heroic knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations."

A century is passed away since Johnson, from whatever motive, beheld with reverence the old gate of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. There it still remains, in a quarter of the town little visited, with scarcely another relic of antiquity immediately about it. Extensive improvements are going forward in its neighbourhood; and it may probably be one day swept away with as ruthless a hand as that of the Protector Somerset, who blew up the stately buildings of the hospital to procure materials for his own palace in the Strand. May it be preserved from the most complete of all destroyers-the building speculator! It has to us a double interest. It is the representative of the days of chivalrous enthusiasm on the one hand, and of popular improvement on the other. The order, which dates from the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, has perished, even in our own time—an anomaly in the age up to which it had survived. The general desire for knowledge, which gave birth to the Gentleman's Magazine,' is an increasing power, and one which depends upon no splendid endowments and no stately mansions for its maintenance and ornament. Cave, the printer, was the accidental successor of the Prior of the Hospital of St. John. But, representing the freedom of public opinion, he was the natural successor of the despotic power of a secret society. At any rate, the accident invests St. John's Gate with an interest which would not otherwise belong to it; and in its double character we may not be ashamed to behold it with reverence." Before we carry ourselves and our readers into the past, we must, however, request their companionship while we examine what St. John's Gate now is. At the head of this paper they have a representation of its present external appearance: but a peep into the interior may furnish some amusing contrasts with the days of the Edwards and Henries.

Turning out of St. John's Street to enter St. John's Lane-a narrow street which runs obliquely from that wide thoroughfare-the Gate presents itself to our view, completely closing the road, and leaving a passage into St. John's Square only through the archway. The large masses of stone of which the Gate is composed are much decayed; but the groined arch has recently been restored. This restoration, which appears to have proceeded from a desire to preserve this monument as public property, seems out of character with the purposes to which the Gateway is devoted. A huge board which surmounts the archway informs us that we may here solace ourselves with the hospitalities of the Jerusalem Tavern; and, that we may understand that the entertainment which may be set before us will not be subjected to any of the original notions of abstinence which a pilgrim might once have been expected to bring within these walls, a window of a house or bulk, on the eastern side of the Gateway, displays all the attractions of bottles with golden labels of "Cordial Gin," "Pineapple Rum," and "Real Cognac." We pass under the arch, and perceive that the modern hospitium runs through the eastern side of the Gateway, and connects with premises at either end. We are here invited "To the Parlour;" and we enter. A comfortable room is that parlour, with its tables checkered with many a liquorstain; and genius has here its due honours, for Dr. Johnson's favourite seat is

carefully pointed out. But the tavern has higher attractions than its parlour fireside with Dr. Johnson's corner; it has a "Grand Hall," where the "Knights of Jerusalem" still assemble in solemn conclave every Monday evening. It was long before we ventured to ask whether any uninitiated eyes might see that Grand Hall; but we did take courage, and most obligingly were we conducted to it. We ascended the eastern turret by a broad staircase (but certainly not one of the date of the original building), and we were soon in the central room of the Gateway. It is a fine lofty room, and, if there be few remains of ancient magnificence-no elaborate carvings, no quaint inscriptions, nor "storied windows," the spirit of the past has been evoked from the ruins of the great military order, to confer dignities and splendours on the peaceful burghers who are now wont here to congregate. Banners, gaudy with gold and vermilion, float upon the walls; and, if the actual "armoury of the invincible knights" be wanting, there are two or three cuirasses which look as grim and awful as any

Nor are the fine arts absent from the decoration of this apartment. Sculpture has here given us a coloured effigy of some redoubted Hospitaller; and Painting has lovingly united under the same ceiling the stern countenance of Prior Dockwra, the builder of the Gate, and the sleek and benign likenesses of the worshipful founders of the modern Order. Their names may one day have a European fame, like those of Fulk de Villaret and Pierre d'Aubusson; but in the mean while history records not their exploits, and we shall be silent as to their names. They are quiet lawgivers, and not rampaging warriors. They have done the wise thing which poetry abhors-changed "swords for ledgers." Instead of secret oaths and terrible mysteries, they invite all men to enter their community at the small price of twopence each night. Instead of vain covenants to drink nothing but water, and rejoice in a crust of mouldy bread, the visitor may call for anything for which he has the means of payment, even to the delicacies of kidneys, tripe, and Welsh rabbits. The edicts of this happy brotherhood are inscribed in letters of gold for all men to read; and the virtuous regard which they display for the morals of their community presents a striking contrast to the reputed excesses of the military Orders. The code has only four articles, and one of them is especially directed against the singing of improper songs. Here then is mirth without licentiousness, ambition without violence, power without oppression. When the Grand Master ascends the throne which is here erected as the best eminence to which a Knight of Jerusalem may now aspire, wearing his robes of state, and surrounded by his great commanders, also in their "weeds of peace," no clangour of trumpets rends the air; but the mahogany tables are drummed upon by a hundred ungauntleted hands, and a gentle cloud of incense arises from the pipes which send forth their perfume from every mouth. Would we had partaken of that inspiration! After the third hour the dimensions of the "Grand Hall" of the Jerusalem Tavern would have expanded into the form and proportions of the "Great Hall" of the Priory of St. John. The smoke-coloured ceiling would have lifted itself up into a groined roof, glorious with the heraldry of many a Crusader or Knight of Rhodes. The drowsy echoes of "tol de rol" or "derry down" would have melted into solemn strains of impassioned devo

