The acceptance of Elsie's offer, on the part of Prince Henry of Hoheneck, seems to be the turning-point of the story and the temptation. Here again Lucifer interposes, in the character of a monk, who, from the Confessional, gives unholy advice to the Prince; but this scene does not strike us with peculiar admiration. In brief, the offer is accepted. Prince Henry and the peasant's daughter set out together for Salerno, and the greater portion of the remainder of the drama is occupied with the description of their route, and what befel them on their way. Mr Longfellow has made excellent use of this dioramic method. He has contrived to throw himself entirely into the age which he has selected for illustration; and crusaders, monks, pilgrims, and minstrels pass before us in varied procession, giving life and animation to the scenery through which the voyagers move. The most remarkable passages are the Friar's Sermon, and the Miracle play represented in the cathedral of Strasburg. We observe that several critics have already fallen foul of the author on account of those scenes, denouncing him in no measured terms for the levity, and even the profanity, of his tone. One or two have even gone the length of declaring that he is more impious than Lord Byron; and that _Cain_ is, in the hands of the youthful reader, a less dangerous work than the _Golden Legend_. This is sheer nonsense. Mr Longfellow, as the general tenor of his writings discloses, is eminently a Christian poet, and the last charge which can be brought against him is that of scepticism and infidelity. His aim, in this part of the _Golden Legend_, is to reproduce a true and vivid picture of the manners, the customs, and even the superstition of the age; and this he has been enabled to do, through his intimate familiarity with writings which are very little studied at the present day. He is deeply versed, not only in the monkish legends and traditions, but in that kind of theological literature which, in the thirteenth century, and even much later, was mixed up with the pure evangelical doctrine, and retailed to the people as truth, by the ministers of a corrupted Church. That the sermon delivered by Friar Cuthbert, in the square of Strasburg, must sound irreverent to modern ears, is a proposition which no one can deny. It is irreverent, but not a whit more so than were all the sermons of the period. It is intended to mark, and does mark more accurately than anything we ever read, the license of language which was employed by the emissaries of the Church of Rome--the haughty claims and systematic usurpations of that Church--and the mixture of truth and fable which then constituted the staple of her doctrine. Friar Cuthbert is not preaching from the Evangelists: he is preaching half from his own invention, and half from the spurious Gospel of Nicodemus. His sermon is nothing more nor less than a satire upon the teaching of the Church of Rome, and a most effective one it is.