What name would we bestow on a superior being, whose whole endeavours
were employed, and whose whole pleasure consisted in terrifying,
ensnaring, tormenting, and destroying mankind? whose superior faculties
were exerted in fomenting animosities amongst them, in contriving
engines of destruction, and inciting them to use them in maiming and
murdering each other? whose power over them was employed in assisting
the rapacious, deceiving the simple, and oppressing the innocent? who,
without provocation or advantage, should continue from day to day, void
of all pity and remorse, thus to torment mankind for diversion, and at
the same time endeavour with his utmost care to preserve their lives and
to propagate their species, in order to increase the number of victims
devoted to his malevolence, and be delighted in proportion to the
miseries he occasioned. I say, what name detestable enough could we find
for such a being? yet, if we impartially consider the case, and our
intermediate situation, we must acknowledge that, with regard to
inferior animals, just such a being is a sportsman.
JENYNS.
* * * * *
PETER THE HERMIT, AND THE FIRST CRUSADE.
It was in Palestine itself that Peter the Hermit first conceived the
grand idea of rousing the powers of Christendom to rescue the Christians
of the East from the thraldom of the Mussulman, and the Sepulchre of
Jesus from the rude hands of the Infidel.
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