ous a part in Romeo and Juliet! and when Hero is ac cused by Leonato before the assembled company, who does not love the friar who alone rises to speak in her defence?

"Hear me a little,

For I have only been silent so long

And given way unto this course of fortune
By noting of the Lady: I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions start
Into her face; a thousand innocent shames
In angel-whiteness bear away those blushes;
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth.-Call me a fool!
Trust not my reading, nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,

If this sweet Lady lie not guiltless here,
Under some biting error *."

Shakspeare, however, has the art of describing in few words the perfection of these holy men. Thus, when Duke Frederick pursues his brother to the forest of Ardenn:

"And to the skirts of this wild wood he came;
Where, meeting with an old religious man,

After some question with him, was converted

Both from his enterprise, and from the world f.”

But in the few words which follow, the friar seems to stand before us,

"Bound by my charity and my blessed order,

I come to visit the afflicted spirits

Here in the prison."

-the friar, such as I have often known, and such as Forsyth describes, who, though a zealous disciple of the moderns, confesses, in his travels in Italy, that "in hospitals, in prisons, on the scaffold; in short, wherever there is misery, you find Franciscans allaying it." We shall meet with many instances in history and romance where knights, kings, and emperors have sought in the cloister a refuge

* Shakspeare, Much Ado about Nothing, iv, 1.
+ As You Like It, v. 4.

"he

from the misery of the world. When Sir Launcelot recovered from his swoon from the wound in his side, he cried out, "O Lauayn, helpe me, that I were on my hors, for here is fast by, within this two myle, a gentyl heremyte, that somtyme was a fulle noble knyghte, and a grete lord of possessions. And for grete goodenes he hath taken hym to wylful poverte, and forsaken many landes, and his name is Sire Baudewyn of Bretayn, and he is a ful noble surgeon, and a good leche." And the hermit says of himself, "for somtyme I was one of the felauship of the round table; but I thanke God, now I am otherwyse disposed." "And thenne anone the hermyte staunched his blood, and made hym to drynke good wyn; so that Sir Launcelot was wel refreshed, and knewe hymself. For in these days it was not the guyse of heremytes as is now a dayes. For there were none heremytes in tho dayes, but that they had ben men of worshyp and of prowesse; and tho heremytes held grete housholde, and refresshyd peple that were in distresse." Sir Launcelot himself ends his life in a hermit's habit. After taking leave of the queen, rode alle that daye and alle that nyghte in a foreste, wepynge. And at the last he was ware of an hermytage, and a chappel that stode betwene two clyffes, and than he herd a lytel belle rynge to masse, and thyder he rode and alyghted, and teyed hys hors to the gate, and herde masse. And he that sange the masse was the byshop of Caunterburye. Bothe the byshop and Syr Bedwere knewe Syr Launcelot, and they spake togyder after masse: but whenne Syr Bedwere hadde told hym his tale, Syr Launcelot's herte almost braste for sorowe; and Syr Launcelot threwe abrode hys armour, and sayde, Allas, who may trust thys world!' And then he knelyd doune on hys knees, and prayd the byshop for to shryve him and assoile hym. And than he besoughte the bysshop that he might be his broder. Than the byshop sayde, 'I wylle gladly;' and than he putte an habyte upon Syr Launcelot, and than he served God day and nyghte with prayers and fastynges." In like manner Sir Bors comes to the chapel, and follows his example. So does Syre Galyhud, Syr Galyhodyn, Syr Bleoberys, Syr Vyllyars, Syr Clavrus, and Syr Gahalantyne." And whan they sawe that Syr Launcelot had taken hym to such perfeccyon, they had

noo lyste to departe, but toke such an babyte as he had. Thus they endured in grete penaunce vi yeres, and thanne Syr Launcelot toke the habyte of preesthode, and a twelvemonethe he sange mass.

