swered, we
should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours
was answered also. So it was with the monks. The two great parties in
human affairs are only the party which sees life black against white,
and the party which sees it white against black, the party which
macerates and blackens itself with sacrifice because the background is
full of the blaze of an universal mercy, and the party which crowns
itself with flowers and lights itself with bridal torches because it
stands against a black curtain of incalculable night. The revellers are
old, and the monks are young. It was the monks who were the spendthrifts
of happiness, and we who are its misers.

Doubtless, as is apparent from Mr. Adderley's book, the clear and
tranquil life of the Three Vows had a fine and delicate effect on the
genius of Francis. He was primarily a poet. The perfection of his
literary instinct is shown in his naming the fire "brother," and the
water "sister," in the quaint demagogic dexterity of the appeal in the
sermon to the fishes "that they alone were saved in the Flood." In the
amazingly minute and graphic dramatisation of the life, disappointments,
and excuses of any shrub or beast that he happened to be addressing, his
genius has a curious resemblance to that of Burns. But if he avoided the
weakness of Burns' verses to animals, the occasional morbidity, bombast,
and moralisation on himself, the credit is surely due to a cleaner and
more transparent life.

The general attitude of St. Francis, like that of his Master, embodied a
kind of terrible common sense. The famous remark of the Caterpillar in
"Alice in Wonderland"--"Why not?" impresses us as his general motto. He
could not see why he should not be on good terms with all things. The
pomp of war and ambition, the great empire of the Middle Ages, and all
its fellows begin to look tawdry and top-heavy, under the rationality of
that innocent stare. His questions were blasting and devastating, like
the questions of a child. He would not have been afraid even of the
nightmares of cosmogony, for he had no fear in him. To him the world
was small, not because he had any views as to its size, but for the
reason that gossiping ladies find it small, because so many relatives
were to be found in it. If you had taken him to the loneliest star that
the madness of an astronomer can conceive, he would have only beheld in
it the features of a new friend.

ROSTAND

Whe