The nations not so blest as thee, Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall, Whilst thou shalt flourish, great and free, The dread and envy of them all. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves! Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies, Serves but to root thy native oak. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves! Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe and thy renown. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves! To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every shore it circles thine. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves! The Muses, still with freedom found, Shall to thy happy coast repair; Blest isle! with matchless beauty crown'd, And manly hearts to guard the fair. Rule, Britannia, rule the waves! Britons never will be slaves! XIX. THE FIRST CRUSADE. DAVID HUME.--1711-1776. _From_ HISTORY OF ENGLAND. After Mahomet had, by means of his pretended revelations, united the dispersed Arabians under one head, they issued forth from their deserts in great multitudes; and being animated with zeal for their new religion, and supported by the vigor of their new government, they made deep impression on the eastern empire, which was far in the decline, with regard both to military discipline and to civil policy. Jerusalem, by its situation, became one of their most early conquests; and the Christians had the mortification to see the holy sepulchre, and the other places, consecrated by the presence of their religious founder, fallen into the possession of infidels. But the Arabians or Saracens were so employed in military enterprises, by which they spread their empire in a few years from the banks of the Ganges to the Straits of Gibraltar, that they had no leisure for theological controversy: and though the Alcoran, the original monument of their faith, seems to contain some violent precepts, they were much less infected with the spirit of bigotry and persecution than the indolent and speculative Greeks, who were continually refining on the several articles of their religious system. They gave little disturbance to those zealous pilgrims, who daily flocked to Jerusalem; and they allowed every man, after paying a moderate tribute, to visit the holy sepulchre, to perform his religious duties, and to return in peace. But the Turcomans or Turks, a tribe of Tartars, who had embraced Mahometanism, having wrested Syria from the Saracens, and having, in the year 1065, made themselves