and arts, by depriving the different governments of Europe, on whose hands every thing depends in a state, of the leisure and means to attend to the progress of both, yet we cannot with our author deny to the crusades the merit which they really possess, of having developed the ideas of commerce, and of having tended to deliver the common order of the people from the feudal yoke. But let us hear Mr. Berington.

"But was the state of letters at all affected by the first, or by the ensuing crusades? I think that it was affected, but to its detriment. That it suffered at home will hardly be controverted, when we consider the dissipation which it occasioned in the minds of all men, civil and ecclesiastical; and the new temper that was generated, by which all sedentary occupations were suspended, and a mark of reproach fixed upon every undertaking, which did not tend to, or was not connected with, the peculiar military mania of the times. Schools and convents felt the general contagion; if a few employed the sober remonstrances of wisdom, they were unheeded or despised. At the call of their prince Duke Robert, the pupils of Bea deserted their masters; and no eloquence gained hearers but that of the Hermit, or of popular declaimers on the same topic. That this was the case, is sufficiently attested by the histories of the times." P. 268.

To this statement we have not the least objection; and we might add other instances to those which Mr. Berington has produced, if other instances were necessary.

"As to external benefits, I believe there were none; or if any, did they compensate for the depopulation of countries; the waste of treasure; the obscuration of the moral principle with respect to correct views of right and wrong; and the introduction of many foreign vices? It is true, that among the Greeks there was much to learn, and much might have been derived from the Saracens themselves. But in our sottish vanity, we affected to despise the former, because their bodily strength was inferior to our own, and they knew less of the art of war; and to have sought instruction from a Saracen, or to have taken it when offered, might fairly have been deemed an humiliating concession to the enemy, if not a base dereliction of the christian faith. Our ignorance, besides, of the languages of the countries through which we passed, was an insurmountable obstacle to every acquirement; unless where the observation of the eye may be supposed to have sufficed. Hence it has been remarked, that a higher degree of splendour and parade, which was borrowed from the riches and magnificence of the eastern cities, was introduced into the courts and ceremonies of the Euro. pean princes." P. 268.

Now we should certainly conceive that this higher degree of splendour and parade was certainly of some advantage to Europe.

It developed the ideas of commerce, and opened a free inter course amongst the nations, just as much and perhaps even more than the journeys to Rome which the Metropolitans were obliged to undertake, in order to take from the shrine of St. Peter the Pallium, which invested them with the fulness of their power; as Mr. Berington has very justly observed, that from these journeys every traveller returned with some additions to his stock of knowledge, though in other respects they were an evil as far as they served to create or to perpetuate a servile dependence on the Roman court.

"Should it be objected to me, that I can discover advantages from this intercourse with Rome and with Romans, and none from the crusades, which promoted more travelling and a much more extensive communication-I reply, that the spirit, the views, the motives, joined to the characters of the men engaged, in both cases, were widely different; and that, therefore, the results could not be the same. On one side, we behold persons of education, of sober and regular conduct and habits, coolly contemplating, as they proceeded or as they sojourned, the manners, the arts, the customs of nations; on the other, we gaze upon a promiscuous multitude of all ages, orders, and professions, rushing forward with the impetuosity of a torrent, and solely intent on plunder, sensual gratification, or providing the means of subsistence; on destroying the supposed enemy, or, at the best, on accomplishing their vows. Here the disparity is obvious, and it is by no means in favour of the erusades." P. 274.

After what has been said, the reader will be able to judge by himself respecting the accuracy of this comparison. Mr. Be rington compares the archbishops and their suites to the promiscuous multitude that composed the crusades, whilst he ought to have compared the advantages which these journeys of the archbishops produced on the mind of their countrymen at home, with the benefits arising from the intercourse which the vessels of the Venetians, Genoese, and all other commercial nations of Europe opened amongst distaut countries by means of the crusades. But let us go on.

"If it be still insisted that some benefits, in domestic, civil, or scientific knowledge, were necessarily communicated to Europe, either by the expeditions themselves, or, at least, owing to our long abode in the East: I ask what those benefits were? or how it happened, that the literary and intellectual aspect of Europe exhibited no striking change, till other causes, wholly unconnected with the crusades, were brought into action? I believe then, that these expeditions were utterly sterile with respect to the arts, to learning, and to every moral advantage; and that they neither retarded the progress of the invading enemy, nor, for a single day, the fate of the eastern empire." P. 269.

We.

We will not enter into a discussion whether the crusades alone, unconnected with other causes, could have produced any striking changes in Europe; but we may with safety assert, that to the crusades Europe owes the first measures for the abolition of the feudal system, and for delivering the common order of the people, without speaking of the other benefit which they produced in contributing to soften the manners of all the nations of Europe by the introduction of the laws and the spirit of chivalry. It is a fact too well known in history, that many barons, and indeed many kings, in order to fit themselves out for the enterprise, and encounter the expences of such a journey, were ob liged to free many of their vassals, and what is the same thing, allow to many of them the liberty of purchasing some of those rights, of which they had been deprived by the feudal system. This beneficial measure, whatever may be said to the contrary, is the very first which was adopted in favour of the freedom of the common people, so that in course of time it produced the total abolition of the feudal system; and if want of room did not forbid, we might follow all the details which this mania, in many respects absurd and detrimental, produced on the liberties of the people in France, Germany, Italy and England.

