on the altars was veiled, the last consecrated wafers were burnt, and the bodies of the saints and images of the patrons were carried down into the crypts. In presence of the assembled people, the legate, attired in his violet-coloured stole, used on Passion Day as in the service of the dead, elevated his voice, and announced to the multitude on their knees, in the name of Jesus Christ, that all the domains of the king of France were laid under an interdict, until he ceased his adulterous intercourse with Agnes de Meranie his concubine. A deep groaning was heard in the church; the old men, the women and children wept: it seemed as if the hour of judgment was come, and that all were going to appear before the avenging God without the succour of the church. The influence of this proceeding can only be calculated by those who know the depth of superstition in which the masses were at this period plunged. From the moment of the fulmination of the bull, all religious offices were suspended, the images of our Saviour outside the church were covered up, as also those of the Apostles and the Virgin, the guardian angel, before whom the baron and his vassals were accustomed to kneel every sabbath and feast day. The cross on the steeple was also covered with black cloth: the gates were closed, and the noisy bells, which announced the close of labour for the day and the hour of prayer, were alike muffled: service ceased from one end of the kingdom to the other, the choir was silent and the monasteries still: marriages and baptisms were celebrated in the churchyard, and they who died during the interdict did not receive Christian burial. People left the kingdom to attend the ceremonies of the church in neighbouring countries; they flocked to Normandy, into Britanny and the fiefs of England. At many points of the kingdom violent commotions took place: the multitude attempted to force the bishops and priests to reopen the chapels, and to celebrate the holy mysteries.

Philip tried in vain every means of resistance, and at length was obliged to send two clerks to ask that the interdict should be taken off, protesting that he was ready to put the question of divorce to a trial of its validity. The Pope answered, " I am willing: but first of all let him send away his concubine and take back Ingeburg: then, and then only, will I proceed to examine the case of divorce, and take off the interdict!"-" My God! my God!" cried Agnes," where now shall I take my grief?" Philip in a moment of fury exclaimed: "Well then, I will turn my back on the Church-Saladin was happy to have no pope." Philip assembled his parliament and summoned the principal barons and prelates of his realm: Agnes appeared before them, in a suit of mourning, in grief, but beautiful in her tears; a mortal paleness

marked her face, and her far-advanced pregnancy did not diminish the interest her appearance excited. The barons and the prelates, however, could find no means of relieving their sovereign: they decided that the king must obey the wish of the pope, that Agnes de Meranie should be dismissed, and Ingeburg brought back from her prison.

Agnes wrote an affecting letter to the pope, who only answered by sending a legate to inquire into the affair of the divorce. She retired to a castle in Normandy, where she died at the end of two months in child-bed. In the mean time the council sat at Soissons to deliberate on the validity of the divorce, and it was joined by envoys from the king of Denmark. The affair was every day assuming a more serious character, when one morning the assembly was informed that the king had all of a sudden arrived on horseback, and had rode away with Ingeburg on the croup behind him. Here was an end of their grave deliberation on the divorce, and the council was dissolved. Philip, however, had no further intention than that of confounding a council debating on a point that no longer concerned him: he again shut up Ingeburg in an old palace, and in spite of the repeated entreaties of the Pope that he would take carnal knowledge of his lawful wife, his capricious disgust remained in all its force, and it was only on his death bed that he ever again consented to see her.

The extraordinary power of the Church under Innocent is also strikingly displayed in the treatment of the Comte de Toulouse, when Provence, which was a fief of the king of Arragon, was invaded by the crusading barons, bent upon destroying the Albigenses by fire and sword. When this powerful prince-for such was the Comte de Toulouse-saw that it was impossible for him with his vassals and allies to make head against the Frank seigneurs under Louis of France, he determined on making his peace with the Church, which charged him with heresy or the protection of heresy. After promising to give up into their hands seven of his strongest castles, and taken an oath to confirm it, the Comte was admitted to make his abjuration. Advancing towards the sanctuary, an altar covered with relics, naked to the waist, a rope was drawn tight about his neck, and two bishops held the ends of it, as if they were holding a beast of burden; the Comte then pronounced an oath, beginning thus: "In the 12th year of my lord, the Pope Innocent III., I Raymond, in presence of the holy relics, the host and the wood of the true cross, swear, that I will obey all the orders of the pope and yours, Master Melon (the legate) touching the articles for which I am excommunicated, &c." When

the ceremony of reconciliation commenced, the legate put a stole on the neck of the count instead of the cord, and taking the two ends, he took him into the sanctuary, whipping him with a rod. The lord count cried out, and was red with shame: at last the legate gave him absolution. The crowd in the church was so great, that they were obliged to send him out of the church all covered with blood, by the subterranean passage leading into the fields.

