V. POETICAL TREATMENT OF THE HISTORY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE. TORQUATO TASSO: Gerusalemme Liberata; Venice, 1580. English translation, Jerusalem Delivered; New York, Appleton. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY—OUTLINE OF STUDY. After the lapse of eight hundred years the story of the crusades still furnishes the most fascinating, if not the most instructive, pages of Christian history. Romance has entertained the generations from the days of the Italian Tasso to those of Walter Scott with the rude yet chivalric characters of those mediæval times. Ponderous knights and dashing emirs, fair women and saintly apparitions, continue to move over the mimic stage of the imagination. Poetry, in all the tongues of modern Europe, draws its imagery from scenes that were enacted while these languages were being formed from their classic or barbaric originals. The hymnology of the church is enriched by the songs of those who caught their rhythm from the march of the crusading host. Bernard of Clugny watched the salvation armies of the olden time as they sauntered by his cloister window. Now catching their spirit, and anon oppressed with their failure to express the truest prowess of the believer’s soul, he tried to lift men’s faith to the Jerusalem above: “O happy band of pilgrims, If onward ye will tread With Jesus as your fellow To Jesus as your head! “Thou hast no shore, fair ocean; Thou hast no time, bright day; Dear fountain of refreshment To pilgrims on the way. “Upon the Rock of Ages They raise thy holy tower; Thine is the victor’s laurel, And thine the golden dower.” Our newest songs catch the very gleam of those battle days. For example: “Onward, Christian soldiers, Marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus Going on before!” is not unlike the chorus of a Latin hymn of Berthier of Orleans, which was sung under the tent and on the field: “Lignum crucis Signum ducis Sequitur exercitus; Quod non cessit Sed præcessit In vi Sancti Spiritus.” The student of human nature, also, will find here his most subtle and perplexing, but at the same time his most suggestive, subjects. Never before or since was there such exalted faith combined with such grotesque superstition, such splendid self-sacrifice mingled with cruel and unrestrained selfishness, such holy purpose with its wings entangled, torn, and besmeared in vicious environments.