The usual Poojah being now per formed, she was hurried to her doom; and employing the remaining moments of life in blessing her family, and ten derly recommending her child to the care of her mother-in-law, she stepped upon the pile. A scene ensued which I shall never recollect but with horror and indignation. The devotee's fatherin-law, who, throughout the occasion, had shown the most execrable anxiety to close the business, now came forward with a thick rope to tie her down; so that if any attempt was made to escape it should prove unavailable; but by the interference of Mr.

he was frustrated in his design. Determined, however, not to be disappointed, if possible, he next produced two long bamboo poles, and would have fastened these across the pile, but being again prevented, he had recourse to a more infalliable expedient, to which it was not our province to make any objection. He heaped such an unusual weight of heavy logs of wood and faggots on the bodies, as effectually rendered the living as incapable as the dead from ever rising beneath their pressure. In this stage of the ceremony some of the mob cried out, "koon koon, set fire to the pile, light the pile."-This being done, I only remained to witness a catastrophe, that in fictitious tragedy, would have been performed behind the curtain. As soon as the action of the fire caught her body, the strugglings of this unhappy victim in the excruciating agonies of death, amidst the devouring element, would have melted a heart formed of adamant.

Who, within the pale of Christianity, could view this scene, without sighing for the depravity of human nature— who leave it, without lamenting that practices so abominable should be tolerated. Hurkāru.

From the Evening Post.

We are informed that a highly respect able gentleman of this city yesterday sent to Bishop Hobart a check for five hundred dollars, for the use of the Protestant Epis copal Theological School in this State. The late bequest to that institution fur nishes a powerful motive to those who have hitherto hesitated, from doubts as to its success, to aid with those contributions

which will be necessary to its final éstáblishment. The institution is very far from being rich. The individual subscriptions hitherto have indeed been liberal, several of them amounting to 1000; but as from various causes few persons have yet been solicited for contributions, the aggregate of them is very inconsiderable. It is ap prehended also, that the bequest of Mr. Sherred will not equal the original esti mate. It will, indeed, be unfortunate if his bequest should check or diminish those further contributions, which will

be essential to the success of an institution so intimately connected with the best interests of society.

Episcopal Acts:

ON Thursday before Easter, April 19th, the Right Rev. Bishop Hobart held an or dination in Christ Church, in this city, and admitted Messrs. George W. Doane, William Thompson, and Lawson Carter, to the holy order of Deacons. Morning Prayer was conducted by the Rev. George Upfold, M. D. Rector of St. Luke's Church, New-York, and an appropriate exhortation delivered by the Rev. Benjamin T. Onderdonk, an Assistant Minister of Trinity Church, New-York.

On Sunday, the 28th of January, 1821, a new church was consecrated to the wor

ship of Almighty God, in St. Bartholomew's parish, South-Carolina, by the name of Edmondsbury Chapel, by the Right Rev. Dr. Bowen, Bishop of the Diocess. Bartholomew's, being present and assistThe Rev. Henry Anthon, Minister of St. ing. Confirmation was administered at the same time and place.

An ordination was held by the Right Rev. Dr. Bowen, on the 10th of Feb. 1821, at St. Michael's Church, in the city of Charleston, South-Carolina, when William to the holy order of Deacons. H. Mitchell, of Charleston, was admitted

At the consecration of the church in Augusta, Georgia, on the 20th of March last, mentioned in our Journal for April, confirmation was administered to twentyone persons by the Right Rev. Dr. Bowen.

DIED, on the 4th of April, at Norfolk, Virginia, in the 31st year of his age, the Rev. Samuel Low, late rector of Christ Church, in that borough.

In this city, on Saturday afternoon, April 7, in the 69th year of his age, the Rev. William Smith, D. D. a presbyter of the diocess' of Connecticut. Dr. S. was a native of Scotland, and received orders from one of the nonjuring Bishops in that country. He came to the United States soon after the revolution, and exercised his ministry, chiefly, in the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

No. 6.]

The History of the Crusades, for the
Recovery and Possession of the Holy
Land. By Charles Mills.
(Continued from page 135, and concluded.)

