ed them to be less
than the least of Christ's servants. Like Francis, they were to be
mendicants, begging their food from day to day. Having nothing
themselves, they would be the better able to touch the hearts of those
who had nothing. Yet it was not so much the humility of Francis as his
loving heart which distinguished him amongst men. Not only all human
beings but all created things were dear to him. Once he is said to
have preached to birds. He called the sun and the wind his brethren,
the moon and the water his sisters. When he died the last feeble words
which he breathed were, "Welcome, sister Death!"

6. =St. Dominic.=--Another order arose about the same time in Spain.
Dominic, a Spaniard, was appalled, not by the misery, but by the
ignorance of mankind. The order which he instituted was to be called
that of the Friars Preachers, though they have in later times usually
been known as Dominicans. Like the Franciscans they were to be Friars,
or brothers, because all teaching is vain, as much as all charitable
acts are vain, unless brotherly kindness be at the root. Like the
Franciscans they were to be mendicants, because so only could the
world be convinced that they sought not their own good, but to win
souls to Christ.

7. =The Coming of the Friars. 1220-1224.=--In =1220= the first
Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in =1224=, the first
Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in
England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those
whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of
argument. The Franciscans had a different work before them. The misery
of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The
townsmen had made provision for keeping good order amongst all who
shared in the liberties,[13] or, as we should say, in the privileges
of the town; but they made no provision for good order amongst the
crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they
might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside
the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the
town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man
cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the
churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the
charities with which the brethren of the gilds assuaged the
misfortunes of their own members. It was amongst these that the