120 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. absorb a part of the civilization of the East, and to think of something better than family or feudal quarrels. They pre- vented the civilization of the West from becoming crystallized. They kept alive the great ideal of a kingdom presided over by the King of Eighteousness, the Prince of Peace, under whose rule the continual state of warfare, the bloodshed, the treach- ery, the cruelty, that the Crusaders found among their own people, as among all half-civilized races, should cease. They breathed throughout the Western nations the breath of a com- mon life, furnished them with a high ideal, and gave a great impetus to poetry in Western literature. As we reach the end of the twelfth century we come to the end of this noble dream. The nations of the West were pre- paring to reap the harvest of results wdiich had sprung from their efforts, by themselves developing national life, national art, and national literature. The crusading spirit, though it still existed, had lost much of its freshness ; and each succes- sive effort made by the forces of Christendom upon the Sara- cens was made with less fervor, less religious spirit, and less spontaneity than the effort which had preceded it. During the crusades the men of the West were continually brought into contact with the inhabitants of the ers and the Ncw Romc, and with other subiects of the Bvzan- tine emperor, ihe characteristic dinerences be- tween them come out with great clearness in the pages of Anna Comnena, and, at a later date, in those of Nicetas, of William of Tyre, of Yillchardouin, and a host of other con- temporary historians. While it is clear that the men of the West were comparatively a horde of barbafians, who entered and finally destroyed a refined and civilized capital, the vir- tues and vices of the two races stand out with equal distinct- ness. The Crusaders felt, spoke, and acted in presence of the civilization, but also of the nnmanly luxury, the lying and treachery, of the Byzantine court, as Englishmen have so often done in presence of some of the courts of farther Asia. They were rough and rude, drunken and licentious, and at times could be false and cruel. But their falseness and cruelty, com- pared with that of the Byzantines, were those of an average
