was subjected to the highest cultivation of which the soil, naturally fertile and improved by every resource of scientific agriculture, was susceptible. The cities, large and populous, enjoyed every advantage of wealth which could be derived from an extensive traffic. Béziers had sixty thousand inhabitants, a larger number than any town in England. Nîmes, Arles, Carcassonne, were but little inferior in size and grandeur. Every commercial device was familiar to the people. Their shrewdness was proverbial. Their trade was enormous. A knowledge of banking and bills of exchange, with many important fiscal regulations, had been introduced by the Jews of Barcelona. Toulouse, one of the most beautiful and licentious of mediæval capitals, was the focus of this splendid civilization. It was the seat of the Muses, the home of chivalry, the goal of every devotee of love and of ambition. There the knightly adventurer sought distinction in the tournament and the tilt of reeds, martial amusements borrowed from the Moor. Thither journeyed the troubadour and the jongleur, sure of hospitality and reward in palace and castle, in the comfortable home of the merchant, in the humble dwelling of the laborer. There was crowned the poet, successful in the literary contest, two hundred years before the laurel was placed upon the brow of Petrarch in the Capitol at Rome. There were held the Courts of Love, where women argued and determined, with all the grave impartiality of a judicial tribunal, questions involving the laws of gallantry, their observance and their violation. The potentate, who, under the modest title of count, governed this great and opulent realm, enjoyed a larger measure of authority than most representatives of the royal houses of Europe. His family was of high antiquity, and its rank dated back for many centuries. The rich fiefs of Béziers, Foix, Quercy, Montpellier, and Narbonne, with their numerous important dependencies, acknowledged his authority as suzerain. Wealthier than any of his Christian contemporaries, he was more powerful in all the attributes of monarchical dignity than the King of France. His dominions included the greater part of the territory south of the Loire, and embraced the fertile and flourishing districts bounded by the Garonne, the Isère, the Mediterranean, and the Alps. He had achieved renown in the Crusades. His sword had won for him the principality of Tripoli. He had been an unsuccessful but prominent competitor for the throne of Jerusalem. In his public relations he was the soul of chivalric courtesy; in his personal habits a fastidious voluptuary; in belief a skeptic; in tastes a Mohammedan. The conspicuous valor he displayed on the fields of Palestine was, in some degree, neutralized by a moral cowardice which instinctively shrank from a conflict involving the dearest privileges for which humanity can contend,--the preservation of political integrity and the exercise of the right of intellectual freedom.