be still farther extended. He assures his readers that he shall be but little satisfied with the execution of his own book, if it merely gratifies their curiosity to know what has already taken place; without leading them to make active exertions on behalf of the suffering and indigent part of the community, and to forward any measures which may appear yet more conducive to their relief than those that have been already devised.

With regard to mendicants, nearly the same regulations' have been adopted in France as in this country for their suppression. The metropolis no longer swarms with sturdy beggars; and in the provinces, wherever mendicity-societies have been established, the old and the maimed have been maintained, and the idle have been compelled to work. The law directs that

"All persons who are found begging, in a place which has a public establishment for preventing the necessity of begging, shall be punished with imprisonment from three to six months, and, at the expiration of their term, shall be taken to the mendicant-establishment. In places where no such establishment exists, healthy beggars shall be punished with imprisonment from one to three months; and, if they are taken when out of their own district, the imprisonment shall extend from six months to two years. All beggars, even the disabled, who make use of threats, or who may have entered, without leave from the proprietor or people of the house, either into a habitation or into a neighbouring inclosure, or wwho pretend to be wounded or infirm, or who beg in a party, (un-less they are husband and wife, father or mother, and their young children, or a blind man and his leader,) shall be punished with imprisonment from six months to two years. All beggars, or vagabonds, who may have been seized or found concealed in any way whatever, either bearing arms, although they may neither have used nor threatened to use them, or provided with files, picklocks, or other such instruments, whether to commit robbery or to perpetrate any other crime, or to break into houses, shall be punished with imprisonment from two to five years. All vagabond-beggars, who are discovered with effects on them above the value of 100 francs, and who cannot explain how they obtained them, shall be punished with imprisonment from six months to two years. All beggars and vagabonds, who have committed an act of violence on any body, shall be punished with solitary confinement, with the addition of greater punishments, if necessary, on account of the nature or the circumstances of the injury.

"All vagabonds and beggars, who have committed any crime for which they are liable to compulsory labour for a time, shall receive such punishment in addition. The penalties enacted against individuals carrying false certificates, false passports, or false papers of the road, shall be always enforced to the highest degree, when applied to mendicants and beggars. Vagabonds and begMm 2

gars,

gars, who have suffered the penalties named above, shall remain afterward at the disposal of government."

Baron DUPIN complains that, in several of the provinces, imaginary obstacles are allowed to prevent the establishment of mendicity-societies; and that this law does not produce all' the benefit which might be expected from it, because the beggar is able to say that he is willing to work but no work can be provided for him.

The public situation which the author holds, as Conseiller Maitre à la Cour des Comptes,' has enabled him to enter into very minute details of the revenues of the different charitable establishments; and, on the whole, the volume before us contains a body of information at once minute and valuable, and such as must prove highly acceptable to those who are interested in promoting the welfare of the lower orders in France, or even in England. The account of the different hospitals in Paris is written in a manner particularly clear and succinct; but it is too long to be extracted, and we dare not venture to make an abridgment.

ART. XII. Histoire des Croisades, &c.; i. e. A History of the Crusades, Fourth Part, containing the Two Expeditions of Saint Louis, the Wars of the Christians against the Turks, and general Remarks on the Result of the Crusades. Vols. IV. and V. Also, the Bibliography of the Crusades, containing an Analysis of all the Chronicles of the East and West which treat of those Events; in Two Volumes, forming Vols. VI. and VII. By M.. MICHAUD, of the French Academy. 8vo. Paris. 1822. Imported by Treuttel and Co. Pric 21. 2s.

M. MICHAUD has at length completed his laborious history of the Crusades. We have already noticed the earlier parts of his work with qualified approbation; and a perusal of these later volumes confirms us in the sentence which we then passed, on the abundance of the author's industry, on his deficiency in judgment, and on his want of those enlarged views of human nature and of society, which are absolutely necessary to qualify any writer to appreciate justly the benefits and the mischiefs resulting from these Quixotic enterprizes of the dark ages. It is true that at the beginning of the last century, and particularly in France, it was very much the fashion to consider the Crusades as productive of unmixed evil; and the writers of the day thought

10

* See Monthly Review, N. S. vol. lxxi. p. 493.; vol. lxxvii. p. 520.; vol. lxxxvii. p. 519.

that

that they could not sufficiently expose the arts and imposture of the Popes, and the delusion of the general body of Christians, without proving at the same time that this warfare of bigotry and infatuation recoiled with unqualified evil on those who commenced it. M. MICHAUD seems anxious, in his holy zeal, to go into the other extreme; and, as many advantages certainly did accrue from these circumstances to literature and to the arts, though such benefits were little connected with the object of the adventure, or within the contemplation of the adventurers, he chuses to fancy that it is the mere obstinacy of modern philosophy to characterize these holy wars as mad in their projection and absurd in principle. Perhaps, indeed, he considers himself as bound by the rules of his knighthood, (as belonging to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and of the Holy Sepulchre,) and justified by the spirit of certain parties and the revival of other orders in France in the present day, to maintain that infidels may be edified by the sword; and that Christianity permits the extermination of those perverse beings who will not listen to self-evident truths, and refuse to be converted.

