"Thou mayest revisit it after thou hast fulfilled thy desire to pray at thy Saviour's tomb, and to tread the holy soil His sacred Feet have trodden; but it must be years hence." "My best prayers must be for thee." "Tut, tut, my child; thy adventures form an episode I love to think of. See, Beachy Head recedes; anon thou shalt see the towers of Coutances Cathedral across the deep." CHAPTER XXV. IN THE FOREST OF LEBANON. Thirty years had passed away since the events recorded in our last chapter, and the mighty Conqueror himself had gone to render an account of his stewardship to the Judge of all men. The thoughts and aspirations of all Christian people were now attracted to far different subjects from the woes or wrongs of the English nation. The Crusades had begun. Peter the Hermit had moved all Christendom by his fiery eloquence, and sent them to avenge the wrongs the pilgrims of the cross had sustained from Turkish hands, and to free the holy soil from the spawn of the false prophet. Since the Caliph Omar received the capitulation of Jerusalem, in 637, and established therein the religion of Mahomed, no greater calamity had ever befallen Christendom than the conquest of Asia Minor, and subsequently Syria, by the Turks. The latter event, which occurred about nine years after the Norman Conquest of England, transferred the government of Palestine, and the custody of the holy places, from a race which, although Mahometan, was yet tolerant, to a far fiercer and "anti-human" government The "unspeakable Turk" had appeared on the scene of European politics. For, under the milder rule of the Fatimite Caliphs, who reigned over Jerusalem from A.D. 969 to 1076, a peculiar quarter of the holy city had been assigned to the Christians; a fair tribute secured them protection, and the Sepulchre of Christ, with the other scenes identified with the Passion, were left in their hands. Greeks and Latins alike enjoyed freedom of worship, and crowds of pilgrims flocked from all the western nations. Then appeared our Turks on the scene. They first ravished Asia Minor from the weak grasp of the later Roman Empire, and established their capital and worship--the abomination of desolation--where the first great Christian council had drawn up the Nicene Creed, that is, at Nicaea in Bithynia. Then, later on, under the Sultan Malek Shah, they attacked Syria and Egypt, and the Holy Land passed under that blighting rule, which has ever since withered it in its grasp, with a few brief intervals. And now the scene changed: the pilgrims, who through innumerable dangers had reached the holy city, only entered it to become the victims of contumely and savage insult, and often perished by brutal violence before they reached their goal--the Holy Sepulchre. The very patriarch of Jerusalem was dragged by the hair and cast into a filthy dungeon, in order to exact a heavy ransom from the sympathy of his flock, and the tale of his sufferings harrowed all hearts.