CHAP. I.]

ST. JOHN OT JERUSALEM.

69

of more or less truth, or perhaps doubtful; hutalso a few quite incredible in themselves, but yetwith this of verity, that they express the way ofthinking of that time. Then these documents maybe relied on blindly as far as they go, and that isnot far, save dates and small contracts and con-cerns of no general value. But they may he usedas a test with regard to others that are. Whatis in contradiction with them, in even so minora point as date or place, must be apocryphal ornecessarily be false. They are the cross-exami-nations of a lawyer.

Ibn-Alatir’s observation, that the founder of anempire has scarcely in any instance been succeededby his children, for that he probably lies underpollution of blood, which, however necessarily shedor legitimately, cannot but be displeasing to theEternal—so that ambition is punished even in thislife—is applied by many Moslems to Saladin himself,who leaving seventeen sons and one daughter, theseand his turbaned emirs cut up his inheritance intoa number of small states, and conducted them-selves so ill, that Safadin was in a manner forcedto become Sultan of Egypt and Damascus; andended by concentrating in himself and transmittingto his own children the entire possessions of hismighty brother, with the single exception of