In presenting to the general reader a newly-written Life of so
extraordinary a person as St. Frances of Rome, together with the
biographical sketches contained in the present volume, it may be useful
to introduce them with a few brief remarks on that peculiar feature in
the histories of many Saints, which is least in accordance with the
popular ideas of modern times. A mere translation, or republication of a
foreign or ancient book, does not necessarily imply any degree of assent
to the principles involved in the original writer's statements. The new
version or edition may be nothing more than a work of antiquarian or
literary interest, by no means professing any thing more than a belief
that persons will be found who will, from some motive or other, be glad
to read it.

Not so, however, in the case of a biography which, though not pretending
to present the results of fresh researches, does profess to give an
account new in shape, and adapted to the wants of the day in which
it asks its share of public attention. In this case no person can
honourably write, and no editor can honourably sanction, any statements
but such as are not only possible and probable, but, allowing
for the degree of authenticity in each case claimed, on the whole
historically true. No honest man, who absolutely disbelieves in all
documents in which the original chronicler has mingled accounts of
supernatural events with the record of his own personal knowledge,
could possibly either write or edit such Lives as those included in
the following pages; still less could they be made public by one who
disbelieves in the reality of modern miracles altogether.

In presenting, then, the present and other similar volumes to the
ordinary reader, I anticipate some such questions as these: "Do you