volume one

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PEEFACE. ix
because it combines with goodness to employ both these.
To term successful cunning wisdom, and foretell its per-
petual success, is to cast virtue prostrate at the feet
of vice, and to destroy for ever every holy human
aspiration. "It is not, and it cannot come to good"
Hamlet's is a sounder creed than Mr. Macaulay's.—If we
look for the real benefits derived by the human race from
the Crusades, we shall find that not one of them Avas con-
templated by the chm'chmen who planned and promoted
these expeditions ;
whilst, of the advantages they aimed at,
except some wealth to the general church, most were never
attained, and the rest quickly crumbled into ruin. "Wliere
then is the Avisdom of this boasted policy ? The miraculous
regenerations of papal power were the effects of circumstances
rather than of profound wisdom. ]Mr. Macaulay has given
a highly- coloured picture of the order of the Jesuits and
their founder, attributing too much, as we think, to Loyola
—wiser and cooler heads than his perfected the schemes of
the fanatic.
We could, " if it were our hint," say much more on
this head ; but we must conclude by showing that it was
this part of Mr. Macaulay's essay that led us into this
apparent digression. When our readers see in the text and
appendix the very interesting documents concerning the
institution of the Assassins, under the Old Man of the
Mountain, we think they must be struck, as we were, with
the wonderful analogy between this sect and the Society of
Jesus. The same careful physical selection in their tools ;
the same elaborate, imaginative education ; the same abnega-
tion of self; the same blind and perfect obedience; the
same unscrupulousness as to means ; the same devotedness
to one aim,—the power of the Old Man or the General ;
these really almost lead us to believe they had one common
source, and that the Spaniard was a pupil of the Syrian.
I*