78 WORKMEN AND HEROES persons found in it were immediately hanged, as some authorities say, by the king's orders, with the exception only of Gurdun. He was brought into the presence of his dying victim, when Richard, under the impulse of generosity 01 compunction, gave him his liberty, with a hundred shillings to take him home ; but after the king's death he was flayed alive, and then hanged, by order of Mar- chadee, the leader of the Brabantine mercenaries serving in Richard's army. The character of Richard is, of course, not to be judged without reference to the general manners of the age in which he lived. It is probable enough that there was hardly an excess, either of violence or licentiousness, into which his impetuous temperament did not occasionally precipitate him ; but he seems to have had nothing base or malignant in his composition ; and that he was as capable of acts of extraordinary generosity and disinterestedness as of excesses of brutal fury or profligacy. Of the courage and strength of will proper to his race, he had his full share, with more than his share of their strength of thevv and sinew ; and his intellectual powers, both natural and acquired, were also of a high order. He was renowned in his own day not only as beyond all dispute the" stoutest and most gallant of living heroes, but as likewise occupying a place in the foremost rank of those who excelled in wit, in eloquence; and in song. ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI * BY GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP, LL.D. (1182-1226) ONE reason why those beings who are known to us as saints are so little understood is, that their lives are usually written in one of two ways, both equally unsuited to popular appreciation. Either they are presented in a dry, bare, mat- ter-of-fact manner, which requires all the knowledge and sympathy of the initiated to give it vital meaning ; or else they are sur- rounded with an appanage of por- tents, visions, miracles, legends iss " spread before the reader without discrimination or explanation which confuse the mind and soul, and absolutely repel all who do not share the faith of the subject and the biographer. As a matter of fact, no Catholic is obliged to accept these legends and tradi-
- Copyright. 1894. by Selmat Hess.
