THE WILD PRIMROSE.

"QUEEN lilies, and ye painted populace,"
And thou, whom Eastern poets fondly call
The nightingale's imperial, graceful love,
When all night long beneath star-gemmed skies
He drinks thy fresh, thy song-inspiring fragrance,
Most gorgeous rose! oh ye are beauteous all!
And richly ye deserve your poet's lays.
Yet were I the winged flower of the spring,

The bright hued butterfly, my humble love

Should be the lowly Primrose. Flower of hope,
Thou greetest the new-born year with thy soft perfume,
Even before the snowy bud peeps out

Beneath its snowy burden; and till summer

Fill garden, wood, and meadow with her treasures,
Thy gracious presence gladdens every hedgerow ;
And, shaded by the softest, greenest moss,

It gladdens too my humble room; though purchased
By wounded hand, torn veil, or mud-soiled shoe.
Yet cheaply purchased, for thou bringest back
All the rich fancies of my earliest life.
Delicate rose of the spring's earliest prime;
Sweet flower of Memory as well as Hope.
Even cold November's skies, and plashy banks,
Are cheered by thy meek presence: lonely then,
All thy gay sisters faded. Childhood's treasure,
Thou tellest of past delight, and promised pleasure.

LECTURES ON ENGLISH HISTORY.
PART IV.

N. M.

THE fantastical institution of Chivalry now claims our notice. It has been recently very satisfactorily shewn, that though called into special action by the events of the eleventh century, it had its origin long previously to that period, and was "but the development of material facts long before existing, the spontaneous result of the Germanic manners, and the Feudal relations." The glories which have been supposed to encircle chivalry have long since faded from the imagination. Byron's remark that Burke needed not to have lamented its extinction, will now be re-echoed by every well informed mind. We are no longer led away by the false supposition, that the knight wandered from his castle to seek adventures, to succour distressed damsels, and put an end to

the captivity of unfortunate princesses, to redress injuries by the prowess of his single arm, and to do that for the infirm, the helpless, and the persecuted, which, in a more regular state of society, is the business of the law. Many of the most chivalrous individuals were notorious for tyranny, oppression, and licentiousness; nearly all were beings of impulse rather than of reflection, and as their good deeds flowed from no very worthy motives, they cannot hold a high rank in the scale of virtues. We are compelled to add to this, that the chivalrous of this period were grossly ignorant, few could read, and fewer still could write their names; nor was this state of things regarded with any feelings of compunction or shame. Superstition, frequently of the most grovelling kind took place of religion; puerile outward ceremonies formed its sum and substance; a crusade, a pilgrimage, the endowing of a monastery, atoned for the most heinous crimes, and whatever benefit might have resulted by softening and refining manners and intercourse between equals, the mechanic, the field labourer, the bondsman, felt not his chains lightened by it. To him the command was just as imperious, and on him the curse and the buffet as freely and as heartily bestowed, as on his progenitures, by the rougher superior of a century or two previous. That none rose superior to the proud bigotry and benighted ignorance of the age, ought not to be affirmed; doubtless there were some who redeemed the institution, as well as the times themselves from the general disgrace, and were lights shining in dark places, but these were exceptions too few to do more than confirm the general rule, and too weak, thereby, to greatly influence those around.

The ceremonies used in admitting a scion of nobility to the rank of Knighthood, are thus described;-"The young man was first stripped of all his garments and put into a bath, the symbol of purification. On his coming out of the bath, they clad him in a white tunic, the symbol of purity, a red robe, emblematic of the blood which he was to shed in the cause of the faith, and a black doublet, in token of the dissolution which awaited him, as well as all mankind. Thus purified and clothed, the novice kept a rigorous fast for twenty four hours. When evening came, he entered the church and passed the night in prayer, sometimes alone, sometimes with a priest and his sponsors, who prayed in company with him. The next morning, his first act was confession, after which the priest administered to him the com

munion, and after communion, he heard a mass of the Holy Ghost, and commonly a sermon on the duties of a chevalier, and the new course of life on which he was about to enter. When the sermon was over, the novice advanced towards the altar, with the sword of knighthood suspended from his neck; the priest took it off, blessed it, and attached it to his neck again." We are further informed, that on answering certain questions put to him by his superior, he received the accolade, a slight blow on his shoulders from the knight's sword, and was from this pronounced a dubbed knight. He put on his helmet, sprang upon a noble horse waiting for him, and without using the stirrup, rode round the church brandishing his lance, and flourishing his sword, and thence quitting the church, he showed himself to the people outside, who greeted his arrival with prolonged shouts and acclamations.

