THE SYRIAN LADY;
A SKETCH OF THE CRUSADES.
“Yes, love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given, To lift from earth our low desire. Devotion wafts the mind above, But heaven itself descends in love.”—The Giaour.

There is something in the first approach of spring—in the budding of the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the sun—as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed, that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph. Like many others, admirable practices of the olden time, the setting apart to joy and innocent festivity of the first of May is now gradually falling into neglect; but at the period of which we are about to treat, not Christmas itself could be observed with more reverential care than its inviting rival. On May-day, the evergreens which had decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave way to garlands of such flowers as102 the mellowing influences of the season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume; troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete, prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court, the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad harbinger of sunshine and of summer.

In England, above all other lands—the merry England of antiquity—was this pleasing festival peculiarly dear to all classes of society; at all times a period eagerly anticipated, and rapturously enjoyed, never perhaps was its arrival celebrated by all men with wilder revelry, with more enthusiastic happiness, than on the year which had accomplished the deliverance of their lion-hearted monarch from the chains of perfidious Austria. It seemed to the whole nation as though, not only the actual winter of the year, with his dark accompaniments of snow and storm, but the yet more oppressive winter of anarchy and misrule, of usurpation and tyranny, were about to pass away from the people, which had so long groaned under the griping sway of the bad John, or been torn by the savage strife of his mercenary barons; while their legitimate and honored sovereign was dragging his dreary hours along in the dungeon, from which he had but now escaped, through the devoted fidelity and unrivalled art of the minstrel Blondel.

Now, however, the king was on the throne of his fathers, girt with a circle of three gallant spirits, who had shed their blood like water on the thirsty deserts of Syria; earning not only earthly honor and renown, but, as their imperfect faith103 had taught them to believe, the far more lofty guerdon of eternal life. Now their national festival had returned—they were called upon by the thousand voices of nature to give the rein to Pleasure, and why should they turn a deaf ear to her inspiring call?

The streets of London—widely different indeed from the vast wilderness of walls, which has risen like a ph?nix from the ashes of its predecessor, but even at that early age a vast and flourishing town—were thronged, from the earliest dawn, by a constant succession of smiling faces: old and young, men and maidens, grave citizens and stern soldiers, all yielding to the excitement of the moment, all hurrying from the intricate lanes of the city to greet their king, who had announced his intention of holding a court at Westminster, and proceeding thence, at high noon, to feast with the city dignitaries in Guild-hall. The open stalls, which then occupied the place of shops, were adorned by a display of their richest wares, decorated with wreaths of a thousand bright colors;—steel harness from the forges of Milan; rich velvets from the looms of Genoa; drinking-cups and ewers of embossed gold, glittered in every booth. The projecting galleries, which thrust forward their irregular gables far across the narrow streets, were hung with tapestries of price; while garlands of flowers, stretched from side to side, and the profusion of hawthorn boughs, with their light green leaves and snowy blossoms, lent a sylvan appearance to the crowded haunts of the metropolis. From space to space the streets were guarded by the city-watch in their white cassocks and glittering head-pieces; while ever and anon the train of some great lord came winding its way, with led horses in costly caparison, squires and pages in the most gorgeous fashion of the day, the banner and the knightly armor of the baron borne before him, from his lodgings in the Minories, or the more notorious Chepe. The air was literally alive with music and104 light laughter; even the shaven and cowled monk, as he threaded his way through the motley concourse—suffered the gravity of his brow to relax into a smile when he looked upon the undisguised delight of some fair girl, escorted by her trusty bachelor; now stopping to gaze on the foreign curiosities displayed in decorated stalls; now starting in affected terror from the tramp and snort of the proud war-horse, or mustering a frown of indignation at the unlicensed salutation of its courtly rider; now laughing with unsuppressed glee at the strange antics of the mummers and morricers, who, in every disguise that fancy could suggest, danced and tumbled through the crowded ways—heedless of the disturbance they excited, or the danger they incurred from the hoofs of chargers which were prancing along in constant succession, to display the equestrian graces and firm seat of some young aspirant for the honors of chivalry.

The whole scene was in the highest degree picturesque, and such as no other age of the world could afford. The happiness which, although fleeting and fictitious, threw its bright illumination over the whole multitude, oblivious of the cares, the labors, and the sorrows of to-morrow, afforded a subject for the harp of the poet, no less worthy his inspired meditations than the gorgeous coloring and the rich costume of the middle ages might lend to the pencil of a Leslie or a Newton.

In a chamber overlooking with its Gothic casements this scene of contagious mirth—alone, unmoved by the gay hum which told of happiness in every passing breeze—borne down, as it would appear, by the weight of some secret calamity—sat Sir Gilbert à-Becket, of glorious form and unblemished fame. The bravest of the brave on the battle-plain, unequalled for wisdom in the hall of council, he had been among the first of those bold hearts who had buckled on their mighty armor to fight the good fight of Christianity—to rear the cross above the105 crescent—and to redeem the Savior’s sepulchre from the contaminating sway of the unbeliever.

