Page:Pleasures of England (1888).djvu/96

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78
The Pleasures of Deed.

force, the Christian faith and works all over the world so far as he comprehends them; not merely with the Mahometan indignation against spiritual error, but with a sound and honest soul's dislike of material error, and resolution to extinguish that, even if perchance found in the spiritual persons to whom, in their office, he yet rendered total reverence.

Which force and faith in him I may best illustrate by merely putting together the broken paragraphs of Sismondi's account of the founding of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily: virtually contemporary with the conquest of England.

"The Normans surpassed all the races of the west in their ardour for pilgrimages. They would not, to go into the Holy Land, submit to the monotony[1] of a long sea voyage—the rather that they found not on the Mediterranean the storms or dangers they had rejoiced to encounter on their own sea. They traversed by land the whole of France and Italy, trusting to their swords to procure the necessary subsistence,[2]if the charity of the faithful did not enough provide for it with alms. The towns of Naples, Amalfi, Gaeta, and Bari, held constant commerce with Syria; and frequent miracles, it was believed, illustrated the Monte

  1. I give Sismondi's idea as it stands, but there was no question in the matter of monotony or of danger. The journey was made on foot because it was the most laborious way, and the most humble.
  2. See farther on, p. 110, the analogies with English arrangements of the same kind.