21 NOVEMBER 1908, Page 8

• satisfaction in comparing the Crusades which moved Europe for

a hundred and seventy years or so from 1090 onwards with the ',undertakings of which Mr. Gilliat tells us the history in this --very attractive volume. There is no need to depreciate the good • qualities of the kings and princes, the knights and prelates, who assumed the badge of the Cross ; but no one would deny that ithere was a very considerable admixture of meaner motives with their heroism. Put over against them the names of Wilberforce and his collaborators, of St. Vincent de Paul, of John Howard, of -Oberlin, of Father Mathew, of Lord Shaftesbury, of Charles Gordon • (who would certainly have been a Crusader of the old sort eight centuries before, and who may well be taken as a proof of the world-movement), and, finally, of men whose work perhaps is iless appreciated because it is so near, such as Sir George 'Williams, Quintin Hogg, Thomas John Barnard°, and one "who is still happily at work, Dr. Grenfell. This enumeration • of names will suggest the subjects of this book. They are easy -enough to run over : the abolition of slavery, the reform of Iprisons—St. Vincent de Paul did for France what John Howard -did a century and a half later for England and began to do for .Europe—the humanising of the law, work in which Samuel glamilly was perhaps more original than any of the other heroes. 'Xiiese are some of the " Crusades" which are related, and we have

• o t gone through half the list even of names. As to any summary

serf details, it is quite impossible. There is not a single name -among all recorded here which might not well have a volume to litself. Such volumes have, of course, been written, and Mr.

▪ has carefully consulted them, and taken from some of them

atheir most characteristic narratives. Wherever we open the book -we find something of commanding interest. It is full of encourage- =cut and hope, for, after all, if we do not think the world is ,getting better, the spring is taken out of our work ; not less is it full of exhortation. For every reason it is a book to be Studied.