The King of France was sagacious, wise, deliberate in council, steady and calm in action, seeing clearly, and steadily pursuing, the measures most for the interest of his kingdom--dignified and royal in his deportment, brave in person, but a politician rather than a warrior.

The Crusade would have been no choice of his own; but the spirit was contagious, and the expedition was enforced upon him by the church, and by the unanimous wish of his nobility.

In any other situation, or in a milder age, his character might have stood higher than that of the adventurous Coeur de Lion.

But in the Crusade, itself an undertaking wholly irrational, sound reason was the quality of all others least estimated, and the chivalric valour which both the age and the enterprise demanded was considered as debased if mingled with the least touch of discretion.

So that the merit of Philip, compared with that of his haughty rival, showed like the clear but minute flame of a lamp placed near the glare of a huge, blazing torch, which, not possessing half the utility, makes ten times more impression on the eye.