ALTHOUGH the possession of the Holy City and sepulchre was the result of the first Crusade, yet this conquest, however honourable to the valour, or valued by the piety of the Crusaders, could contribute little to the security of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem. Other battles must be fought and other victories achieved, to preserve the important prize. When the celebrated battle of Ascalon had completed the consternation and apparent ruin of the Musselman cause, many of the Christian chiefs returned to their native countries. To Godfrey and to Tancred were left the defence of the infant state. Tancred, acting in obedience to the commands of his sovereign, reduced the towns of Galilee, Tiberias, and the towns on the lake of Gennesaret; while Godfrey himself was employed in bringing to submission the Arabs inhabiting the left bank of the Jordan. But after all the conquests of Godfrey and his immediate successors, they found that the crown of Jerusalem was little more than an empty name. The lords of Jaffa, of Tiberias, and of Ramla, scarcely recognized the regal authority; the sovereigns of Tripoli, of Antioch, of Edessa, could be esteemed nothing more than natural, though often insincere allies.

Of the kingdoms, or rather baronies by which Jerusalem was bounded, the two chief were Antioch and Edessa. They were the most formidable barriers against the Saracen power. The first was situated near the river Orontes; the last by the river Euphrates. The lords of these respective cities had always regarded each other with jealousy, VOL. V.

[VOL. V.

The loss of Edessa was the cause of the second great armament of Christendom against the Infidel world. Eugenius the Third then filled the Papal throne, and the Bishop of Gaballe, in Syria, accompanied by a great number of priests and cavaliers, made a formal representation to the Pontiff of the miseries of the Christians in the East.

"Louis VII. was the first sovereign prince who engaged himself to fight under the banner of the cross. The news of the calamities in Palestine quickened his holy resolution, and like other men he was impetuously moved by the eloquence of St. Bernard, the great oracle of the age. By the superiority of his talents, and also of his consideration in the eyes of Europe, this new apostle in a holy war was far more capable than Peter the Hermit, of excit ing the tumultuous emotions of enthu siasm. From his ancestors, the counts of Chatillon and Montbart, Bernard inherited nobility; but he felt not its usual accompaniment, the love of military honour. His ardent and religious soul soon disdained the light follies of youth; and, casting off the desire of celebrity as a writer of poetry and songs, he wandered in the fanciful regions of sanctified beatitude, or the rough and craggy paths of polemical theology. At the age of twenty-three he embraced the monastic life at Ci

21

teaux; and soon afterwards, with the co-operation of about thirty other enthusiasts, many of whom were his relations, he founded the monastery of Clairvaux, in Champagne. His miraculous eloquence severed the connexions of social life: sons separated themselves from their fathers, and husbands dissolved the nuptial ties. Genuine fanaticism only could have followed a man who sternly told his admirers, that if they wished to enter his convent, they must dismiss their bodies, for their souls alone could dwell in a place which was sacred to contemplation and devotion. His self-denial and his earnestness for religion gained him the reverence of his contemporaries; and in the altercations between rival authorities, his decision was appealed to as that of an inflexible and incorruptible judge. When the clergy of Louis the Gross asserted the clerical prerogatives of exemption from taxes, and from submission to secular authority, Bernard supported the selfish and rebellious prelates, and treated the king as the enemy of God. In the war for the pontificate between Anaclet and Innocent II. he supported the cause of the latter; and by the display of his zeal and ability in France and Germany, he placed his friend in the chair of St. Peter. He reconciled the conflicting interests of Pisa and Genoa; and the Genoese thought that his disinterestedness was angelical, when he refused their offer of a bishoprick. He was celebrated as a writer as well as a preacher, but he was far inferior both in genius and erudition to his distinguished contemporary: and he opposed him more successfully by authority than by argument. Abelard was the great supporter of the scholastic philosophy; and his love of disputation, unchecked by reverend and holy discretion, led him into some strange and absurd errors in theology. He was vain of the graces of his person, and proud of his intellectual powers. He presumptuously thought that his accomplishments were irresistible by the opposite sex; and that it was by genius alone he had mastered those sciences which mortals, framed in nature's common mould, can only obtain by mute abstraction and solitary labour.

Bernard exposed the corruption and licentiousness of the bishops and monks of his age.

