of fanaticism ran, almost entirely naked through the streets of that city, warning all its inhabitants of the impending wrath of heaven; and exhorting them in the most solemn manner, to avert the approaching danger, by humbly imploring the mercy of the offended Deity; but this religious paroxysm was of short duration. He was at this time in habits of intimacy with the great characters who then filled the professional chairs of the university, and ardently engaged in the pursuits of study; and the exercises which his daily tasks required, together with the company and conversation of these rational, well-informed, and thinking men, preserved his reason, and soon restored him to the full and free enjoyment of those faculties, from which both science and humanity afterward derived so many benefits. The conduct of St. Francis, commonly called the holy Francis of Assisi, was in some degree similar; excepting that the madness of this fanatic continued throughout his life, while the delirium of Fothergill lasted but a day. This saint was born at Assisi, in the province of Umbria, in the year 1182. His real name of baptism was John; but, on account of the facility with which he acquired the French language, so necessary at that time in Italy, especially for the business for which he was intended, he was called Francis. He is said to have been born with the figure of a cross on his right shoulder, and to have dreamt that he was designed by heaven to promote the interests of that holy sign. His disposition was naturally mild, his comprehension quick, his feelings acute, his manners easy, his imagination vivid, and his passions inordinately warm. A careless and unrestrained indulgence of the propensities of youth had led him into a variety of vicious habits and libertine extravagances, until the solitude to which a fit of sickness confined him, brought him to a recollection, and forced him to reflect upon the dangerous tendency of his past misconduct. His mind started with horror at the dreadful scene his retrospection presented to his view; and he resolved to quit the company of his former associates, to reform the profligacy of his life, to restore his character, and to save, by penitence and prayer, his guilty soul. These serious reflections wrought so powerfully on his dejected mind, that he fell into an extravagant kind of devotion, more resembling madness than religion. Fixing on a passage in St. Matthew, in which our Saviour desires his apostles to _provide neither gold nor silver, nor brass in their purses; nor scrip for their journey; neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves_, he was led to consider a voluntary and absolute poverty as the essence of the gospel, and to prescribe this poverty as a sacred rule, both to himself and to the few who followed him. He accordingly wandered through the streets of Assisi, in garments that scarcely concealed his nakedness, in order, as he said, to inure himself to the taunts and ridicule of