vation on the constitution, would, on the contrary, be to carry into effect that provision of the Great Charter, by which the King has promised that there shall be neither denial nor delay of justice."*

The design which the author recommends of revising, classifying, and abbreviating the statutes, leads him to consider at some length the question of codification in general. Our readers know that the opinions of many eminent jurists of the present day are divided upon this nice and speculative point. Mr. Bentham in this country, and M. Meyer in Holland, (whose elaborate work on the Judicial Institutions of Europe was reviewed in a former number), names of great weight on such a subject, are strenuous advocates for the formation of codes, in all countries which do not already possess them. MM. Hugo and Savigny, of not inferior reputation to those we have mentioned, have taken the opposite side of the question; our author ranks himself with the latter, and avows himself Anti-Tribonian. We are unable at present to enter upon this part of the subject, which deserves indeed a more full consideration and greater space than we can at present devote to it. We perceive that M. Meyer has announced a work on Codification, which it is possible may afford us an opportunity of examining the principles contended for by the champions on either side. For this time we dismiss it, observing, however, that the author has displayed much learning and ingenuity in the argument he has advanced against the proposition for forming a code in England, where, it must be admitted, that the reasons which have influenced other countries in adopting such a measure do not exist.

The author's remarks on the English bar, and more particularly on the king's counsel, and their unreasonable and pertinacious opposition (with some exceptions) to all reform, are written with so much spirit, that we should be tempted to give some extracts from them, but that the length to which this article has already extended admonishes us to bring it to a close; and we cannot do so more conveniently and properly than by the recapitulation which Mr. Cooper makes of his plan of improvement.

"Let the work of reform, then, in the judicial system of England, be proceeded in without further delay; or, at least, as soon as that system shall be relieved from the presence of Lord Eldon" (this consummation, so devoutly wished, has at length arrived): "let that reform tend immediately to the correction of those evils, the existence of which has been confirmed by time, and let the most simple and easy method of effecting it be resorted to in preference to any other. To accomplish this object, I am persuaded that the measures I have proposed for the successive amelioration of the judicial organization, and, above all, for the administration of justice more promptly and at less cost, are well adapted: * Nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum vel justitiam. VOL. V. NO. X.

SS

that new equity courts, competent to the despatch of all suits which may be brought before them, as soon as they are set down for hearing, should be established: that a new and exclusive tribunal should be created, to consist of three or four judges, for disposing of the business relating to bankrupts and insolvents:† that a supreme court, which shall sit constantly, in the same manner as the other courts, shall be established for hearing appeals instead of the House of Lords, and that appeals from the colonies shall be heard in the same court, if it shall be found impracticable to decide those appeals finally in the colonies themselves : that the number of judges in the ordinary courts be increased, and that these courts be so constituted that whenever there shall happen to be an arrear of causes in one of them, they may be transferred to the others: that there be no intermediate appeal, but only a direct appeal to the supreme court that the administration of justice in the principality of Wales be put upon the same footing as in England: that the judges of the courts at Westminster extend their circuits of Nisi Prius assize to that principality, and that the courts of equity there be abolished: that the circuits of these judges be so arranged and divided, that there shall be no necessity for leaving remanets in the cause papers, for want of sufficient time to despatch them that all the courts of equity and common law shall be held in the same place: that all these courts shall sit at once, and in the morning: that none of the Judges or Masters in Chancery shall be members of the House of Commons: that the monopoly of serjeants at law and king's counsel be extinguished, and that such rank shall be conferred on any one who, being qualified, shall think fit to solicit for it that the statute law be consolidated, classed, and completed that the process of each court be simplified and made uniform, and legal fictions abolished. If measures such as those which I have bere rapidly sketched shall be adopted, the complaints which are now so frequent, of the interminable delays and of the ruinous expense which are the inseparable attendants of the legal proceedings of this country, will be heard no more; and if the people still complain, it will at least not be against the judicial system, nor on account of the numerous collections of decrees and treatises and commentaries on the laws,-nor of the confused mass of statutes-nor because the common law is unwritten-nor because, after years of expectation and anxiety, the parties who gain their causes lose at the same time a large portion of their fortunes."

The value of several of these suggestions has received a most striking confirmation since they were published, by the Report of

It appears, that so long ago as the reign of James I., the design of increasing the number of equity judges had engaged the attention of the legislature. Vide Commons' Journals, vol. i. p. 596.

The efficacy of this recommendation has been sufficiently proved in the existing Court for the relief of Insolvent Debtors. There is, perhaps, no tribunal in the country in which business is conducted with greater intelligence, decorum, regularity, and dispatch, nor one in which the conduct of the judges gives more universal satisfaction.

was,

One of the propositions made to Cromwell by Shepherd, (author of the Touchstone,) "that there be enough of courts of justice; rather too many than too few; and that they be not overburthened with business." Vide Shepherd's England's Balme, p. 20.

the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and proceedings of the courts of Common Law, in which all those which are connected with that subject have been adopted and recommended to be carried into execution. All that relates to the Court of Chancery yet remains to be done. The great obstacle to reform is removed in the removal of Lord Eldon. Lord Lyndhurst has the power-he ought to have the ambition-to effect so useful and requisite a work as that which invites his labours. He has pledged himself in the face of the peers of England, that he will do so; and if he fulfils that pledge, he may earn the brightest renown that ever yet was associated with the name of an English judge.

