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of appetite to the spiritual feast. ^70 In the sea-voyage of Palestine, the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare: but the conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between Germany and Greece. The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; ^71 and from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen hundred miles of a Christian empire. Among the Franks, the zeal of pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times: and the roads were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of every rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their dominions; and the numbers of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross. About thirty years before the first crusade, the arch bishop of Mentz, with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan; and the multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons. At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the emperor; but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault of the wild Arabs: they drew their swords with scrupulous reluctance, and sustained siege in the village of Capernaum, till they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir. After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy, but only a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land.

Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion of this pilgrimage: he observes that they sailed from Normandy, thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand, and the wallet at their back. ^72

[Footnote 67: See D'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411,) Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 390, 397, 400, 401,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 321 - 323,) and Marei, (p. 384 - 386,) an historian of Egypt, translated by Reiske from Arabic into German, and verbally interpreted to me by a friend.]

[Footnote 68: The religion of the Druses is concealed by their ignorance and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood. The little that is, or deserves to be, known, may be seen in the industrious Niebuhr, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354 - 357,) and the second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de Volney.

Note: The religion of the Druses has, within the present year, been fully developed from their own writings, which have long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and Oxford, in the "Expose de la Religion des Druses, by M. Silvestre de Sacy." Deux tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life of Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors in the account of Gibbon. These errors chiefly arose from his want of knowledge or of attention to the chronology of Hakem's life. Hakem succeeded to the throne of Egypt in the year of the Hegira 386. He did not assume his divinity till 408. His life was indeed "a wild mixture of vice and folly," to which may be added, of the most sanguinary cruelty. During his reign, 18,000 persons were victims of his ferocity. Yet such is the god, observes M. de Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years! (See p. ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric meaning, alluding to the destruction of other religions and the propagation of his own. It does not seem to have been the "vanity" of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion. The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali, the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was God, the one