A writer, who signs himself “Crito” in the “Truth Teller,” No. 15,
introduces us to an honest enthusiast, discoursing to his hearers on the
_snow-drop_ of the season, and other offerings from Flora, to the
rolling year. “Picture to your imagination, a poor, ‘dirty’ mendicant,
of the order of St. Francis, who had long prayed and fasted in his
sanctuary, and long laboured in his garden, issuing out on the morning
of his first pilgrimage, without money and without provisions, clad in
his mantle and hood, ‘like a sad votarist in palmer’s weeds;’ and thus,
and in these words, taking leave of the poor flock who lived round his
gothic habitation.--‘Fellow-men, I owe you nothing, and I give you all;
you neither paid me tithe nor rent, yet I have bestowed on you food and
clothing in poverty, medicine in sickness, and spiritual counsel in
adversity. That I might do all these things, I have devoted my life in
the seclusion of those venerable walls. There I have consulted the
sacred books of our church for your spiritual instruction and the good
of your souls; to clothe you, I have sold the embroidered garment, and
have put on the habit of mendicity. In the intercalary moments of my
canonical hours of prayer, I have collected together the treasures of
Flora, and gathered from her plants the useful arts of physic, by which
you have been benefited. Ever mindful of the useful object of the labour
to which I had condemned myself, I have brought together into the garden
of this priory, the lily of the valley and the gentian of the mountain,
the nymphæa of the lake, and the cliver of the arid bank; in short, I
have collected the pilewort, the throatwort, the liverwort, and every
other vegetable specific which the kind hand of nature has spread over
the globe, and which I have designated by their qualities, and have
converted to your use and benefit. Mindful also of the pious festivals
which our church prescribes, I have sought to make these charming
objects of floral nature, the timepieces of my religious calendar, and
the mementos of the hastening period of my mortality. Thus I can light
the taper to our Virgin Mother on the blowing of the white snowdrop,
which opens its floweret at the time of Candlemas; the lady’s smock and
the daffodil remind me of the Annunciation; the blue harebell, of the
festival of St. George; the ranunculus, of the Invention of the Cross;
the scarlet lychnis, of St. John the Baptist’s day; the white lily, of
the Visitation of our Lady; and the virgin’s bower, of her Assumption;
and Michaelmas, Martinmas, Holy Rood, and Christmas, have all their
appropriate monitors. I learn the time of day from the shutting of the
blossoms of the star of Jerusalem and the dandelion, and the hour of the
night by the stars.”’
From kind feelings to the benevolence of the Franciscan mendicant’s
address, which we may suppose ourselves to have just heard, we
illustrate something of his purpose, by annexing the rose, the tulip,
and the passion-flower, after an engraving by a catholic artist, who has
impressed them with devotional monograms, and symbols of his faith.
[Illustration]