" says he, "who in sumptuous edifices, and lofty walls,
expose to view inestimable treasures, impudently transgressing the limits
of poverty, and the fundamentals of their profession; who diligently
apply themselves to lords and rich persons, that they may gape after
wealth; extorting confessions and clandestine wills, commending
themselves and their order only, and extolling them above all others. So
that no Christian now believes he can be saved, unless he be governed by
the councils of the preachers and minors. In obtaining privileges, they
are solicitors; in the courts of kings and potentates, they are
councillors, gentlemen of the chamber, treasurers, match-makers,
matrimony-brokers; executioners of papal extortions; in their sermons,
either flatterers or stinging backbiters, discoverers of confession, or
impudent rebukers."

Making all due allowance for the party feeling of the historian, thus
commemorating the factions of the "Mother Church," enough may be seen of
the truth, to form a general idea of the condition of the brotherhoods,
one of whose "palaces, supported by high pillars," is now left us as a
subject for our investigation.

The order of Black Friars owe their origin to the famous Dominick,
notorious for his zeal in the persecution of the Albigenses. He figures
also in the "Golden Legend," as a miraculously endowed infant; his
god-mother perceiving on his forehead a star, which made the whole world
light. The common seal of the Black Friars, still preserved,
commemorates another miracle concerning him: "Being grown to man's
estate, he became a great preacher against heretics; and once upon a
time, he put his authorities against them in writing, and gave the
schedule into the hands of a heretic, that he might ponder over its
contents. The same night, a party being met at a fire, the man produced
the schedule, upon which he was persuaded to cast it into the flames, to
test its truth; which doing, the schedule sprung back again, after a few
minutes, unburnt; the experiment was repeated thrice, with the same
results; but the heretics refused to be convinced, and pledged themselves
not to reveal the matter;--but one of them, it seems, afterwards did so."

Many other marvellous tales are extant of holy St. Dominick, but we
hasten on to take a look at the church of his followers. The present
building bears date of the fifteenth century, and would seem to have been
materially enriched by the famous Sir