Hours with the Mystics: A Contribution to the History of Religious Opinion

by Robert Alfred Vaughan

E di giù vincon si che verso Iddio

Tutti tirati sono e tutti tirano.

E Dionisio con tanto disio

A contemplar questi ordini si mise,

Che li nomò e distinse com’ io.[^[30]]

Dante.

Kate. I have been looking at the pictures in Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art, of those strange creatures, the hermit saints—the Fathers of the desert. Only see this one, what a mane and claws! The two lions digging the grave there are own brothers to the holy men themselves.

Atherton. Yet they claimed powers as much above humanity as, to look at them, you would think them beneath it.

Gower. Religious Nebuchadnezzars.

Willoughby. No shavelings, at any rate, like the smooth-faced sanctities of the later calendar.