ART. X.-1. Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, nach morgenländischen und abendländischen Berichten; von Friedrich Wilken. (History of the Crusades, from Eastern and Western authorities. By Frederic Wilken.) Leipzig. 1807-1826. Vol. I.—IV. 8vo. 2. Histoire des Croisades. Par M. Michaud, de l'Academie Française. Quatrième Edition, revue, corrigée, et augmentée. Paris. 1825-1829. 6 tomes.

8vo.

3. Bibliothèque des Croisades. Par M. Michaud. Paris. 1829.

THE most extraordinary phenomena beyond question which the history of the world presents, are the Crusades to the Holy Land. In no other instance have large bodies of men acted from causes so purely moral. When tides of Kelts, Germans, Scandinavians, and Huns rolled in on the Roman empire, it was the pressure of necessity or the love of spoil which urged them on; it was the lust of conquest and of booty which in all ages has poured the Turkish hordes over the East, and even the Arabs were led as much by the hope of gain as the zeal for proselytism. But it was genuine religious enthusiasm, (fanaticism if we choose to call it so,) and the passion for military fame, which impelled all orders of men to abandon their homes in the West, and undergo toils and dangers without number, for the sake of conquering and retaining a piece of land in the East, which religious associations had hallowed in their eyes. The warriors of the cross (we mean of course the great majority) drew their swords, not for themselves, but for their Lord, whose favour they aspired to gain by rescuing his heritage. from the hands of those who unjustly held it; and he who reads or writes the History of the Crusades with feelings of contempt or aversion for those who engaged in them, may be satisfied that he is yet far from possessing that calm comprehensive spirit of

philosophy, without which history can never be read or written to advantage.

The Crusades are the real Romance of History. If romance requires that its heroes should act from motives which are not merely selfish, what men were ever less self-seeking than Godfrey of Bouillon and most of his companions?-than Louis VII. and Louis IX., Coeur de Lion and Barbarossa? No history records more daring deeds of valour than that of the Holy Wars; yet it is, we apprehend, a capital error to mix up chivalry, in its usual acceptation, with the Crusades. They had little save valour in common. Of the various parts that form the compound idea of chivalry, which are so well summed up in the two lines of the poet of the Furioso,

"Le donne, i cavaglier, gl'armi, gl'amori,

Le cortesie, gl'audaci imprese,"

only one-half are applicable to the Crusades. It was not till the holy wars were over that chivalry rose in its splendour; its noon was not till the fourteenth century, when courts and castles were filled with

"ladies whose bright eyes

Rained influence and judged the prize;"

in the days of Crécy and Poitiers, when hostile warriors vied with each other in courtesy; and when Froissart, the chronicler of chivalry, gaily rambled from castle to castle, enjoying the smiles of ladies and the applause of knights. Chivalry no doubt co-existed to a certain extent with the Crusades; they were both scions of the same stock-feudalism; they were both effects, neither of them a cause; their principle was materially different. The crusader acted from higher motives than the preux chevalier, who displayed his valour to become worthy of le don d'amoureuse merci, and suspended an embroidered glove from his casque; and it is from the operation of these more elevated motives that the Crusades derive a large portion of their interest.

No history embracing the same extent of time introduces to us so many various nations, or brings so many distinguished personages on the scene. In our progress through it we encounter almost every nation of Europe, and almost every name of note which its annals present for a space of two centuries, eminently prolific of great names. We meet the Greek empire at one of its most interesting periods; we mix with Turks, Saracens, and some of their most distinguished princes and warriors; and we even hear in the distance the sounds of the hoofs of the countless cavalry of Genghis Khan and his descendants, as they issue from the deserts of the remote East to spread desolation to the shores of

the Baltic and the Mediterranean. The Crusades present to our view that extraordinary junction of the monk and the soldier in the religious military orders which arose at that time; the murderous union of the Assassins enters into their history, which also includes the origin of the Mameluke power, whose extinction, like that of the Knights of St. John, has been among the events of our own days. Battles and sieges of the greatest variety and interest, marvellous deeds of valour, miracles, every thing in short which can contribute to give to true history a tinge of romance-are to be found in the History of the Crusades; and numerous narratives of both Eastern and Western eye-witnesses, afforded a rich harvest of materials to whoever would undertake the agreeable task of presenting them in one view to the public. It may naturally therefore be asked, how so promising a subject has been allowed to lie so long neglected? How is it that till of late no History of the Crusades was to be found in any modern language, except the French one of the Jesuit Maimbourg, and the quaint and sententious but superficial Holy War" of our countryman Thomas Fuller? In answer to this question it may be replied, that it was only about the middle of the last century that the English and French began to write with any care and philosophy the history of other nations and events not immediately connected with their own, and that then many subjects of apparently more immediate interest presented themselves; that the Italians wrote only Italian history; and that as the Germans were just beginning to write, their labours naturally began at home. These, however, are rather specious than solid reasons;-perhaps a far more potent cause was the authority of Gibbon, who, having considered the subject rather superficially, and regarding, as was natural for him, the crusaders as a pack of brutal, ignorant, fanatics, hinted that a consecutive narrative of their deeds would present nothing more than a succession of the same causes and effects, little relieved by variety,—an idea, the falsity of which we trust we shall demonstrate before we conclude.

In the present century, however, the subject of the Crusades has been taken up almost at the same time in France and Germany, and the works to which it has given birth have been followed-sed non passibus æquis-by an English one. The interest of the subject has been fully proved by the success which has attended these histories; for both the French and English ones, although neither of them possesses any extraordinary merit, have already reached a fourth edition.

The History of the Crusades which stands first in our list and is undoubtedly the best, (although still unfinished,) is the German one of Frederic Wilken, formerly Professor of History in the