he brought the new message that man is dear to God; that the
soul is ceaselessly joyful; that man, created in the divine image, is a
part of the divine life, and that only when he lives in this response
and recognition does he truly live at all. In this restatement of the
truth that Jesus came to proclaim, St. Francis opened the way for a
revival of art, and opened the gates of that infinite and divine energy
which has immortally recorded itself for all ages in the "Divina
Comedia" of Dante. The irresistible wave of power which resulted from
that liberating of thought, feeling, and emotion by the work of St.
Francis expressed itself in the sublimest poem of all the ages, and in
that glorious triumph of art that is still the treasure and the source
of artistic inspiration.

It is only when the world is lifted out of the limitations of the
material by a period of great art that humanity is brought into close
and inspiring relation with the living Christ.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

_Men and women make the world,
As head and heart make human life._

MRS. BROWNING.

* * * * *

_Alas, our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place;
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate,
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony._

LONGFELLOW.

_And as, after the lapse of a thousand years, you stand upon that
hallowed spot, the yellow Tiber flowing sluggishly beneath you, the
ruins of the Eternal City all around you speaking of fallen
greatness, the mighty Basilica of St. Peter rising before you like
some modern tower of Babel that would monopolize the road to
heaven, the eye rests upon the figure of the Archangel sheathing
his glittering sword upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo,
and the heart asks, Why should that be a legend? Why should that be
a projection of a morbid and devout imagination? Why should it not
have been the clairvoyance of supernatural ecstasy opening the
world of spirits? It was no unreality when the angel of God, with
his sword drawn in his hand, withstood the prophet Balaam. It was
no morbid imagination when the angel of God smote with the edge of