usual, j in the part of a peace-maker, and prevailed on the king to receive the prelate; and soon after, in 1458, both Helena and her hus- iband died. But the quarrel had shaken the tottering kingdom ; ithe grand Caraman, the Turcoman ruler of Caramania, took the / opportunity of these quarrels to seize Corycus, the last Frank stronghold of Armenia. The Cilician and Syrian begs with the I Egyptian sultan formed a league for the conquest of Cyprus, I which was foiled by the Rhodian galleys, or the Larin kingdom would have succumbed before the capture of Constantinople. The end was clearly coming, and it was not now a question between Venetians and Genoese, but between Christian and IT [ 50 ] Moslem, which should take the island as a derelict. The royal house was nearly extinct. Charlotte of Lusignan, the only legitimate child of John III, succeeded him in 1458. She was the widow of John of Portugal, prince of Antioch, who had been poisoned by the creatures of Helena in 1457. She married, in 1459, her cousin Lewis count of Geneva, of the house of Savoy, who was crowned the same year. Her bastard brother, James, archbishop-elect of Nicosia, the son of a Greek lady, whose nose Queen Helena had bit off, was disappointed of the succession, and turned traitor. He aspired to the vainglory of sovereignty, and, having done homage to the sultan of Egypt, invaded Cyprus. For four years Queen Charlotte was besieged at Cherin ; in 1464 she fled to Rhodes, and thence to Italy, where, in 1485, she made over her rights and the three crowns she wore to the house of Savoy. James II, a prince of some power, governed or com- manded in Cyprus from 1464 to 1473, and to some extent justi- fied his usurpation by taking Famagosta from the Genoese, but his reign was one long series of conspiracies. He was assassin- ated two years after his marriage with Caterina Cornaro (in 147 1), who bore a son after her husband's death. This was King James III, who died w^hen he was two years old. The Venetians held that the rights of the infant king devolved on his mother, and in her name governed Cyprus. On the details of the Venetian title I cannot now enter ; the whole history has been accepted on the evidence of the enemies of the republic, whose story is briefly this. In order to qualify Caterina for a foreign marriage she was declared the adopted daughter of S. Mark, and her husband the son-in-law of the republic. The republic, anxious for the succession, poisoned the son-in-law, who in his will entailed the crown on his children, posthumous and illegitimate, with remainder to the house of Lusignan. But this was set aside by the connivance of Caterina with the Venetians, who, after they had ruled Cyprus for fifteen years in her name, obtained from her a renunciation of her rights in favour of the republic; this was done in 1489; and then, I [ 51 ] formally as well as actually, Cyprus became a Venetian depen- dency, tributary to the Sultan of Egypt. Caterina herself retired to the Venetian territory, where she lived at the villa Paradiso in the Trevisan mountains, painted by Titian and patronising the scholars of the renaissance, until the year of her death, 15 10. After eighty-one years spent under Venice, Cyprus was con- quered by the Turks in 1570. From the date then of Caterina's surrender, and indeed from the death of King James, the history of the island falls into the mass of that wonderful Venetian history of which we read so little, but which must contain so many lessons, and so many warnings for a nation like our own. The titles of the several royalties which thus came to an end were claimed as titles easily may be claimed by other competitors : the Dukes of Savoy called themselves Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem from the date of Queen Charlotte's settlement; the Kings of Naples had called themselves Kings of Jerusalem since the transfer of the rights of Mary of Antioch, in 1277, to Charles of Anjou ; and the title has run on to the present day in the houses of Spain and Austria, the Dukes of Lorraine and the successive dynasties of Naples. The kingdom of Armenia must, I think, have been dropped ; but the Savoyard claim to Cyprus was held as an offence to the Venetian re- public, a point of ceremonial which, in the seventeenth century, put a stop for thirty years to any diplomatic intercourse between Venice and Savoy. The successors of Richard I never put in a claim to the reversion ; the quartering of the arms of Cyprus, which is said to appear on the tomb of Queen Elizabeth, being no doubt a part of the bearings derived from her great-grand- mother, Jacquetta of Luxemburg, whose daughter, Elizabeth Wydville, carried the blood of the house of Brienne and the Dukes of Athens into the line of York \ The Kings of Sardinia 1 The descent is a long one, and there is a question whether the arms are those of Cyprus at all. But certain claims to represent the elder house of Lusignan had come into the family of Luxemburg. Jacquetta was daughter of the Count Peter of S. Pol, whose