This Dominic the Cuirassier, being very ambitious, tasked himself generally at ten psalters, and thirty thousand lashes a day, at which rate he would have redeemed three thousand six hundred and fifty years of purgatory per annum. In addition to this, however, he used to petition for a supplementary task of a hundred years. Being, as he hoped, already a creditor to a large amount in the angel’s books, and as no good works can be lost, he recited and lashed away for the benefit of the great sinking fund of the Catholic Church, with more spirit than ever. During one Lent he entreated for, and obtained, the imposition of a thousand years; and St. Pietro Damiano affirms that, in these forty days, he actually recited the psalter two hundred times, and inflicted sixty millions of stripes; working away with a scourge in each hand. In an heroic mood he once determined to flog himself, in the jockey phrase, against time, and at the end of twenty-four hours had gone through the psalms twelve times, and begun them the thirteenth, the quota of stripes being one hundred and eighty-three thousand, reducing purgatory stock sixty-one years, twelve days, and thirty-three minutes. It still remains to be proved, how he could recite verses and count lashes at the same time, or consistently have continued to wear his cuirass, which would have nullified the infliction of so many stripes. There is no event in the history of the religious opinions of mankind more singular than that of the Crusades; every circumstance that tends to explain, or give any rational account of, this extraordinary frenzy of delusion in the human mind is interesting. In the account which follows, that which is given from the elegant pen of Dr. Robertson, in his Life of the Emperor Charles V. has been taken advantage of. The Crusades, or expeditions to rescue the Holy Land out of the hands of Infidels, seemed to be the first event that roused Europe from the lethargy in which it had been long sunk, and that tended to introduce any considerable change in government, or in manners. It is natural to the human mind to view those places which have been distinguished by being the residence of any illustrious personage, or the scene of any great transaction, with some degree of delight and veneration. To this principle must be ascribed the superstitious devotion with which Christians, from the earliest ages of the church, were accustomed to visit that country, which the Almighty had selected as the inheritance of his favourite people, and in which the Son of God had accomplished the redemption of mankind.