g out clearly against the
horizon; instead of a multitude swarming in the penumbra of reality, a
few personages, larger than nature, forming harmonious groups in an
ideal temple.

The genius of a people[9] is all of a piece: they apply to history the
same processes that they apply to the arts. While the Germanic spirit
considers events rather in their evolution, in their complex becoming,
the Italian spirit takes them at a given moment, overlooks the shadows,
the clouds, the mists, everything that makes the line indistinct, brings
out the contour sharply, and thus constructs a very lucid story, which
is a delight to the eyes, but which is little more than a symbol of the
reality.

At other times it takes a man, separates him from the unnamed crowd, and
by a labor often unconscious, makes him the ideal type of a whole
epoch.[10]

Certainly there is in every people a tendency to give themselves a
circle of divinities and heroes who are, so to say, the incarnation of
its instincts; but generally that requires the long labor of centuries.
The Italian character will not suffer this slow action; as soon as it
recognizes a man it says so, it even shouts it aloud if that is
necessary, and makes him enter upon immortality while still alive. Thus
legend almost confounds itself with history, and it becomes very
difficult to reduce men to their true proportions.

We must not, then, ask too much of history. The more beautiful is the
dawn, the less one can describe it. The most beautiful things in nature,
the flower and the butterfly, should be touched only by delicate hands.

The effort here made to indicate the variegated, wavering tints which
form the atmosphere in which St. Francis lived is therefore of very
uncertain success. It was perhaps presumptuous to undertake it.

Happily we are no longer in the time when historians thought they had
done the right thing when they had reduced everything to its proper
size, contenting themselves with denying or omitting everything in the
life of the heroes of humanity which rises above the level of our
every-day experience.

No doubt Francis did not meet on the road to Sienna three pure and
gentle virgins come from heaven to greet him; the devil did not overturn
rocks for the sake of terrifying him; but when we deny these visions and
apparitions, we are victims of an error graver, perhaps, than that of
those who affirm them.

The first time that I was at Assisi I arrived in the mi