1853.] Results of the Crusades. 119 Other circumstances also contributed to weaken the barons and to strengthen the merchants. During the Crusades, the seignorial courts lost much of their authority; and by degrees many of the causes which had hitherto been determined in them were transferred to the ecclesiastical or municipal courts. With this transfer a new and complex system of judicature gradually grew up, to which the barons were entirely unaccustomed, and whose intricacies their uneducated minds could not penetrate. As the consequence they were compelled to yield up the dispensation of justice to men whom they heartily despised, but who had been trained in all the intellectual subtilties of the age. The changes in the structure of armies, and in military science, to which the Crusades gave birth, still further enfeebled the barons, by substituting for the independent bands composing a feudal army, a compact and disciplined body under one responsible leader. The baron thus fell from a leader himself into a mere captain; and his importance was again diminished by the greater military value placed upon foot soldiers after the experience of the Eastern wars. From that time the mounted knight and the common soldier were regarded as more nearly equal in battle than they had hitherto been considered. On the other hand, the commercial body was strengthened by all these causes, and by the great impulse given to the arts of navigation. During the Crusades, shipbuilding and all maritime enterprises received an impetus which raised the commercial cities into new importance. In the pursuit of gain, many a Crusader forgot the cause in which he had embarked, and turned his thoughts to the prosecution of enterprises which should restore his wasted fortune. New routes were opened to the great Eastern marts; and by this means Venice, Pisa, and Genoa reaped a richer harvest than ever from their foreign commerce. As the Crusaders saw the wealth which the people of these proud and opulent cities enjoyed, they became anxious to share in these benefits, and upon the shores of the Baltic and in France rose many cities which owed their origin and rapid growth to the maritime enterprises which the Crusades directly fostered. The merchants thus became a new and important element in the civilization of the age. It was in these two important respects that the chief results of the Crusades were witnessed. But they also tended to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge in various ways. A more correct idea of the geography of the East was brought back by the Crusaders, and from this time the crude notions which had heretofore existed in regard to the relative size and position of different kingdoms were dissipated. Historical compositions became more common, and were more carefully prepared. The philosophy of the East and of ancient Greece was more widely diffused. New facts in natural history became known to the men of science who accompanied the Christian armies, or who remained at home in their monasteries. Architecture began to flourish with the return of the Crusaders; and some of the fairest works of Eastern art were reproduced in the cities of the West. Many useful inventions were also introduced to the knowledge of Europeans by the Crusaders. And, finally, from this period we must date the decline of serfdom, which had hitherto been so striking a feature in the feudal system. Such, in general, were the results of the Crusades. They had been undertaken for the prosecution of a somewhat wild and visionary scheme. But in this they signally failed of success. Other triumphs were won than those contemplated by their preachers, — triumphs of which they never dreamed, and which they would have regarded with horror, if some prophet had unveiled the future to them. Other men reaped the harvest than those rough barons who poured forth from every castle to the fight. Still, it cannot be doubted that the results of the Crusades were far more beneficial to the general interests of Europe, than they could have been if every ambitious baron had founded a powerful principality on the shores of the Mediterranean or the banks of the Jordan, and Palestine continued a Christian kingdom. C. C. S. 1853.] Professor Farrar. ART. IX. PROFESSOR FARRAR. 121 DR. JOHN FARRAR, formerly Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, died at his residence in that city on the eighth day of May. He was one of the last survivors of the brilliant circle of men of science and letters who were associated with President Kirkland in the chief places of administration of Harvard College. He had rendered important services to learning. He was an object of respect and cordial gratitude to the numerous persons whose studies he had directed, many of them still in active life. He had been most kindly accessible to all,— scholars or not scholars, who wanted any knowledge to which he could help them; and not a few remember him gratefully for such aid. He had sustained all relations with an eminent conscientiousness. He had rendered generous services whenever he had the power, and that was very frequently. He had a large and warm heart. His virtues had an uncommon attractiveness and grace. His bright and strong mind had borne the fruits of an assiduous culture. He has left a void among the friendships, and taken an honored place in the memory, of good men. Jacob John Farrar was born in 1779, in the town of Lincoln, Massachusetts, on a farm which has been in the possession of the family through five generations. Farrar of Lancaster, his progenitor at the