There was not one among the gallant thousands who had followed their lion-hearted leader from the green vales of England to the sultry sands of Palestine, whose high qualities had been more frequently tried, or whose undaunted valor was more generally acknowledged, than the knight à-Becket; there was not one to whose lance the chivalrous Richard looked more confidently for support, nor one to whose counsel he more willingly inclined his ear. In the last desperate effort before the walls of Ascalon—when, with thirty knights alone, the English monarch had defied the concentrated powers, and vainly sought an opponent in the ranks of sixty thousand mussulmans—his crest had shone the foremost in those fierce encounters which have rendered the name of the Melec Ric a terror to the tribes of the desert that has endured even to the present day. It was at the close of this bloody encounter, that, conquered by his own previous exertions rather than by the prowess of his foemen—his armor hacked and rent, his war-steed slain beneath him—he had been overwhelmed by numbers while wielding his tremendous blade beside the bridle-rein of his king, and borne away by the Saracens into hopeless captivity.

Days and months had rolled onward, and the limbs of the champion were wasted and his constitution sapped by the vile repose of the dungeon; yet never for an instant had his proud demeanor altered, or his high spirit quailed beneath the prospect of an endless slavery. All means had been resorted to by his turbaned captors to induce him to adopt the creed of Mohammed. Threat of torments such as was scarcely endured even by the martyrs of old; promises of dominion, and wealth, and honor; the agonies of thirst and hunger; the allurement of beauty almost superhuman—had been brought to assail the faith of the despairing but undaunted prisoner: and each temptation106 had been tried but to prove how unflinching was his resolution, and how implicit his faith in that Rock of Ages which he had ever served with enthusiastic, at least, if erring zeal, and with a fervency of love which no peril could shake, no pleasure could seduce from its serene fidelity.

At length, when hope itself was almost dead within his breast; when ransom after ransom had been vainly offered; when the noblest moslem captives had been tendered in exchange for his inestimable head; and, to crown the whole, when the no-longer united powers of the crusading league had departed from the shores on which they had lavished so much of their best blood—his deliverance from the fetters of the infidel was accomplished by one of those extraordinary circumstances which the world calls chance, but which the Christian knows how to attribute to the infinite mercies of an overruling Providence. The eagerness of the politic sultan—whose name ranks as high among the tribes of Islam as the glory of his opponents among the pale sons of Europe—to obtain proselytes from the nations which he had the sagacity to perceive were no less superior to the wandering hordes of the desert in arts than in arms, had led him to break through those laws which are so intimately connected with the religion of Mohammed—the laws of the harem! As the pious faith of the western warrior appeared to gain fresh vigor from every succeeding temptation, so did the anxiety of his conqueror increase to gain over to his cause a spirit the value of which was daily rendered more and more conspicuous. In order to bring about this end, after every other device had failed, he commanded the admission to the Briton’s cell of the fairest maiden of his harem—a maid whose pure and spotless beauty went further to prove her unblemished descent than even the titles which were assigned to the youthful Leila, of almost royal birth.

107 Dazzled by her charms, and intoxicated by the fascination of her manner, her artless wit, and her delicate timidity, so far removed from the unbridled passion of such other eastern beauties as had visited his solitude, the Christian soldier betrayed such evident delight in listening to her soft words, and such keen anxiety for a repetition of the interview, that the oriental monarch believed that he had in sooth prevailed. Confidently, however, as he had calculated on the conversion of the believing husband by the unbelieving wife, the bare possibility of an opposite result had never once occurred to his distorted vision. But truly has it been said, “Magna est veritas et pr?valebit!” The damsel who had been sent to create emotion in the breast of another, was the first to become its victim herself: she whose tutored tongue was to have won the prisoner from the faith of his fathers, was herself the first to fall away from the creed of her race. Enamored, beyond the reach of description, of the good knight, whose attractions of person were no less superior to the boasted beauty of the oriental nobles, than his rich and enthusiastic mind soared above their prejudiced understandings, she had surrendered her whole soul to a passion as intense as the heat of her native climate; she had lent a willing ear to the fervid eloquence of her beloved, and had drank in fresh passion from the very language which had won her reason from the debasing superstitions of Islamism to the bright and everlasting splendors of the Christian faith. From this moment the eastern maid became the bride of his affections, the solace of his weary hours, the object of his brightest hopes. He had discovered that she was worthy of his love; he was sure that her whole being was devoted to his welfare; and he struggled no longer against the spirit with which he had battled, as unworthy his country, his name, and his religion.

It was not long ere the converted maiden had planned the escape, and actually effected the deliverance, of her affianced lover. She had sworn to join him in his flight; she had promised108 to accompany him to his distant country, and to be the star of his ascendant destinies, as she had ............