mother. Marguerite of Enghien, carried the representation of the Counts of H 2 [ 52 ] continued to strike money as Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, ' until they became Kings of Italy. There is no recognised King of Cyprus now, but there are two or three Kings of Jerusalem; and the Cypriot title is claimed, I believe, by some obscure branch of the house of Lusignan, under the will of King James II. So much for the archaeology of the question. The interest of England in the affairs of the Levant did not come to an end with the surrender of Cyprus to Venice ; for the Knights of Rhodes maintained the defence of Christendom for half a century longer, and England was a close friend of the order until Henry VIII confiscated its estates. The Turcopolier of the Knights Hospitallers was always an Englishman ; he was the commander of the light infantry of the order. I have found no list of the Turcopoliers ; but in the fifteenth century we have the names of Peter Holt, Thomas Launcleve, or Langcliffe, Hugh Middleton, and John Kendall ; all of them would seem North-countrymen. In the last century a medal of John Kendal was found in Knaresborough Forest, and it would seem that he was a member of the family which was particularly marked by its devotion to S. Wilfrid of Ripon. The last known brother of the Order of S. Thomas of Acre, Richard of Tickhill, must also have been a Yorkshire man. The Cypriot king also had a Turcopolier, who, in 1357, was an Englishman. But these are trifles. I said in my first lecture that I should draw no moral or Brienne to the Luxembnrgs. Mary, daughter of Hugh I, of Cyprus, and his queen, married Walter IV, of Brienne, father of Hugh, and grandfather of Walter V, duke of Athens ; Walter V had a daughter Isabel, who married Walter IV, of Enghien, father of Lewis, Count of Brienne and Conversano, and grandfather of Margaret, who was the heiress of Enghien. She married John of Luxemburg, and was mother of Peter, Count of S. Pol. As a claim to the throne of Cyprus, this descent was worthless ; but it was a royal descent, and, after the extinction of the Lusignans and the house of Antioch- Lusignan, might be thought to have a value of its own. Queen Elizabeth, however, was in no sense the heiress of S. Pol, much less of Lusignan. [ 53 ] political lesson from the history of Cyprus and Armenia. No lesson can safely be drawn from it, if by lesson we mean absolute instruction or warning that it would be foolish to despise. But it does suggest some generalisations and prompt some questions. We can see that the loss of the Levantine states in the middle ages, that is, the cessation of the defence of Christendom against Mahometanism, was mainly caused by the jealousies of the Christian powers themselves : the de- termination of the Venetians and the Genoese to set their re- spective commercial profits above all other considerations. Whilst the Teutonic knights were fighting in the North and the Rhodians in the South, Cyprus, the storehouse of Palestine, was left a prey to the evils out of which the Genoese and Venetians could make their market. It was so in the age that followed : the alliance between Francis I and Solyman paralysed all action by which Charles V and Ferdinand I would have defended the provinces on the Danube and Transylvania, and suffered the Turkish dominion to grow almost unimpeded, until the world began to think that the Turks had a vested 'interest in the lands they devastated. But the questions which arise are not easily stated, and not easily answered. How can the East be redeemed by the acclimatisation of Northern races ? are the Northern races the only races that can redeem the East, and if so, how are they to be saved from the evils, moral, intellectual, and political, which acclimatisation seems invariably to bring with it ? Are the Eastern races to be redeemed at all, or is that part of the aspiration of the Christian Church and of social philanthropists to be a vain dream ? Is the task of empires to conquer or to colonise ; the task of colonies to extirpate or to develope ? Is a commercial or a military policy the surest agent of civilisation ? Can a worn-out nation be revived and refreshed and recruited by a bracing treatment ? can it be revived at all ? Does the difference between European and Asiatic history consist in the vitality of the historic nations in Europe and the inexhaustibleness of the hive in Asia ? If not. [ 54 ] how is Europe to treat Asia, so that the march of civilisation may affect the lands in which the stream of history seems to have long been stayed ? if it is so, how shall the East be rescued from the successive waves of barbarism which may be now impending, and how kept alive when those successive impulses are exhausted ? Small as our subject was, it was a part of that which touches all, the world's government and the long patience of Providence. " And I said, it is mine own Infirmity, but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most Highest." 4>*^^^^. fM ^, r^ ?<^'. /^, ^^"4^ d .^ %*i?!