acter. Had his Youth been passed in the world,
He would have shown himself possessed of many brilliant and manly
qualities. He was naturally enterprizing, firm, and fearless: He had
a Warrior's heart, and He might have shone with splendour at the head
of an Army. There was no want of generosity in his nature: The
Wretched never failed to find in him a compassionate Auditor: His
abilities were quick and shining, and his judgment, vast, solid, and
decisive. With such qualifications He would have been an ornament to
his Country: That He possessed them, He had given proofs in his
earliest infancy, and his Parents had beheld his dawning virtues with
the fondest delight and admiration. Unfortunately, while yet a Child
He was deprived of those Parents. He fell into the power of a Relation
whose only wish about him was never to hear of him more; For that
purpose He gave him in charge to his Friend, the former Superior of the
Capuchins. The Abbot, a very Monk, used all his endeavours to persuade
the Boy that happiness existed not without the walls of a Convent. He
succeeded fully. To deserve admittance into the order of St. Francis
was Ambrosio's highest ambition. His Instructors carefully repressed
those virtues whose grandeur and disinterestedness were ill-suited to
the Cloister. Instead of universal benevolence, He adopted a selfish
partiality for his own particular establishment: He was taught to
consider compassion for the errors of Others as a crime of the blackest
dye: The noble frankness of his temper was exchanged for servile
humility; and in order to break his natural spirit, the Monks terrified
his young mind by placing before him all the horrors with which
Superstition could furnish them: They painted to him the torments of
the Damned in colours the most dark, terrible, and fantastic, and
threatened him at the slightest fault with eternal perdition. No
wonder that his imagination constantly dwelling upon these fearful
objects should have rendered his character timid and apprehensive. Add
to this, that his long absence from the great world, and total
unacquaintance with the common dangers of life, made him form of them
an idea far more dismal than the reality. While the Monks were busied
in rooting out his virtues and narrowing his sentiments, they allowed
every vice which had fallen to his share to arrive at full perfection.
He was suffered to be proud, vain, ambitious, and disdainful: He was
jealou