aint; not to be a St.
Ignatius, wrestling with the foe, though Philip was termed the Society's
bell of call, so many subjects did he send to it; not to be a St. Francis
Xavier, though Philip had longed to shed his blood for Christ in India
with him; not to be a St. Caietan, or hunter of souls, for Philip
preferred, as he expressed it, tranquilly to cast in his net to gain them;
he preferred to yield to the stream, and direct the current, which he
could not stop, of science, literature, art, and fashion, and to sweeten
and to sanctify what God had made very good and man had spoilt.

And so he contemplated as the idea of his mission, not the propagation of
the faith, nor the exposition of doctrine, nor the catechetical schools;
whatever was exact and systematic pleased him not; he put from him
monastic rule and authoritative speech, as David refused the armour of his
king. No; he would be but an ordinary individual priest as others: and his
weapons should be but unaffected humility and unpretending love. All he
did was to be done by the light, and fervour, and convincing eloquence of
his personal character and his easy conversation. He came to the Eternal
City and he sat himself down there, and his home and his family gradually
grew up around him, by the spontaneous accession of materials from
without. He did not so much seek his own as draw them to him. He sat in
his small room, and they in their gay worldly dresses, the rich and the
wellborn, as well as the simple and the illiterate, crowded into it. In
the mid-heats of summer, in the frosts of winter, still was he in that low
and narrow cell at San Girolamo, reading the hearts of those who came to
him, and curing their souls' maladies by the very touch of his hand. It
was a vision of the Magi worshipping the infant Saviour, so pure and
innocent, so sweet and beautiful was he; and so loyal and so dear to the
gracious Virgin Mother. And they who came remained gazing and listening,
till at length, first one and then another threw off their bravery, and
took his poor cassock and girdle instead: or, if they kept it, it was to
put haircloth under it, or to take on them a rule of life, while to the
world they looked as before.

In the words of his biographer, "he was all things to all men. He suited
himself to noble and ignoble, young and old, subjects and prelates,
learned and ignorant; and received those who were strangers to him with
singular benignity, and embraced them w