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tion and the story three times told, how Jenkins beat his wife and was taken to the police-station, would have slided into a soft tale of a Troubadour discovering his lady-love who had followed him through Palestine as a pretty page. Slowly, but surely, the green coats and the blue, the butcher's frock and the grocer's apron, would have become shadowed into as many black robes; and in the very height of our ecstacy the white cross would have grown on every man's breast out of its symbolical red field. Then the "order, order" of the chairman would have become a battle-cry; the knock of his hammer would have been the sound of the distant culverin; the hiccups of the far-gone sipper of treble-X ale would have represented the groans of the wounded. We should have fallen asleep, and have dreamt a much more vivid picture of the ancient glories of the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem than we can hope to present with the aid of obscure chronicles and perishing fragments—the things which the antiquary digs up, and, when he has brought them to light in his erudite pages, has the satisfaction to be called "one of those industrious who are only re-burying the dead.” *

In the eleventh century, when the ardour of pilgrimage was inflamed anew, there was a hospital within the walls of Jerusalem for the use of the Latin pilgrims, which had been erected by Italian traders, chiefly of Amalfi. Near this hospital, and within a stone's cast of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, they erected, with the permission of the Egyptian Khalif, a church dedicated to the Holy Virgin, which was usually called Sta. Maria de Latina. In this hospital abode an abbot and a good number of monks, who were of the Latin church, and followed the rule of St. Benedict. They devoted themselves to the reception and entertainment of pilgrims, and gave alms to those who were poor, or had been rifled by robbers, to enable them to pay the tax required by the Moslems for permission to visit the holy places. When the number of the pilgrims became so great that the hospital was incapable of receiving them all, the monks raised another hospitium close by their church, with a chapel dedicated to a canonized Patriarch of Alexandria, named St. John Eleëmon, or the Compassionate. At the time when the army of the Crusaders appeared before the walls of Jerusalem the Hospital of St. John was presided over by Gerard, a native of Provence, a man of great uprightness and of exemplary piety. His benevolence was of a truly Christian character, and far transcended that of his age in general. When the city was taken, numbers of the wounded pilgrims were received, and their wounds tended, in the Hospital of St. John, and the pious Duke Godfrey, on visiting them some days afterwards, heard nothing but the praises of the good Gerard and his monks. Emboldened by the universal favour which they enjoyed, Gerard and his companions expressed their wish to separate themselves from the monastery of Sta. Maria de Latina, and pursue their works of charity alone and independently. Their desire met no opposition: they drew up a rule for themselves, to which they made a vow of obedience in presence of the Patriarch, and assumed as their dress a black mantle with a white cross on the breast. The humility of these Hospitallers was extreme. The finest flour went to compose the food which they gave to the sick and poor; what remained after they were satisfied, mingled with clay, was the repast of the monks. As long as the

*Horace Walpole (of Gough) in a Letter to Cole, 1773.

brotherhood were poor, they continued in obedience to the Abbot of Sta. Maria de Latina, and also paid tithes to the Patriarch. But a tide of wealth soon began to flow in upon them. Duke Godfrey, enamoured of their virtue, bestowed on them his lordship of Montboire, in Brabant, with all its appurtenances; and his brother and successor, Baldwin, gave them a share of all the booty taken from the infidels. These examples were followed by other Christian princes; so that within the space of a very few years the Hospital of St. John was in possession of numerous manors both in the East and in Europe, which were placed under the management of members of their society.

