maxims of Plato and Aristotle contained in Arabic versions of those writers. Their manners insensibly became softened, their ideas were enlarged, their tastes were cultivated; they no longer regarded the torture of heretics and the massacre of infidels as conformable to the precepts of a religion based upon “peace and good-will to men.” With deep disgust they threw off their allegiance to the Church of Rome. Woman, hitherto a slave, subjected to the caprice of an imperious and irresponsible master, was raised by the hand of chivalry and made the cherished companion, if not the equal, of her lord. Semi-barbarous Europe looked with wonder upon a land so blessed by nature and adorned by art; where the remains of classic antiquity were taught in the same schools with the botany of Syria and the chemistry of Spain; where a philosophic spirit of inquiry had awakened the noblest aspirations of the human intellect, and where knightly courtesy had replaced the rudeness of the sword. This advanced civilization had, unfortunately, come four centuries too soon. The fears of the Papacy were excited, and a ferocious crusade, which spared neither rank, age, sex, nor infirmity, was published against the unfortunate Albigenses. Upon the ruins of one of the most refined societies that had arisen to instruct mankind since the days of Athenian greatness, a society which embodied all that was interesting, learned, profitable, or entertaining in human life, was erected the Inquisition, the bane of science, and the implacable foe of civil and religious liberty.