The austerity of his life fortified him against the seductions of the heart; and while he stood up to his neck in water for the purpose of cooling an amorous flame, Abelard threw himself into the arms of his pupil Eloisa." It was at Vezelai, a small town of Burgundy, that St. Bernard appeared as the orator of the Christian cause. No building could contain the immense multitudes, and therefore they met on a neighbouring hill. On this spot Pons, the Abbot of Vezelai, built a church in honour of the Holy Cross; and, it is well known, that the pulpit from which St. Bernard preached was in existence, at Vezelai, till the beginning of the French Revolution, in 1789.

The zeal of Louis in the cause scarcely needed the eloquent harangues of the Abbe of Clairvaux; but the languor of Conrad the Third, the then emperor of Germany, required no common stimulants. At length, however, this powerful preacher succeeded. On a certain day at Spires, while the service of the mass was celebrating, St. Bernard interrupted the solemn service. He painted to his hearers the terrors of the last judgment, and addressing himself particularly to the emperor, reproached him with his luke-warmness in the cause of God. Conrad was so moved by this vehement apostrophe, that he instantly assumed the sacred badge, and before Louis had assembled his forces, embarked for Constantinople.

The disastrous issue of the second Crusade is sufficiently known; but we think that many of its events are too rapidly passed by our author. We re gret that he has omitted to mention the fate of St. Bernard, who fell a victim to chagrin at its failure. We are still more surprised that he has not named in his text the friend of St. Bernard, Suger, the Abbe of St. Denys.. This virtuous minister of Louis VII. had always, from political motives, opposed the Crusade, but on the return of his master, though at the age of seventy, took the desperate resolution of making an expedition at the head of his vassals, to retrieve the misfortunes of his so

vereign. This omission is the more extraordinary, as Mr. Mills, in a note, alludes to the battles of the first holy war "storied" on the windows of the church of St. Denys, and which paintings were made by the order of Suger.

Edessa was the object for the recovery of which the second Crusade was undertaken; a greater loss than Edessa summoned the warriors of Europe the third time to the Holy Land. The victorious arms of Saladin had captured Jerusalem itself; its imbecile monarch, Guy, of Lusignan, was long detained in captivity, and was at length liberated, because his conqueror entertained a fear lest his subjects might elect a more formidable successor. This hero of Islamism, in whose praise subjects and enemies have been almost equally prodigal, acquires a greater interest, because he was the rival of our own Richard. The third Crusade will be read with peculiar pleasure as connected with the English history of former times, and as its theatre, the plains of Acre, is connected with recent and memorable transactions. We shall extract the following as a happy instance of our author's talent of description :"Shouts of warm and gratulatory acclamations saluted the English on their arrival at Acre. The brilliant scene before them was culculated to excite all the animating feelings of warriors. The martial youth of Europe were assembled on the plain in all the pride and pomp of chivalry. The splendid tents, the gorgeous ensigns, the glitering weapons, the armorial cognisances, displayed the varieties of individual fancy and national peculiarities. On the eminences in the distance the thick embattled squadrons of the sultan were encamped. The Mameluk Tartar was armed with his bow; the people of the higher Egypt with their flails and scourges, and the Bedoweens with their spears and small round shields. The brazen drum sounded the note of war; and the black banner of Saladin was raised in proud defiance of the crimson standard of the cross."

On ground so frequently trodden, not only by the historian, but by the writers who address themselves to the imagination, the reviewer may decline

to linger. We shall therefore content ourselves with offering to the reader, our author's narrative of the abandon ment of the siege of Jerusalem by Richard.

