Note 67 — BOOK XVI.

It appears almost incomprehensible that our author should, in these reflections, omit that which must strike every one else as the principal cause of the change he affects to lament. In the days of Peter the Hermit, a crusade was a golden day-dream, in which ambition and cupidity indulged as strongly as piety or superstition. But experience had not only proved it to be “a baseless fabric,” but a cruel and a bitter scourge to all who had embarked in one. The first Crusaders were visionary—later ones must have been mad.—Trans.