Lilo of St. Francis of Assisi. By the Rev. F.
Leopold de Chevance. Translated from the French by R. F. O'Connor. (Burns. and Oates.) —1t is to be wished that Father de Chevance bad told us something about the discovery of the manuscript chronicle of Bernard Besse, had let us know whore it was found, and by whom and when. Apart from this question, the book is highly interesting. There is something to be said for writing the life of such a man as St. Francis from a wholly uncritical stand-point. The necessity of explaining away miracles and apologising for utterances which do not suit our ways of thinking diminishes the general effect of a book. It does not suit, for instance, our Protestant notions of individuality and responsibility to find Si. Francis saying to a disobedient disciple, "I want not living men, but dead mon, for servants." But the picture of the man, is much more striking than when we see it through a certain conven- tional haze. The book is not without some sound sense in it. There it something in the following :—" To protect the Mendicant Orders is to perform an act of justice, and to proscribe them to ruin the people. For the day when they [modern governments] shall deprive the poor of the hope of a better life and the salutary influence of voluntary poverty, there will no longer be any compromise against the spirit of revolt which is agitating all Europe."
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