Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

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CLASSICAL TOUR

Ch. VIII.

count of St. Francis of Asisium, the founder of
an order more extraordinary perhaps and more
numerous, though less useful and less respectable
than that of the Benedictines. A man who has
imposed upon so many thousands of voluntary
disciples, laws far more severe than those of Ly-
curgus, and given to his laws a longer duration,
as well as a far more extensive influence than that
legislator or indeed most others have been able to
impart to their institutions, must certainly have
been a very extraordinary person, and must have
derived either from his virtues or from his accom-
plishments means of persuasion unusually effica-
cious. His birth and education were naturally
calculated to confine him to mediocrity; but an
ardent piety and a disinterestedness that knew no
bounds, soon raised him into notice, and made
him an object of contempt to some, of admira-
tion to many. A solemn determination taken at
the age of twenty-one to practise strictly and li-
terally the sublimest lessons of Christian self-
denial, and the courage to support that resolution
without the least deviation during a life of forty-
six years, may be considered as proofs of most
extraordinary energy and consistency of charac-
ter. When to these qualities we add two others
of a very different and almost opposite nature, the
simplicity of a child, and a humility that almost
seemed to border upon pusillanimity, we shall