Nothing is more remarkable than the fullness of the life that throbbed in them.

Natures rich in all capacities and endowed with every kind of sensibility were frequent.

Nor was there any limit to the play of personality in action.

We may apply to them what Mr.Browning has written of Sordello's temperament:-- A footfall there Suffices to upturn to the warm air Half germinating spices, mere decay Produces richer life, and day by day New pollen on the lily-petal grows, And still more labyrinthine buds the rose.
During the Middle Ages man had lived enveloped in a cowl.

He had not seen the beauty of the world or had seen it only to cross himself, and turn aside and tell his beads and pray.