The highest praise yet awarded to valour is, that it recalls the lion-hearted Richard; the most envied meed bestowed on beauty, that it rivals the fascination of Armida. No monument is yet approached by the generous and brave with such emotion as those now mouldering in our churches, which represent the warrior lying with his arms crossed on his breast, in token that, during life, he had served in the Holy Wars. The Crusades form the true heroic age of Europe--the _Jerusalem Delivered_ is its epic poem. Then alone its warriors fought and died together. Banded together under a second "King of men," the forces of Christendom combated around the Holy City against the strength of Asia drawn to its defence. The cause was nobler, the end greater, the motives more exalted, than those which animated the warriors of the Iliad. Another Helen had not fired another Troy; the hope of sharing the spoils of Phrygia had not drawn together the predatory bands of another Greece. The characters on both sides had risen in proportion to the magnitude and sanctity of the strife in which they were engaged. Holier motives, more generous passions were felt, than had yet, from the beginning of time, strung the soldier's arm. Saladin was a mightier prince than Hector; Godfrey a nobler character than Agamemnon; Richard immeasurably more heroic than Achilles. The strife did not continue for ten years, but for twenty lustres; and yet, so uniform were the passions felt through its continuance, so identical the objects contended for, that the whole has the unity of interest of a Greek drama.