EFFECTS OF THE CKUSADES. 



101 



colors, upon the windows of abbeys and cathedrals, the exploits 

 of the Crusaders and the triumphs of the Cross. 



From the Arabs and the Greeks, too, the Europeans received 

 their first lessons in the natural and exact sciences. Imperfect 

 and incomplete as were the astronomy, the botany, the mathe- 

 matics, and the geography of the Arabians, they were far in 

 advance of the same professions as understood and practised in 

 Europe. The languages were improved and enriched by the 

 association and exchange of ideas into which English, Germans, 

 Italians, and French were forced. The confusion of tongues, 

 which was as complete as at Babel, was somewhat corrected by the 

 harmony of interest and oneness of purpose which animated all, of 

 whatever name and lineage, who gathered around the Sepulchre. 



It is obvious, therefore, that the effect of the Crusades, so far 

 as it is the object of a work like the present to trace and de- 

 lineate it, was to give the people of Europe a new motive for 

 maintaining an intercourse with the people of Asia. They had 

 seen their superior civilization, and sought to introduce it among 

 themselves. They had learned to appreciate their skill in the 

 arts, and resolved to acclimate those arts at home. They had 

 accustomed themselves to many articles of luxury, which had 

 become articles of necessity, and which it was now essential, 

 therefore, to transport from the Levant, from the Red Sea, and 

 the Persian Gulf, to the Bay of Venice and the Gulf of Genoa. 

 There was a demand, in short, in the West, for the products, 

 the manufactures, the arts, of the East. Here was the origin 

 of the immense Eastern commerce which now fell into the hands 

 of the Genoese and Venetians, and which, resulting from the 

 Crusades, compelled us to the digression we have made. It is 

 not our purpose, however, to refer more at length to this com- 

 merce, as it was carried on upon seas which had been navigated 

 for twenty centuries ; and we must hasten forward to the period 

 when new paths were laid out over the immensity of the waters. 



A map, published just anterior to the First Crusade, fully (lis- 



