tomb of Saint Francis at Assisi, yet could not leave the neighborhood
without making it. We took the morning-train for the little excursion,
meaning to drive back, and crossed the Tiber for the first time on the
downward journey at Ponte San Giovanni. We got out at the station of
Santa Maria degli Angeli, so named from the immense church built over
the cell where Saint Francis lived and died and the little chapel
where he prayed. The Porzionuncula it was called, or "little share,"
being all that he deemed needful for man's abode on earth, and more
than needful. It was hither that he came in the heyday of youth,
forsaking the house of his wealthy father, the love of his mother,
a life of pleasure with his gay companions, and dedicated himself to
poverty and preaching the word of God. One of our party had said that
she considered Saint Francis the author of much evil, and as having
done irreparable harm to the Italian people in sanctifying dirt and
idleness. But apostles are not to be judged by the abuse of their
doctrine; and although it cannot be denied that Saint Francis
encouraged beggary by forbidding his followers to possess aught of
their own, he enjoined that they should labor with their hands for
several hours daily. And to me it seemed as if out of Palestine
there could be no spot of greater significance and sacredness to any
Christian than this, where in a sanguinary and licentious age a young
man suddenly broke all the bonds of self, and taught in his own person
humility, renunciation and brotherly love as they had hardly been
taught since his Master's death. The sternness of his personal
self-denial is only equaled by his sweetness toward all living things:
not men alone, but animals, birds, fishes, the frogs, the crickets,
shared his love, and were called brother and sister by him. The great
and instantaneous movement which he produced in his own time was no
short-lived blaze of fanaticism, for its results have lasted from the
twelfth century to our own; and although we may well believe that the