The dangers which beset the pilgrims amid the scimitars of the barbarous Tartars, was the pretext for all Europe to rise in arms with the determination to conquer or die in their defence. A wild enthusiast, with haggard features--a body worn and wasted with fasting and holy vigils, and enveloped in coarse and dusty sackcloth, elevating the symbolic cross in his attenuated fingers, wanders from palace to palace, from house to house, from hut to hamlet, calling aloud for vengeance upon the followers of the Crescent, who dared to molest the children of God in the performance of their sacred duties. As his naked feet, pierced by every flinty rock, leave their crimson stains in his track, so does the thirst for Moslem blood burn and consume the vitals of the restless human throngs, who listen to his wild harangues. Pope Urban was ready to fan this flame, and the panting multitude were by his holy and supreme power absolved from the weight of all past offences as well as all those they should ever commit, if they would prosecute with zeal this holy war. The worst of sinners, robbers and assassins, over whose hardened hearts there still lingered the dying glow of the internal fire of conscience, or before whose sin-distempered vision ever flittered the phantoms of past transgressions, rejoiced to say avaunt for ever, to the ghosts of their departed crimes, and feel an assurance of no future retribution for their dark deeds of horror. A new field for rapine and adventure opened before them, and they rushed impetuously on to the combat. Many, who had led a life of more retired wickedness and grown grey in sin were glad to seize a hope of salvation even on the borders of eternity, and tottered along with the vast concourse. Rich and poor, young and old, with fervid zeal embraced the means of future happiness beyond the grave. And the vast territory through which these soldiers of the Cross wended their way was whitened with the bones of the self sacrificed. Even after the great champion Godfrey de Bouillon, had gained the prize, and enjoyed a regal rank of one short year's duration, he had to surrender his earthly throne to his holiness at Rome, and content himself like his followers with the hopes of a kingdom in the unseen world. Vain would be the effort to count the victims of religious enthusiasm; of the attempts to appease the great unseen essence of human life; to propitiate the favor of that Power, which, as it has called into being, can also summon his creatures from their earthly tenements, and dispose of their spirits, as seemeth best to his sovereign will. But holy wars, and sin-atoning pilgrimages, are not confined to the followers of the Cross.