"The army continued its march towards Jerusalem, and encamped in the valley of Hebron. The generals and soldiers vowed that they would not quit Palestine without having redeemed the sepulchre. Every thing wore the face of joy when this resolution was adopted; Richard participated in the feeling, and although he thought that his presence in England would be the only. means of restoring affairs there, yet he professed to the duke of Burgundy and the count of Champagne, that no solicitation from Europe should prevail with him to leave the allies until after the following Easter. Hymns and thanksgivings testified the popular joy. at this resolution; the army recommenced its course; and so sure were the soldiers of a speedy accomplishment of their wishes, that they carried with them only a month's provisions. In every step of their progress they were harassed by flying parties of Saracens; on one occasion the valour of the Bishop of Salisbury saved the French division of the Croisés; and on another, the ever vigilant earl of Leicester recovered the caravan of stores which the Saracens had seized, on its road from Jaffa to the army. The nearer the approach of the Christians, the greater was the terror of the Musselmans in Jerusalem; many of them prepared to leave the city, and even Saladin was alarmed for its safety. The Crusaders were at Bethlehem; the French nobility in the council were as clamorous as the people without to press forward; but the mind of Richard vacillated, and he avowed his doubts of the policy of the measure, as his force was not adequate to a siege, and to the keeping up of communica tions with its stores on the coast. proposed that they should march to Beritus, to Cairo, or Damascus ; but as the barons of Syria, the Templars, and Hospitallers, had a perfect knowledge of Palestine, he thought that their decision should regulate the proceedings of the army. A council of twenty was

He

accordingly appointed from the military orders, the lords of the Holy Land, and also the French knights. They learned that the Turks had destroyed all the cisterns which were within two miles of the city; the heats of summer had begun; and for these reasons it was decided that the siege of Jerusalem should be deferred, and that the army should march to some other conquest. As a general, Richard was fully aware of the impolicy of advancing against the sacred city, yet he was unable to suppress his bitter feelings of mortification at a decision which would probably blast the proud hopes that he had indulged of redeeming the sepulchre. A friend led him to a hill which commanded a view of Jerusalem; but, covering his face with a shield, he declared that he was not worthy to behold a city which he could not conquer."

After the termination of the third Crusade, we follow the narrative with feelings comparatively languid. The fourth, though its opening prospect was the fairest, soon experienced a signal defeat, and the fifth ended in the foundation of the Latin empire at Constantinople.

The space which we have allotted for our review, will allow only a summary notice of the four remaining Crusades. The sixth was instigated by Innocent III. but was brought to a successful issue by his enemy the emperor Frederick II. and in defiance of Papal authority. The seventh, after the redemption of the sepulchre by Richard, earl of Cornwall, ended in the introduction of the Korasmians into Palestine. The two remaining Crusades were carried on jointly by the French and English. Louis IX. the great stay of the French Crusades, died at Tunis, in his progress, a second time, to the Holy Land. The last European hero who appeared on the shores of Palesfine, was English. Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I. with a force not exceeding one thousand men, landed at Acre, and the name of Plantagenet drove the sultan of Egypt from its vicinity. The capture of Nazareth, and the defeat of a large Turkish force, were the proofs of his hereditary valour. Our last extract shall relate to this prince.

"But the march of victory was closed, for the English soldiers were parched by the rays of a Syrian sun, and their leader was extended on the bed of sickness. The governor of Jaffa was the apparent friend of Edward, but the sultan's threat of degradation, if further commerce were held with an infidel, changed courtesy into malignity, and his brutal zeal for the display of his loyalty must have satisfied even the suspicious bosom of a tyrant. He hired the dagger of one of those assassins who had escaped the proscription which the Tartars, mercifully for the world, had made of the followers of the old man of the mountain. The wretch, as the bearer of letters, was admitted into the chamber of his intended victim. The purpose of his errand being ac complished, he drew a poignard from the concealment of his belt, and aimed a blow at Edward's breast. After receiving two or three wounds, the vigor. ous prince threw the villain on the floor, and stabbed him to the heart. The dagger had been steeped in poison, and for some hours Edward's fate was involved in danger. The fairy hand of fiction has ascribed his convalescence to one of that sex, whose generous affections are never restrained by the chilling calculations of selfishness. But the stern pen of history has recorded that his restoration to health was the simple result of surgical skill, co-operating with the salient spring of a vigorous frame. The English soldiers burned to reyenge on the Turkish people the dastardly act of the assassin. But Edward checked them, and forgot his own injuries when he reflected that were he to sanction murder, the humble unarmed pilgrims could never claim the protection of the Saracens. After the English prince had been fourteen months in Acre, the sultan of Egypt offered peace, for wars with the Moslem powers engrossed his military strength. Edward gladly seized this occasion of leaving the Holy Land, for his force was too small for the achievement of great actions, and his father had implored his return to England. The hostile commanders signed accordingly a treaty for a ten years' suspension of arms: the lords of Syria disarrayed