fifth remove, was killed by the Indians in Philip's war, soon after their destruction of that town. The family trace their lineage to Robert Farrar, Bishop of St. David's, who suffered at the stake for his religion, March 30, 1555. Samuel Farrar, father of John, led a company of militia to the fight at Concord, on the 19th of April, 1775, and afterwards served with credit in the Revolutionary war, especially in the siege of Boston and the campaign which terminated in the capture of Burgoyne. That business over, he changed his military title for that of Deacon, which he retained through life. Having educated his eldest son at college, he expected the two others to become farmers like himself. To John, the youngest, were assigned the care of the garden, and those offices VOL. LV. 4TH S. VOL. XX. NO. I. 11 about home which made him particularly useful to his mother, whose darling he was. So his boyhood passed away, its even tenor broken by but one unhappy accident. Reared under the strictest Puritan regimen, he rarely joined in the amusements of the youth of the neighborhood. Once he was prevailed on to attend a dance at a friend's house some miles off, and, returning late at night, was thrown from his horse, and broke his arm. He kept on, stabled his horse, and went to bed, but not to rest, with his very uncomfortable secret. night of bodily and mental pain taught him that it could be kept no longer; and the broken limb was considered as the wholesome and seasonable chastisement of an erring child. A Like Jesse's son of old, going with domestic supplies to the camp, the youngest hope of the Lincoln farmer's house was often sent on horseback to Cambridge with changes of clothes for his studious brother. The charms of learned leisure, however, had never seemed to tempt him from his garden and his mother, when on one of his missions he chanced to see the students practising with a fire-engine. This seemed to him in after years to have been what determined the course of his life. The pastime struck his fancy so agreeably as to lead him immediately to request his father to permit him to prepare for college. He was allowed to have his way, and was sent to Phillips Academy at Andover, then under the care of that distinguished teacher, the late Mark Newman. He was here an inmate of the family of the reverend Dr. French, with which an alliance subsequently took place, by the marriage of Dr. French's son to Mr. Farrar's only sister. Meanwhile his elder brother, who had finished the college course, and served a year as Tutor, was studying law at Haverhill. The correspondence which now took place between them is marked with the truest brotherly affection, and the ingenuous and respectful docility with which the younger received the elder's advice. The letters of the former indicate the high enjoyment which he had come to have in his studies, especially in the departments of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, destined to be the special employment of his riper age. A letter in which he gives. an account of the examination for admittance opens a pleasant glimpse of old times. 1853.] College Course. 123 "We took our books and set off, walked across the Common, and ascended four or five long winding stairs into a huge, dark, hot entry, and there waited until half past eleven, which was about an hour and a half, when the division that had been under examination removed to the Museum. We were called in, took our seats before Messrs. Barron, Hedge, Wells, and Kendall, and our names, ages, &c. were taken off. Then Mr. Kendall examined us in the sixth chapter to the Romans, Mr. Wells in the tenth section Pro T. Annio Milone,' and then we were dismissed until half past two, at which time we returned and waited until after five, when we were again called for. We took our places, and were examined in the fifth book of Virgil. We were then sent into the Museum to make Latin, which being examined, we were called in. Our names all being called, we were sent to the President, not a little comforted.' He was so unwell, he only looked over our Latin, and then said: 'I accept you all,' giving us an extract from the laws. We went to the steward, got our bond, and so got through about eight of the clock." At this time Mr. Farrar was twenty years of age. His fixed habits of order, sobriety, and diligence secured him against the temptations of college life, and his mind was so mature as to afford him the full benefit of its means of improvement. Like other students of limited means, he kept school in some country town during the winter vacations; once at Groton, where he formed a friendship with the elder members of the family of Lawrence, which lasted through their lives. Among his classmates he was happy enough to find many as well disposed as himself, and with some he formed intimate friendships, which only death interrupted. With one of these friends he passed a vacation at Cambridge, that they might read Shakspeare together. The two characteristics of his mind, which predominated in its later manifestation,- the imaginative faculty and the aptitude for natural science, - appear to have been, at this period, in simultaneous development. The detur, or reward of merit, assigned to him in 1802, we find from the College record to have been "Bonnycastle's Astronomy." At the public exhibition in April, 1803, he presented a mathematical exercise. At the Commencement at which he graduated Bachelor of Arts, the Latin Theses prepared by him were in the department of Physics, and he pronounced an English Dissertation "on the Moral Ten |