We shall now pass to another aspect, in which the church, or at least a churchman, was exhibited to an admiring multitude. In one of the engagements between Richard and Philip, the Bishop of Beauvais was taken prisoner: he was found by the side of Philip, with his helmet on his head and lance in his hand: and in the course of the battle had made great carnage among the English. Richard treated him harshly, and locked him up in a fortified tower. He wrote a bitter complaint to the pope that a churchman should be so treated: the pope answered rationally enough: "You quitted the peaceful rule of the shepherd for the turbulence of war, the mitre for the casque, the pastoral crook for the lance, the cup for the cuirass, the ring for the sword, and you write me word that evil has befallen you. I am not astonished: you sought-well! you have found: you struck, and lo! you are stricken in your turn: however, I shall write to Richard to ask your deliverance." At the great battle of Bovines, the same bishop was again in arms, and distinguished himself greatly by his marvellous prowess. The venerable prelate fought with a massive iron club, for he had a scruple of conscience about taking life away by an effusion of blood. The chance of the fight brought him in contact with the Earl of Salisbury, upon whom he fell with his club, and quickly brought him to the earth. The bishop had by him a chatelain, the Sire de Nivelle. "John de Nivelle," said he, " drag this Salisbury along for me: say it was thou that struck him, for I am doing unlawful work. I should not change my staff for this club." Saying these words, he went forward gaily upon the English, knocking them down with his club, right and left.

Among other signs of the times recorded in the history of this remarkable reign, is the crusade of the children. The spirit of an age may be indicated by the turn of the infantine mind: in a country engaged in a popular war, the children will always be found playing at soldiers. But the religious duty of the Crusades had taken such universal hold of men's minds, that it produced a movement, even among the children of Europe, of a kind unparalleled in the history of the world.

In the year 1212, many thousands of boys and girls abandoned

their homes, not only in France, but in Germany and Italy, giving out that they were bent upon delivering the Holy Land. The eldest were not more than eighteen years of age. It was in vain that their parents attempted to restrain them. They watched opportunities of escape, and got away by making holes in the walls; and sallied forth from the paternal mansion with as much joy as if they had been going to a festival. The fate of these unhappy children, as may be supposed, was most unfortunate; they were entrapped in numbers by merchants of Venice, Genoa and Marseilles, who were at that time engaged in the infamous traffic of supplying the seraglios of the East with children. A great many were shipped in the Mediterranean ports, and many died of hunger and fatigue in the long journies to which they had voluntarily devoted themselves, but for which their strength was utterly inadequate.

It would be very ungrateful, after having made such copious use of a book as we have done in this article, to speak ill of the author, and therefore we feel easy in strongly recommending M. Capefigue's history to general attention. It is written after a plan as yet unpractised in England, and which can scarcely be called history. It consists almost wholly of a reproduction of morsels of the old contemporary writers, monks, chroniclers, poets and letter writers, frequently in their own words, and almost always partaking of their simplicity, at the same time occasionally varied by a remark which belongs to the present century. In itself this style of weaving history produces a kind of partycoloured performance, which is far from being agreeable at first sight: a little attentive contemplation, however, shows that the natural result is that of deeply imbuing the reader in the colours of the time.

ART. II-1. Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie. Von Karl Otfried Müller. (An Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology. By C. O. Müller.) Göttingen. 1825.

8vo.

2. Aglaophanus, sive de Theologia Mysticæ Græcorum causis libri tres. Scripsit Chr. Augustus Lobeck, idemque poetarum Orphicorum dispersas reliquias collegit. Königsberg. 1829. 2 vols. 8vo.

THE subject of mythology may be considered in two points of view, either in regard to the religion or the history of ancient nations. The first branch of this subject comprises investigations into the origin and nature of the different modes of worship, the rites, ceremonies, festivals, and sacred symbols prevailing

VOL. VII. NO. XIII.

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among the nations whose mythology we possess; and it is this which has attracted the chief notice of the writers of France and England. These authors, actuated by different motives, either like Volney, Dupuis and others, by a hatred, or like Bryant, by a love of the Christian religion, have by the most absurd etymogies, the most fanciful hypotheses, and the most illogical reasoning, attempted to set up a fabric which the faintest breath of criticism at once demolishes. Though the efforts of these writers have probably been more barren of good results than those of any other labourers in the field of literature, yet the utter worthlessness of their books is to be attributed, not to the nature of the subject, (for the history of religion is the history of the human mind,) but to their eagerness to explain upon one theory, or to refer to one origin, a mass of phenomena wholly unconnected, and springing from numberless causes. Dupuis and Volney with their astronomy, and Bryant with Noah and the ark, resemble the advertising quack, whose infallible and instantaneous cure for all diseases would probably turn out not to be of use in one. in explaining the sacred symbols so prevalent in the ancient religions of India, Egypt and Greece, a new path has been struck out by several modern writers, avoiding the absurdities of the authors just mentioned. Whatever errors may have been committed by the symbolical mythologists, and to howsoever well-grounded objections parts of their systems may be liable, it cannot be denied that the labours of Creuzer and others on the continent, and in this country of Mr. Payne Knight,* have thrown much light on the modes of expression adopted by the early priests and religionists for the objects and powers of nature which they worshipped. The general use of these holy symbols is proved by their constant occurrence on the temples of Hindostan and Egypt, and the coins of the Greek states, which last were exclusively reserved for sacred devices; nor were ever, till late times, polluted by portraits of human princes. The historical school of mythology has had no followers in this country, nor indeed in any country but Germany. The attempts of some of the French and English historians, such as Mitford, Raoul-Rochette, and many others, to elicit history from fable, are ludicrous in the extreme. Instead of perceiving that the legends of mythology bear only an analogy to the truth, that they are false when understood literally, but frequently true when interpreted metaphorically, they have

See his Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology. London. 1818. Printed for private distribution, and afterwards published in the Classical Journal. It was intended to be prefixed to the second volume of "Select Specimens of Ancient Sculpture," published by the Society of Dilettanti, which is, we understand, in course of preparation,