BEFORE THE REST ORATION.

7

»* :

in corporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of chap.tyrants, who, when at the height of greatness, were smittenwith remorse, who abhorred the pleasures and dignitieswhich they had purchased by guilt, who abdicated theircrowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by cruelpenances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawnforth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who,while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit wasto apply to all events in the history of the world the standardreceived in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century.

Yet surely a system which, however deformed by super-stition, introduced strong moral restraints into communitiespreviously governed only by vigour of muscle and by auda-city of spirit, a system which taught the fiercest and mightiest -ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman, a responsiblebeing, might have seemed to deserve a more respectfulmention from philosophers and philanthropists.

The same observations will apply to the contempt withwhich, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak ofthe pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and themonastic institutions of the middle ages. In times when menwere scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, orby the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitantof the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim,than that he should never see anything but those squalidcabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was born. Intimes when life and when female honour were exposed to dailyrisk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the pre-cinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe,than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to crueltyand licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapableof forming extensive political combinations, it was betterthat the Christian nations should be roused and united for