Almost the best-known character in all our pageant now makes his appearance. Clad in coat of mail, his shield blazoned with the leopards of England, his surcoat broidered with the Red Cross, he is the very _beau-ideal_ of a knight. Tall, stalwart, handsome, fair-haired, and blue-eyed, the gaze of all men lingers admiringly on him. A good general, a skilful engineer, a wise judge of men, he might have been a renowned king; but, alas, his lust for war, his thirst for adventure, his fierce delight in conflict made him a mere soldier—the foremost of his time, it is true, but nevertheless a killer of men, and not a builder of states or a benefactor of his land. Still, he shines beyond all other English kings as the hero of song and story, and as the mirror of the knighthood which prevailed in his day. Richard figures in history as the outstanding hero of the third Crusade. Well-nigh a century before he was crowned king at Westminster, Peter the Hermit had harrowed men’s hearts by a recital of the infamies done by the Saracen to Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. With frenzied words he bade his hearers, “Go, deliver the sepulchre of the Lord;” and everywhere arose the answering cry, “God wills it!” A tumultuary horde, burning with enthusiasm, plundered its way to the East, but perished without touching Asiatic shores. Behind it came an organized army, which suffered terribly on the burning sands of Syria, but nevertheless achieved its object, and set up a Latin kingdom in the Holy Land. Half a century went by, and the Crescent was once more in the ascendant. Again a Crusade was preached, and again an immense army set forth to deliver the tomb of our Lord from the infidel. It had to fight against treachery of the worst type, and its career was inglorious in the extreme. Sixteen years ago a new conqueror arose in the East, the great Sultan Saladin, a knight worthy to cross swords with Richard himself. Jerusalem was now in his hands, and pious Christians felt a deep pang of shame that it should be so. Once more a Crusade was preached, and once more the good and the bad, the pious and the impious, the just and the unjust of Christendom swore to drive the Saracen from the holy soil which his foot polluted. Religious enthusiasm blazed up fiercely, and its first-fruits in England was an awful massacre of Jews on the coronation day of Richard. “Down with the foes of the Lord!” shouted the mob, and thousands of innocent Israelites were murdered in cold blood. At Lincoln the brave Jews defended themselves in the castle until all hope was gone. Then they slew their women and children, lest a worse fate should befall them, and perished by their own hands rather than surrender to their Christian foes.