Look at the mottoes on the seals of our older nobility, which date from the era of the Crusades, or the ages succeeding it, when their heroic spirit was not yet extinct, and you will see the clearest demonstration of what was the spirit of these memorable contests. They are all founded on the sacrifice of self to duty, of interest to devotion, of life to love. There is little to be seen there about industry amassing wealth, or prudence averting calamity; but much about honour despising danger, and life sacrificed to duty. In an utilitarian or commercial age, such principles may appear extravagant or romantic; but it is from such extravagant romance that all the greatness of modern Europe has taken its rise. We cannot emancipate ourselves from their influence: a fountain of generous thoughts in every elevated bosom is perpetually gushing forth, from the ideas which have come down to us from the Holy Wars. They live in our romances, in our tragedies, in our poetry, in our language, in our hearts. Of what use are such feelings, say the partisans of utility? "Of what use," answers Madame De Stael, "is the Apollo Belvidere, or the poetry of Milton; the paintings of Raphael, or the strains of Handel? Of what use is the rose or the eglantine; the colours of autumn, or the setting of the sun?" And yet what object ever moved the heart as they have done, and ever will do? Of what use is all that is sublime or beautiful in nature, if not to the soul itself? The interest taken in such objects attests the dignity of that being which is immortal and invisible, and which is ever more strongly moved by whatever speaks to its immortal and invisible nature, than by all the cares of present existence.