advantage of possession; for he held Ptolemais, the last fragment of the christian kingdom of Palestine. The Knights of St John supported him; Venice and the Templars backed King Charles. The latter carried the day. Master of southern Italy, armed protector of the north, Charles I. had no longer aught to check him; the East was open before him. Already he occupied a part of Greece. All that mountainous coast of Albania, celebrated in our days for the devotedness of the Suliots, belonged to him by the death of Helena Comnenus, Mainfroy’s widow, daughter of the despot of Thessaly and Epirus. He also held the island of Corfu, that natural bridge thrown between Italy and the East. The town of Durazzo revolted in his favour, and called him within its walls. He swayed Achaia and the Morea, and had constituted himself candidate for the throne of Constantinople by marrying his daughter to Philip de Courtenay, nominal heir to the Latin Empire, but living in reality on the alms of his father-in-law. It seemed, then, that he had nothing to do but to bid his fleet sail for Byzantium. But in the midst of his ambitious projects he was interrupted by the new crusade, the last undertaken, got up by Saint Louis, and in which Charles could not refuse to join. The death of St Louis terminated the expedition; and after dictating terms of peace to the sultan of Tunis, in whose dominions the adventurers had landed, their return to Europe, by way of Sicily, was decided upon. It was not consistent with Charles’s character to forget or abandon an enterprise he had once decided upon; and on landing at Trapani, he assembled the council of crusading kings and princes, and proposed to them to re-embark for Constantinople. It was a bold and sagacious idea to take advantage of this unusual assemblage of naval forces to establish French power in the East; but Charles, indefatigable himself, spoke to disheartened and disgusted men. All refused, and Edward Plantagenet (afterwards Edward I. of England) rejected with insulting energy his uncle’s proposition, declaring that he would winter in Sicily, and afterwards return to Syria, which he did, without other result than the wound cured by the well-known trait of conjugal affection and courage of the virtuous and intrepid Eleanor of Castile. Subsequently, the realisation of Charles’s ambitious designs upon the East, long entertained, was continually prevented by one circumstance or another, until at last the affairs of Sicily gave him occupation at home, effectually precluding aggrandisement abroad. Essentially a man of war, he nevertheless, in time of peace, showed skill, intelligence, and activity in the administration of the kingdom of Naples. Had the distant provinces of his dominions been as well governed, M. de St Priest affirms that the Two Sicilies would not, during more than two centuries, have been sundered and at enmity. But Charles abandoned the island Sicily to his lieutenants.