"What, sir!" cried my father, "don't you see that from those irruptions on demoralized Rome came the regeneration of manhood, the re-baptism of earth from the last soils of paganism, and the remote origin of whatever of Christianity yet exists free from the idolatries with which Rome contaminated the faith?" Squills held up his hands and made a splutter. Down came Charlemagne, paladins and all! There my father was grand! What a picture he made of the broken, jarring, savage elements of barbaric society. And the iron hand of the great Frank,--settling the nations and founding existent Europe. Squills was now fast sinking into coma or stupefaction; but catching at a straw as he heard the word "Crusades," he stuttered forth, "Ah! there I defy you." "Defy me there!" cries my father; and one would think the ocean was in the shower-bath, it came down with such a rattle. My father scarcely touched on the smaller points in excuse for the Crusades, though he recited very volubly all the humaner arts introduced into Europe by that invasion of the East, and showed how it had served civilization by the vent it afforded for the rude energies of chivalry, by the element of destruction to feudal tyranny that it introduced, by its use in the emancipation of burghs and the disrupture of serfdom. But he painted, in colors vivid as if caught from the skies of the East, the great spread of Mahometanism and the danger it menaced to Christian Europe, and drew up the Godfreys and Tancreds and Richards as a league of the Age and Necessity against the terrible progress of the sword and the Koran. "You call them madmen," cried my father; "but the frenzy of nations is the statemanship of fate! How know you that--but for the terror inspired by the hosts who marched to Jerusalem--how know you that the Crescent had not waved over other realms than those which Roderic lost to the Moor? If Christianity had been less a passion, and the passion had less stirred up all Europe, how know you that the creed of the Arab (which was then, too, a passion) might not have planted its mosques in the forum of Rome and on the site of Notre Dame? For in the war between creeds,--when the creeds are embraced by vast races,--think you that the reason of sages can cope with the passion of millions? Enthusiasm must oppose enthusiasm. The crusader fought for the tomb of Christ, but he saved the life of Christendom." My father paused. Squills was quite passive; he struggled no more,--he was drowned.