What has
been the result? In every city, town, village, and hamlet of that great
kingdom, the divine image of the most illustrious of Hebrews has been
again raised amid the homage of kneeling millions; while, in the
heart of its bright and witty capital, the nation has erected the most
gorgeous'' of modern temples, and consecrated its marble and golden
walls to the name, and memory, and celestial efficacy of a Hebrew woman.
The country of which the solitary pilgrim, kneeling at this moment
at the Holy Sepulchre, was a native, had not actively shared in that
insurrection against the first and second Testament which distinguished
the end of the eighteenth century. But, more than six hundred years
before, it had sent its king, and the flower of its peers and people,
to rescue Jerusalem from those whom they considered infidels! and now,
instead of the third crusade, they expend their superfluous energies in
the construction of railroads.
The failure of the European kingdom of Jerusalem, on which such vast
treasure, such prodigies of valour, and such ardent belief had been
wasted, has been one of those circumstances which have tended to disturb
the faith of Europe, although it should have carried convictions of
a very different character.
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