It has been observed that "London, for some years before the Reformation, contained an extraordinary number of religious edifices and churches, which occupied nearly two-thirds of the entire area."* The writer of the article from which we quote makes an enumeration of the various Friaries, Abbeys, Priories, Nunneries, Colleges, Hospitals having resident Brotherhoods, Fraternities, and Episcopal residences, the mere catalogue of which is a very remarkable exhibition of the amazing wealth of the Church which was assembled within the compass of a few miles. Of these, the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, in Clerkenwell, was amongst the most important. It was founded about the year 1100 by Jordan Briset, a baron of the kingdom, and Muriel, his wife. This was the period of the first Crusade, when Godfrey of Bouillon had driven the infidels from the Holy Land, and was elected the first Christian king of Jerusalem. But it was some forty years later that the servants of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem became a military order of monks, the first body of men united by religious vows who wielded the temporal sword against the enemies of the faith. The Order, in process of time, became divided into seven classes, or languages-the Italian ̧ German, Arragonese, and English; with the three great dialects of France, the Provençal, the Auvergne, and the common French. The sons of the noblest houses of Europe pressed for admission into its ranks. According to their vows, they were to be the servants of the poor and sick, to renounce all personal property, to preserve their chastity, to render implicit obedience to the superior placed over them. When the new brother was admitted he was thus addressed"Receive the yoke of the Lord: it is easy and light, and you shall find rest for your soul. We promise you nothing but bread and water, a simple habit and of little worth. We give you, your parents, and relations, a share in the good works performed by our Order, and by our brethren, both now and hereafter, throughout the world." Cowardice in the field involved the heaviest disgrace, expulsion from the Order: "We place this Cross on your breast, my brother," says the ritual of admission, " that you may love it with all your heart; and may your right hand ever fight in its defence, and for its preservation! Should it ever happen that, in combating against the enemies of the faith, you should retreat, desert the standard of the Cross, and take to flight, you will be stripped of this truly holy sign, according to the statutes and customs of the Order, as having broken the vows you have just taken, and you will be cut off from our body as an unsound and corrupt member." Cowardice was not the vice of the Knights of St. John. For five centuries they maintained the reputation of the

* Retrospective Review, vol. xv. p. 169.

most indomitable courage; and their heroic exploits, with which all Europe rang, were not so much the result of military skill as of personal bravery carried to the extreme of daring and endurance by religious enthusiasm. Their vices were the natural consequences of enormous wealth and power. Pride and luxury soon displayed themselves as their distinguishing characteristics. Their professions of self-denial came to be looked upon as mere formalities, when the richest domains in Christendom were poured into the lap of the Order by those who in becoming brethren renounced all personal property. In the thirteenth century the Order is reputed to have possessed nineteen thousand manors in various Christian lands. This was the period of their highest elevation. The century which succeeded the taking of Ascalon and Gaza in 1153 saw the Knights of St. John everywhere victorious against the infidels, and triumphant over the great rival Order of the Templars. But the jealousy of these two Orders was one of the chief causes of the decline of the Christian power in the Holy Land. Their mutual hatred was at the height, when the Hospitallers sustained their first signal defeat from the Kharismian Mohammedans, about the middle of the thirteenth century. The subsequent events, till the expulsion of the Christians from the Holy Land, have been briefly and graphically narrated in a periodical publication; and, with the permission of the author, we shall transfer the substance, and occasionally the words, of his narrative to these pages.* The hatred between the rival Orders became so intense, that in 1259, after many sanguinary skirmishes, they resolved to try their lances in a pitched and general engagement. The combat was more terrific than any that had been fought for many years with the Mohammedans. The Knights of St. John, who in the end were the victors, gave no quarter, and scarcely a Templar escaped to give an account of the affair to his Order. The thinned ranks of the Red Cross Knights were, however, gradually filled by the arrival of brethren from Europe, and the presence of a new common enemy, more ferocious than any they had hitherto contended with, obliged the two Orders to suspend their hostilities and co-operate for mutual preservation. In the war that ensued, though obliged to give way in all directions before an immeasurable superiority of numbers, the Knights of St. John, and those of the Red Cross, fought with all their ancient valour. Ninety Hospitallers long defended the fortress of Azotus, and, when the Mamlukes of Bendocdar carried the place by assault, they walked over the dead bodies of the last of those gallant knights. Saphoury was defended by a small band of Templars who were equally brave, and also fell to a man. The conquering Mamlukes took Nazareth, Cæsarea, Tyre, Jaffa, Antioch, and other places, and carried fire and sword to the very gates of Acre, the strongest fortress and the main stay of the Christians in the East. The progress of the Mohammedans was checked for a while by the arrival of fresh crusaders from Europe, and by the valour and skill of Prince Edward of England (afterwards Edward I.), who, after obtaining several victories over them, concluded a treaty in 1272, which secured to the Christians a ten years' peace. But in 1287 the cloud of war again burst upon the few places that remained in the possession of the Europeans, and by 1291 the Sultan of Egypt was enabled to lay siege to Acre, the last of

* History of the Knights of Malta, in the 'Penny Magazine' for 1836.