But if the precise origin of Chivalry cannot be ascertained, no such uncertainty hangs over the date of the Crusades. These, the wars of the Cross, took place, as we have the most undeniable evidence, near the end of the eleventh century, and in the reign of our William Rufus, the son and the immediate successor of the Conqueror, though, personally, he had little to do with them. The well-known zeal of Peter the Hermit was the immediate cause of this extraordinary outbreak. He had, as was usual in that age, gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and was an indignant eye-witness to the insults and cruel treatment the pilgrims endured, whilst in the prosecution of their pious enterprize, from the barbarous and fanatical Turks, who at this time had possession of Palestine. Returning to Europe, he represented to the Pope the dangers that were incurred, and solicited his permission to travel through Christendom to preach a Crusade, the object of which should be to rescue the Holy Land from the Infidels, and to put it in possession of the true believers. It is astonishing how successful the mission proved. With his Palmer's cloak and staff, barefooted, and unsupported, save by his indomitable energy of mind, he crossed seas and walked through various countries, arousing the inhabitants as he proceeded, and meeting with the most enthusiastic responses from all classes. The Pope supported him by his authority, and all promised success to the enterprize. In the words of Hume, who has most graphically described the whole proceedings:-"The fame of this great and pious design, being now universally diffused,

procured the attendance of the greatest prelates, nobles, and princes [at Claremont]; and when the Pope and the Hermit renewed their pathetic exhortations, the whole assembly, as if impelled by immediate inspiration, not moved with their previous impressions, exclaimed with one voice, "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!" Words deemed so memorable, and so much the result of a divine influence, that they were employed as the signal of rendezvous and battle in all the future exploits of these adventurers. Men of all ranks flew to arms with the utmost ardour; and an exterior symbol too, a circumstance of chief moment, was here chosen by the devoted combatants-the sign of the Cross—which had been hitherto so much revered among Christians, and which the more it was an object of reproach among the Pagan world, was the more passionately cherished by them, became the badge of union, and was affixed to their right shoulder by all who enlisted themselves in this sacred warfare.”

The Crusades have been held up to the world as one of the most memorable of instances of folly, superstition, and barbarity, and the historian just quoted is liberal in his censures of them, this being in consistence with his coldly sceptical mind. Not denying the absurdity of the undertaking, judging by our own views at this distance of time, and acknowledging much of cruelty connected with it, at the same time we cannot but remark that there were many of the elements of greatness, and not a few of high and pure religious principle mixed up with it. Superstition is but the unwarrantable excess of the devotional spirit, which finds a response in almost every human heart. To feel an interest in places which have been the theatre of mighty events is but natural, and this interest is by no means diminished when the country in question has been the scene of those occurrences which have been recorded in the Bible, and it is but a step further in the mental process to desire to visit them. With a better regulated curiosity and from higher motives, as we trust, are sacred places visited now; but the feeling is the same, and we must attribute it to the roughness of the times, the darkness of the human mind, and the low estimate of human life that Crusades were persevered in. The great cruelties also practised by the Turks and Saracens on the defenceless, unhappy visitors at the Sepulchre, must, in all fairness, be taken into account. Ultimate good, as in all the dispensations of Providence, was the result. The mind of the ignorant islander was expanded; he saw the gifts of God dispensed in rich profusion

to other lands besides his own; he gradually was led to form acquaintance and intimacies with the German, the Italian, the Greek; and even the turbaned Saracen, whom his nursery tales and even the representations of riper years had taught him was a fiend incarnate, was found to be a man of like passions with himself, of the same form and blood, and was frequently acknowledged and embraced as a brother. The elegancies of life were also familiarized to him from intercourse with the more polished inhabitants of Southern Europe, and even of the effete yet still splendid court of Constantinople. Whilst the great barons being compelled, for the most part, to sell or mortgage their fiefs to raise money for the equipment of their followers, diffused wealth among the population, and promoted the rise of towns and of free burgesses, by breaking up their estates, and with it the tyrannical and almost kingly power which their vast possessions enabled them to wield.

B. M. B.

FAREWELL ADDRESS OF THE REV. JOHN ROBINSON, OF LEYDEN, TO THE PILGRIM FATHERS, ABOUT TO SAIL FOR AMERICA, 1620.

BRETHREN,-We are now quickly to part from one another, and whether I may ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord has appointed that or no, I charge you, before God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed Churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw: whatever part of his will our good God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God who yet saw not all things.

This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were burning and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God, but were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received. I beseech you remember, it is an article of your church covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written Word of God. Remember that, and every other article of your sacred covenant. But I must herewithal exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth, examine it, consider it, and compare it with other Scriptures of truth before you receive it; for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti-christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.