What St. Francis and his order accomplished in Italy another great Saint, Dominic, was achieving in the West. The {267} fact that another order similar to that of St. Francis in many respects, yet differing from it in a number of essential particulars, should have arisen almost at the same time shows how profoundly the spirit of organization of effort had penetrated into the minds of these generations of the Thirteenth Century. While poverty was to be the badge of St. Dominic's followers as well as those of St. Francis, learning was to replace the simplicity which St. Francis desired for his sons. The order of preachers began at once to give many eminent scholars to the Church, and for three centuries there was not a single generation that did not see as Dominicans some of the most intellectual men of Europe. Leaders they were in philosophy, in the development of thought, in education, and in every phase of ecclesiastical life. The watch dogs of the Lord, (Domini Canes) they were called, punning on their name because everwhere, they were in the van of defense against the enemies of Christianity. That the Thirteenth Century should have given rise to two such great religious orders stamps it as a wonderfully fruitful period for religion as well as for every other phrase of human development. In order to understand what these great founders tried to do, the work of these two orders must be considered together. They have never ceased, during all the intervening seven centuries, to be the source of great influence in the religious world. They have proven refuges for many gentle spirits at all times and have been the homes of learning, as well as of piety. While occasionally their privileges have been abused, and men have taken advantage of the opportunities to be idle and luxurious, this has happened much seldomer than the world imagines. Not a single century has failed to show men among them whom the world honors as Saints, and whose lives have been examples of what can be accomplished by human nature at its best. They have been literally schools of unselfishness, and men have learned to think less of themselves and more of their labor by the contemplation of the lives of these begging friars. What they did for England, the Rev. Augustus Jessopp, a non-conformist clergyman in England, has recently told very well, and the more one studies their history, the higher the estimation of them; and the more one knows of {268} them, the less does one talk of their vices. Green in his "History of the English People" has paid them a tribute that it is well to remember:--