change of fashion, tells its tale of date and change.
Red heels by thousands once trod the London
stones: now they are seen only in faded, obsolete,
cocked-hat comedies. Blue stockings were
the rage during the Regency; they are gone
where the velvet coat powdered with gold
strawberries, the sky-blue velvets, the flower-
embroidered suits are gone—to dust and ashes;
gone with swords, and clouded canes, and roses
in the shoe, and feather head-dresses, and snowy
mountains of powdered hair, and rolled stockings,
and double watches, and bunches of seals, and
hangers at the button-hole, and daggers at the
side, and plumed hats, and ladies' buttoned riding
masks, and silk cloaks, and satin suits woven
with pearl, and broad cloth of gold sword-belts,
and all other fal-lals of dead vanity—gone
where even Perkins's purple must one day follow
them—to the great dusthole of oblivion outside
the back-door of Vanity Fair.

DRIFT.

ST. FRANCIS'S WILL.

IF abjuring the opera, resigning his clubs,
friends, festivities, and all frivolous matters
conceivable, and cutting himself off without even
the usual shilling which belongs to this popular
phrase, he were to turn into the Home Mission,
take a berth as ward tender in the foul ward of
St. Bartholomew's, or the Fever Hospital, and
at night wait upon the inmates of the Fieldlane
Refuge, what opinion would his own mother
have of the sanity of her son?

And yet the founder of the most distinguished
order of the Mendicant Friars, called either
Franciscan from their founder's name, Grey
Friars, from the colour of their habit, Minores,
or Minorites, as the youngest and humblest of
the religious foundations, six hundred and fifty
years ago, did this and a little more.

From wealth, this zealot descended to
utter poverty; from station he abased
himself to the level of the lowest outcast in the
town, and turned to attend on the poor and the
sick, above all, on that unhappy wretch, who,
in those days, was banished from among his
fellow-men, the pariah of oppidans, the unclean
and accursed leper. St. Francis of Assisum, or
as it is now written Assisi, a town in the Papal
States, was born in the year of our Lord 1182,
and there is a concise outline of his career in
Professor Brewer's Monumenta Francisca,
published by the Lords Commissioners of her
Majesty's Treasury under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls.

"Happily for the objects of his mission, St.
Francis had been brought up as a factor for his
father, a wealthy merchant. He had early
opportunities, through his mercantile occupations,
of coming into contact with the manufacturing
population; and his whole life shows, as well as
the rule which he gave to his followers, that he
understood better than most men (whatever else
might be his failings) the true nature of his
mission and the character of the people with whom
he had to deal. He had to strip Christianity, in
the first instance, of the regal robe in which
popes and prelates had invested it: to preach it
as the gospel of the poor and the oppressed. It
was not to be a trap for men's obedience; it was
not to demand a surrender of that independence
which the commons of the towns had guarded so
jealously, and purchased at such costly sacrifices.
He caught the poorest in their poverty; the
subtle in their subtlety; sending among them
preachers as ill-clad and as ill-fed, but as deep
thinkers in all respects as themselves. Like
other reformers of his age, his earliest thoughts
were directed to the Saracens. Among them he
proposes to labour. But his purposes right
themselves, and find their due employment in. a
larger and more important field. His followers
are to visit the towns two and two; in just so
much clothing as the commonest mendicant
could purchase. They are to sleep at nights
under arches, or in the porches of desolate and
deserted churches, among idiots, lepers, and
outcasts; to beg their bread from door to door;
to set an example of piety and submission."
How the Rev. Canon Pretyman, who left half a
million pounds, vicarial gains, behind him, would
have psha'ed at such a rule of ministration! Moreover,
St. Francis appointed that twelve conditions
must be fulfilled before any applicant could be
received into the order. He must believe the
Catholic faith,—must not be suspected (even) of
error,—must be single,—legitimate,—whole in
body,—prompt of mind,—out of debt,—not born
a bondman,—"if he be a clerk at the least that
he be going of sixteen years of age,"—of good
name and fame,—either competently learned, or
else able to profit the brethren by his labour—
and of gentle condition, so that his entry into
the order "maye be grete edification, to the
peple."

But there is an early English translation of
the Testament of St. Francis, in a vellum MS.
of the fifteenth century, among the Cotton
manuscripts at the British Museum, formerly
belonging to a Franciscan friar, John Howell,
which gives such an insight into the practice and
doctrine of a religious enthusiast, that I believe,
with the properest respect, the whole bench of
bishops will be all the better for a close and
attentive perusal of the document, and so,
without more ado, I copy it and dedicate it to
them:

"Here begynneth the Testament of owre holy
fadre Seynt Francis.

"Owre Lord gave unto me brother Frauncis thys
to begynne and doo penaunce, for why when I was
in the bondage of synne yt was bitter to me and
lothesomme to se and lokke uppon persounys enfect
with leopre (leprosy); but that blessid Lord browghte
rne amonge them, and I did mercy with them, and I
departyng from them, that before semyd bittre and
lothesome was turned and changed to me into gret
swetnesse and comforte bothe of body and of soule,
and afterward in this state I stode and bode a lytle
while and thenn I lefte and forsooke the worldly
lyf; and our Lord gave to me suche faithe and
devotion in his Churchis that thys symply and mekely
I wurshipped hym, and prayed and sayd: 'We
wurshipe The most blessid Lord Jesus Crist here, and
at alle churchis whiche be in alle the worlde; and