Pictures in Umbria

OT

by grey and purple vapour, was a daily reminder of our wish. Some places stamp themselves into the heart, and while life lasts the longing to revisit them inc

ve-groves and vineyards. Fragrant, dewy freshness lay on everything; even when the sun rose higher, and blazed fiercely down o

on its way to Rome. Francis Bernardone must also have enjoyed these glimpses as he w

l to follow the way of the Cross, from love to his Saviour. In that brutal and licentious age, the beginning of the thirteenth century, his example seems to have been irresistible. The life of poverty, obedience, and chastity enjoined by his rule sounded utter folly when first proclaimed to the multitude; but it says something in favour of those times that, when the first outcry ceased, and his fe

not chronicled of those other revivalists,-his idea of life was a very happy one. In the century that followed, Boccaccio did not tea

ich is the true root of happiness, between Francis and Fra Leone,-a talk which continu

heep of God," cried out: "Father, tell me, I pra

r, recorded in the eighth chapter of I Fior

the Proven?al tongue by Francis as he trudged along this road. He did not have his hymns rendered into Italian verse, so that they might be understoo

n, who could always, wherever he went, change sorrow into joy. He rejoiced in the beauty of nature, and went singing along the dusty way, between the olive-trees and th

their songs with his. At Bevagna, a place south of Spello, he preached his famous se

Once, meeting a peasant who had an armful of wild turtle-doves, he took them from the man, lest they should be killed or ill-treated, and, bringing them home

ces between, an opal gauze in the sunshine, and villages nestling beside the tree-shaded Tiber, we saw, hard by, the grey-peaked bridge, so ancient looking, that Fra

at one cannot describe the old town without now and again referring

een garlands, which stretched from one tree to another and linked them together. In some fields long-horned oxen were ploughing the stiff lumpy land between the vines; here and

CHURCH OF SA

ountain side, the great convent of San Francesco, with its double churches; on the righ

a, in which St. Francis and his disciples worshipped, and in which Santa Chiara and so many others

clinging midway to the side of the mountain; and above the houses, the campaniles and spires of Assisi, while towering

to Assisi,-certainly word-painting cannot describe it. Probably the thrill c

e exquisite. Now we had in full view the scene described by Dante

ountain high, wh

ough Perugia's

it doth break its s

pon the

slation of

it stands it bears witness to the strange and beautiful story of the youth who gave up all

8, two years after his death, Francesco Bernardone was canonised by Pope Gregory IX.-the tried friend who knew the life

of art-workers; in a sense, we may look on Francis of Assisi as a source of ins

in which he was held less than a century after his death. Dante was born only thirty-nine years later; and as he certainly visited Assisi, he must have been well acquainted with all the details of th

, planned to begin the wonderful story at its first chapter, and to visit the saint's birthplace, also the scene of his final renunciation of the wor

and feasted our eyes on the outsi

TO THE TO