IRatuie 'IRotes: 
Ube Selbovne Society’s flkaoastite. 
Nos. 23-24. NOVEMBER— DECEMBER, 1891. Vol. IL 
A MEDIEVAL SELBORN IAN. 
( See Frontispiece. ) 
“ Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again ! 
He that, in his catholic wholeness, used to call the very flowers 
Sisters, brothers; and the beasts, whose pains are scarcely less than ours.” 
— Tennyson. 
F these were the days when men placed themselves 
and their causes under the protection of some saint, 
we should have no difficulty in choosing the patron of 
the Selborne Society. Even as it is, we cannot but 
feel the interest and attraction which the humble friar, whose feet 
trod the Umbrian hills and plains some six hundred years ago, 
exercises to-day upon the more spiritual of this nineteenth cen- 
tury ; and the lines of our Laureate do but echo the feelings of 
those who have made themselves acquainted, in one form or 
other, with the life of love which found a responsive echo 
throughout the Christian world in the thirteenth century. 
That life, writes Mrs. Oliphant, in her sympathetic bio- 
graphy, “ is but a record of journeys, long silent walks from one 
place to another, walks which are enlivened by the tender love 
of nature which is always manifest in his visionary eyes, and 
during the course of which he spies the lamb among the flock, 
and steps aside now and then to say his Hours among the sing- 
ing birds, or make his gentle exhortation to them, dismissing his 
little sisters with a blessing. There is always an out-of-door sen- 
sation about the picture — the woods rustling, the soft air blowing, 
the light striking on tower and tree.” Is it not this “ out-of-door 
sensation ” which gives their charm to the writings of Jefferies 
and his school ? is it not, in fact, what we mean when we speak 
of the Selbornian spirit, and may we not claim the gray-robed 
Friar of Assisi as a Selbornian in advance of his time ? 
The preaching to the birds, which we need not too readily 
dismiss as a parable, became at once a popular episode in the 
life of St. Francis. Even before Giotto depicted it on the walls 
of the Great Church at Assisi, it had been painted by earlier 
