Rank and wealth made no difference in the manners of the ascetic monk. He continued to live upon the coarsest fare, to wear the humble dress of his order, to sleep on the ground, or on a bed as hard, and to travel on an ass, or on foot. And Pope Alexander VI. thought it necessary to send a letter to him, with the very unusual exhortation to cultivate the pomps and vanities of the world a little more, for the sake of the church of which he was so exalted a member. Ximenes obeyed, and probably became convinced of the propriety of the counsel, as he became more engaged in civil government. He assumed even a more gorgeous state than his predecessors, but he still practised his usual self-denial in private; he slept and fared as hardly as before, and wore a haircloth under his episcopal robes. He was exemplary in the discharge of his public duties; liberal even to an extreme in relieving the daily necessities of the poor, and in contributing to charitable, useful, and religious undertakings; diligent in promoting the welfare of the people to the full extent of his almost regal power, by repressing extortion and peculation, whether in courts of law, or the collection of the revenue, by providing for the due administration of justice, ecclesiastical and civil, and by exercising a strict superintendence over the conduct of the parochial clergy. To the cry of the wretched his ears were always open; he hated oppression; and if an injured vassal complained against the highest noble in the land, he was ready to grant justice, if the matter lay within his jurisdiction, or, if not, to carry the complaint before the Queen. And his zeal and energy carried to a happy conclusion the arduous undertaking of reforming the Franciscan brotherhood, upon which he succeeded in enforcing a new system of regulations in 1499, after a most obstinate resistance. We may here mention with unmixed praise one of the Archbishop’s charitable undertakings. It was an institution for the education of the daughters of indigent nobles, on such principles, according to the words of our authority, as should train them to the fit discharge of their duties towards their families and towards society. A fund, afterwards increased by the Spanish monarchs, was set apart to provide them with marriage portions. We may here trace the original of the celebrated establishment of St. Cyr.