day is past for serving Christ by going barefoot and living on
alms, the spirit of Saint Francis's doctrine, charity, purity,
self-abnegation, might do as much for modern men as for those of six
hundred years ago. Believing all this, we were not sorry that our
uncompromising friend had stayed behind, and it was in a reverent
mood that we left the little stone chamber--which shrinks to lowlier
proportions by contrast with the enormous dome above it--and turned
to climb the long hill which leads to the magnificent monument which
enthusiasm raised over him who in life had coveted so humble a home.

[Illustration: CHURCH AND CONVENT OF SAINT FRANCIS, AT ASSISI.]

The cliff on which Assisi stands rises abruptly on the side toward
the Tiber: long lines of triple arches, which look as if hewn in
the living stone, stretch along its face, one above another, like
galleries, the great mass of the church and convent, with its towers
and gables and spire-like cypress trees, crowning all. It is this
marriage of the building to the rock, these lower arcades which rise
halfway between the valley and the plateau seeking the help of
the solid crag to sustain the upper ones and the vast superimposed
structure, that makes the distant sight of Assisi so striking, and
almost overwhelms you with a sense of its greatness as the winding
road brings you close below on your way up to the town. It is a triple
church. The uppermost one, begun two years after the saint's death,
has a magnificent Gothic west front and high steps leading from the
piazza, and a rich side-portal with a still higher flight leading from
a court on a lower level. As we entered, the early afternoon sun was
streaming in through the immense rose-window and flooding the vast
nave, illumining the blue star-studded vault of the lofty roof and the
grand, simple frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto on the walls. Thence we