We know not whether it be the spirit of worldly hypocrisy, or the spirit of religious enthusiasm, or that strange mongrel spirit which is yet without a name in our language but is a compound of the two, and is more prevalent than either of them among political devotees, that has possessed the brain of M. MICHAUD: but so it is that even the last crusade, and the abundant follies of Saint Louis in Egypt, are recorded by him with unaccountable admiration for the wisdom and sanctity of the monarch; and with a sort of indefinite wish that the days in which religion had such a happy influence on the lives and conduct of men, and when popes could govern kings and kings govern subjects as they listed, might once again shine on Europe, and exalt France as the leader of the champions of the faithful. The machinery of the political system, howeyer, has been much altered since the times on which his imagination dwells with so much fondness and regret; and other powers have been brought into the ascendant, to diffuse their influence over great events. The days of crusadism, we hope, are passed away; and the favorite notions of the present author on the supremacy of the Pope, and the mediate agency of legitimate despots, are as obsolete as the congenial dreams of judicial astrology.

"Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus."

The last Crusade, and general reflections on the effects of those expeditions, occupy the fourth and fifth volumes. After having

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having commented with so much frankness on the general bearing of M. MICHAUD's reflections, we have much pleasure in extracting a passage in which it will be seen that, now and then, clearer views of the state of society pressed themselves on his attention. The concluding observations on the circum stances in which Spain was placed, we think, are particularly just. zɔildiqon ni

The glory, which the emperors of Germany acquired by their conquests, was only personal glory, and could not interest the German people. This display of their power had nothing in common with the nation over which they ruled. As soon as this power ceased to be a bond, and a support of the people, they separated themselves from their chiefs, and each sought his safety, or his advancement, in his own strength. This gave rise to a state of things which was more unfortunate perhaps for Germany than the absolute authority of the emperors; for, from the ruins of imperial grandeur arose a number of states, opposed one to another by a variety of laws and a spirit of rivalship. All those ecclesiastical and secular principalities in which a monarchical spirit prevailed, those towns in which a spirit of liberty fermented, and a nobility was animated by the hopes of an aristocracy, could have neither the same interests nor the same views, nor could their efforts be directed towards one common and salutary end.

The Popes, after having destroyed the power of the Emperors, wished to dispose of the broken sceptre of Charlemagne, and offered it to all those who longed to satisfy their vengeance. A crowd of princes was then to be seen, who, protected by the court of Rome, made pretensions to the empire; and the more the num ber of pretenders increased, the more ruinous became the state of the empire. In the midst of these civil dissensions, Germany lost for ever her political union, and in the end lost also her religious union.

In order to judge how difficult it was to put in motion this enormous mass, which was called the German confederacy, it is sufficient to observe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, how numerous were the diets which assembled to deliberate on the war with the Turks, and in which even the actual presence of danger could not make them come to an energetic decision for the safety of Germany.

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50% In each European nation, there was at that time an overwhelming power, or rather authority, which was, as it were, a rallying point; a centre round which a society was formed, and united its strength to defend its political existence. Italy had not, like France and other countries, this inestimable means of preservation. Nothing better proves the state of dissolution in which this rich country was, than the manner in which she endeavored to maintain her independence in the middle ages. That separation into several states, that division of territory, that immense population formed into a thousand parts, all betray the absence of every tie, or of any common centre. Italy included many various people: twenty republics had each their own laws, interests, and history.

These

These perpetual wars with the inhabitants of the same city, these quarrels with the different republics, the constant necessity of calling in strangers to support their cause, the suspicion which fell more on the citizens than on the hired adventurers, all tended to efface the true sentiment of patriotism, and caused even the name. of the Italian nation to be forgotten...

The feudal system was abolished sooner in where: but with the feudal system vanished als in Italy than elsethe antient honor of the valiant, and the virtues of knighthood. In republics de fended by mercenaries, valor, and the generous, sentiments accompanying it, are no longer esteemed. Passion has no longer any curb either in the laws or the opinion of man; and it is in this sad period that we behold burst forth the hatred and vengeance which appear to us hardly probable when represented in our tragedies: nothing as more afflicting than the spectacle of Italy in the fourteenth century; and we may say that Dante had only to look around him for the model of his Hello y d

Society, always ready to dissolve, appeared to have no other spring of action than the violence of party, no other life than dis cord or civil war: there was no guard against licentiousness but tyranny; and against tyranny nothing but the despair of faction, or the poignard of conspirators. As the strength of the greater part of these small states, which filled Italy, was rarely proportioned to their ambition, and as the princes, or the citizens, for the same reason which rendered them weak, were at once deficient in both moderation and courage, they sought their elevation or their safety by any means that treason or perfidy could suggest. Conspiracies, insurrections, and the most odious crimes, appeared jus tifiable, and requisite to support their quarrels, or to satisfy their ambition or their jealousy in a word, morality disappeared, and then was formed that school of politics of which we find the les sons or rather the satires in the work of Macchiavel.

It has been said that the Italians had the first idea of what statesmen call political balance: but we do not think that Italy can claim such an honor for that which is called political balance is not am invention, but the natural resource of weakness which seeks a support. Following the progress of events, we see that this long boasted system became unfortunate for Italy, by inviting thither those conquerors who have made it, even down to our days, the theatre of the most bloody wars. རྩྭ ༥ ༦༦རྫྙྰ % བཝཱ་རྟt

At the time of the Crusades, the cities of Lombardy, and the republics of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice, had attained great, prosperity, derived from the trade with the East which Italy carried on before the Crusades, and which she continued, with all the advantages that were opened to her by trans-marine enterprize,

Finally, these republics, which disputed the empire of the seas, though they occupied only a nook of land in the Mediter-ranean; which had their eyes fixed on Syria, Egypt, and Greece; and which deft to strangers the care of defending their territory, carming their own citizens solely for the protection of their commerce; these mercantile republics were much more fit to enrich

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Italy,