Christendom, both from Spain, Egypt, and Syria; and thus the Crusaders
were, indeed, rewarded according to their deeds. They had fancied that
they were bound to vindicate the possession of the earth for Him to whom
they believed the earth belonged. He showed them--or rather He has
shown us, their children--that He can vindicate His own dominion better
far than man can do it for Him; and their cruel and unjust aim was
utterly foiled. That was not the way to make men know or obey Him.
They took the sword, and perished by the sword. But the truly noble
element in them--the element which our hearts and reasons recognise and
love, in spite of all the loud words about the folly and fanaticism of
the Crusades, whensoever we read "The Talisman" or "Ivanhoe"--the
element of loyal faith and self-sacrifice--did not go unrequited. They
learnt wider, juster views of man and virtue, which I cannot help
believing must have had great effect in weakening in their minds their
old, exclusive, and bigoted notions, and in paving the way for the great
outburst of free thought, and the great assertion of the dignity of
humanity, which the fifteenth century beheld. They opened a path for
that influx of scientific knowledge which has produced, in after
centuries, the most enormous effects on the welfare of Europe, and made
life possible for millions who would otherwise have been pent within the
narrow bounds of Europe, to devour each other in the struggle for room
and bread.

But those Arabic translations of Greek authors were a fatal gift for
Egypt, and scarcely less fatal gift for Bagdad. In that Almagest of
Ptolemy, in that Organon of Aristotle, which the Crusaders are said to
have brought home, lay, rude and embryotic, the germs of that physical
science, that geographical knowledge which has opened to the European
the commerce and the colonisation of the globe. Within three hundred
years after his works reached Europe, Ptolemy had taught the Portuguese