Some years ago, when I visited the convent of the grand chartreuse in Dauphiny, one of the fathers was pointed out to me as having been once a general officer in the French army, and a member of several high military orders. A French lady of rank, who travelled in Spain at the commencement of the seventeenth century, has related a curious instance of this abandonment of the world for the service of the altar, which fell under her own observation. The morning after her arrival at Alava, a town in Castile, she went to the church to hear mass. "I espied an hermit who had the air of a person of quality, and yet begged alms of me with such great humility, that I was greatly surprised at it. Don Ferdinand having notice of it, drew near, and said to me, 'The person whom you behold, Madam, is of an illustrious family and of great merit, but his fortune has been very unhappy.' Upon my requesting that he would satisfy my curiosity, he replied, 'that he would endeavour to prevail upon him to relate his own adventures:' he left me, and went to embrace him with the greatest civility and tenderness. Don Frederic de Cardonne and Don Estere de Caragal, had already accosted him as their old acquaintance. They all earnestly entreated that he would come to them when mass was over he as earnestly excused himself; and being told that I was a stranger, and very desirous of hearing from his own lips what had induced him to turn hermit, he appealed to the company, saying, Do us justice, and judge you whether it is fit for me to relate such particulars, in this habit which I wear?' They confessed that he was in the right to decline it. The substance of his history, which was then related by these gentlemen, was as follows: His mistress, one of the most beautiful women in Spain, had been stabbed by his rival, who then made his escape. Don Lewis de Barbaran, for that was the hermit's name, one of the finest gentlemen in the world, and of the first family, had pursued the murderer over half Europe, traversing Italy, Germany, Flanders, and France. It was on his return to Valencia, while still

breathing out vengeance against his enemy, that his conscience was awakened by Divine grace to a sense of the vanity and wickedness of his own heart. From that moment his ardour for revenge was changed into a desire of repentance and of religious consolation; he returned to Sardinia, where he sold his paternal estates, which he divided among his friends and the poor. It was upon a mountain near Madrid, where he first established his hermitage; but his health declining, he was prevailed upon to draw nearer the abode of men, and to reside in a convent within the walls of this town.'' The lady desired the gentlemen to present her compliments to Don Lewis, and to give him two pistoles. Don Ferdinand and his friends gave the same sum. "Here," they said, " is wherewith to enrich the poor of the province; for Don Lewis never appropriates such great alms as these to himself." "We told him," continues the Lady, "that he was the master, and might dispose of the money as he pleased."

Thus, when Sir William of Delorain comes by night to the Abbey of Melrose, as he and the monk are waiting in the church for the moon to shine upon the grave of Michael Scot,

"Again on the knight looked the churchman old,

And again he sighed heavily;

For he had himself been a warrior bold,

And fought in Spain and Italy.

And he thought on the days that were long since by,
When his limbs were strong, and his courage was high."

Harluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec, in Normandy, had been considered in his youth, by all the great families of Normandy, as one of the first knights for all chivalry, and knowledge, and beauty of person; but now did he labour with his own hands in building the monastery. He learned the rudiments of letters at the age of forty, and used to study the Holy Scriptures by night." Guillaume de Poitiers, whose life of William the Conqueror is so interesting, had been a warrior, and had fought in many of the battles he describes. He took holy orders from disgust of the world, and became chaplain to William. His book is full of humanity and good sense.

William of Jumiege, vi. 9.

For a long time after the battle of Nancy, it was said that Charles the Bold had been seen by many persons travelling across the country in the garb of a hermit, and that he was doing penance for seven years *. The hero of the romance, Ogier le Danois, printed at Paris in 1498, is not an imaginary person. He lived in Aultair, Frison; and the romance called him a Dane from confounding Frison with Denmark. He was one of the first lords of the kingdom of Carloman, brother of Charlemagne, who gave him the.command of his army. After distinguishing himself in many battles, he became a monk, along with his companion Benedict, in the Abbey of St. Faron, of Meaux, where, at the end of the last century, might be seen his tomb, a sabre, and an old straight sword, weighing five pounds and a quarter, which belonged to him. His adventures were first written in Latin, with the little " Convertio Othgerii militis et Benedicti ejusdem socii † ;" and afterwards were twice put into French verse by Raymbert de Paris, and Adams. The prose translation is of the 15th century. The author of the Fleur des Histoires d'Orient was an Armenian, nephew to the king of that country, named Haycon, who, having been baptized with all his family, made war against the Mahometans for a considerable time. The author served in these wars, and was rewarded with the lordship of Gourchy; but peace being at length effected, he indulged his love for devotion, and became a monk in Egypt, whence he was sent by his superiors to Pope Clement V. then at Avignon, who induced him to write his memoirs, and made him abbot of a monastery in Poitiers, where he composed his book, in the year 1305. I find in the Bibliothèque Instructive, by De Bure, a book thus entitled, "L'Ordre de Chevalerie: composé par ung Chevalier lequel en sa Vieillesse fut Hermite ." Brother Gobert, who served God in a Cistertian monastery of Brabant, had been a great knight in his day. He had entered this house after making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and to St. James of Compostella. He is described as having been "vir potens in omni virtute secun