Nothing, perhaps, more favoured the general progress of Chivalry than the state of religion in that day; which, overloaded with superstitions, and decked out with every external pomp and ornament, appealed to the imagination through the medium of the senses, and woke a thousand enthusiasms which could find no such fitting career as in the pursuits of knighthood. The first efforts of the feudal system, too, gradually extending themselves to every part of Europe, joined to make Chivalry spread through the different countries where they were felt, by raising up a number of independent lords who--each anxious to reduce his neighbours to vassalage, and to preserve his own separate lordship--required continual armed support from others, to whom he offered in return honour and protection. Thus, for about a century, or perhaps a little more, after the first institution of knighthood, Chivalry slowly gained ground, and by each exploit of any particular body of knights (such, for instance, as we have recorded of the Normans) the order became more and more respected, and its establishment more firm, decided, and regular. It wanted but one great enterprise commenced and carried through upon chivalrous principles alone to render Chivalry, combined as it was with religion and the feudal system, the great master power of Europe--and that enterprise was at hand. The natural reverence for those countries, sanctified and elevated by so many miracles, and rendered sublimely dear to the heart of every Christian, as the land in which his salvation was brightly but terribly worked out, had from all ages rendered Palestine an object of pilgrimage. In the earliest times, after the recognition of the Christian faith by Constantine, the subjects of the Roman empire had followed the example of the empress Helena, and had deemed it almost a Christian duty to visit the scenes of our Saviour's mortal career. For many ages while the whole of Judea remained under the sway of the Cesars, the journey was an easy one. Few difficulties waylaid the passenger, or gave pilgrimage even the merit of dangers encountered and obstacles overcome. Towards the seventh century, the eastern provinces of the Roman empire, already weakened by many invasions, had to encounter the exertions of another adversary, who succeeded in wresting them from their Christian possessors. The successors of Mahomet, who from a low station had become a great legislator, a mighty conqueror, and a pretended prophet, carried on the conquest which he had begun in Arabia, and one by one made themselves masters of Syria, Antioch, Persia, Medea, and in fact the greater part of the rich continent of Asia.