We must now, for the present, take our leave of Mr. Bering. ton. In our next number we shall resume with pleasure the task of imparting to our readers the observations we have made on the remaining part of this volume. In the mean time, we have not the slightest hesitation to recommend it to those of our readers, who wish to be acquainted with a branch of literature so interesting in itself, and unfortunately so much neglected by our age and nation.

(To be continued.)

269 PP.

ART. III. A Geological Essay on the imperfect Evidence in Support of a Theory of the Earth, deducible either from its general Structure or from the Changes produced on its Surface by the Operation of existing Causes. By J. Kidd, M.D. Professor of Chemistry in the University of Oxford. 8vo. 9s. Oxford, Parker; London, Rivingtous. 1814. THE extravagancies of geological speculation have long been regarded as the opprobrium of natural science. The very attempt to explain how the world was made has been generally esteemed both daring and irreverent; and it must be confessed that the presumption displayed by certain theorists on this subject has L VOL. IV. AUGUST, 1815.

been

been fully equalled by the absurdity of their notions. The mad and childish reveries of Demailet, Lamanon, and Bertrand, would alone amply justify all the expressions of contempt and derision which have been directed against geology; and even the vigorous minds of Kepler. Descartes, Burnet, and Buffon, were found to sacrifice to their respective hypotheses relative to our globe, not only all the rules of philosophy but also the plainest dictates of common sense. Nor can we take upon us to affirm that even Werner himself has not, on some occasions, generalized too hastily; and as to Hutton, his doctrines present themselves to our eyes in no other light than that of a geological romance. These two names, however, divide at present the scientific world, as to the leading views which are entertained respecting the crust of the earth; and the authority of Hutton or of Werner has long superseded all reference to more ancient authors, on this amusing and interesting study. We shall therefore, before entering with Professor Kidd, upon the consideration of the limited and imperfect evidence which as yet has been produced in support of any geognostic theory, give a brief sketch of those which have been advanced by the German and the Scottish philosophers whom we have just mentioned.

3

The hypothesis which Dr. Hutton constructed to explain the origin of the earth's surface and the relations which subsist among its component parts, surpasses, in point of elegance and simplicity, every thing that has yet been engrafted upon the speculations of science. He perceived, in the present crust of our globe, the debris of former continents with all their hills and mountains together with the remains of a thousand generations of animals and vegetables, the monuments of art and the labours of countless ages; all which having undergone a process of renovation in the depths of the ocean, was again exposed to the sun as habitable land, fitted to support new races of animals, and to become the theatre of a new order of events. But the causes to which the renovated earth owes its existence are, according to the principles of this theory, already exerting their power to hasten its periodical catastrophie. The rains, the frost, and the very air of the atmosphere, are constantly wearing down the hardest rocks; and thus, those stupendous chains of mountains which stretch over all our continents, and constitute as it were the frame-work of this planet, are undergoing the operations of an incessant waste, and are already lowering their heads towards their parent ocean. All that is at present above the level of the waters will, says the Huttonian, sink in the course of ages to the bottom of the sea; where, by the operation of the central fires, the scattered materials will be again consolidated and reorganized into strata, and be once more elevated to the light of day. Thus

is established a succession of grand phenomena, of which as the commencement cannot be traced, neither can the end be anticipated. Decay and renovation follow each other according to determinate principles, and the perpetuity of the system seems to be provided for in the very frailty and mutation of its parts.

Nothing can appear, in the shape of a philosophical hypothesis, more brilliant and captivating than this; but being founded on the most unwarrantable and gratuitous assumptions, the Huttonian theory is not in any respect entitled to our regard, as an interpretation of nature. There is not only no ground for believing that a mass of fire exists in the interior of the earth; but, on the contrary, the slightest inspection of the mineral kingdom renders it irresistibly convincing, that fire could not be the instrument employed in consolidating the parts, and determining the relations of fossil bodies. In all mountain rocks not strictly primitive, there are found organic remains,, both animal and vegetable, of the most minute and delicate structure, exhibiting still uninjured fibres more slender than the human hair, and tubular vessels which only the microscope can detect. Is it possible to imagine that such a feeble organization could resist the operations of a fire, which must have fused immense rocks of quartz, and rendered liquid all the granite of the Alps and Andes! Would the leaf of a tree, a sprig of fern, or the shell of a fish, remain entire and impassive, while the most stubborn minerals were melted like water! With regard to the argument in favour of the Huttonian hypothesis, which has been drawn from the character of sandstone and conglomerate rocks, it has really no weight whatever, because the appearances in question are more easily explained on the principles of Werner; and the same observation is strictly applicable to the natural history of veins, which, in the greater number of instances, exhibit the most unequivocal proofs of a chrystalline origin. While, however, we thus express our opinion of Dr. Hutton's theory, and hesitate not to pronounce it totally irreconcilable both with the facts and principles of mineralogy, we take pleasure in declaring our complete concurrence with Professor Kidd in acquitting him of all intentions hostile to religion.

Of the Wernerian theory the leading doctrine seems to be, that all the materials of which the crust of the earth is composed were at one time held in a state of solution in the great chaotic water, and that they were consolidated in a certain order and succession, first by means of chystallization, and afterwards by mechanical deposition. From an attentive examination into the position and connections of the various strata, Werner was convinced both that they had been formed by means of water, and also that some of them had been formed at an earlier period L 2 than