Besides, his voice was sharp and thin; his face and person were not prepossessing.

The style of his discourse was adapted to cloisteral disputations, and overloaded with scholastic distinctions.
The great orator had not yet arisen in him.

The friar, with all his dryness and severity, was but too apparent.

With what strange feelings must the youth have trodden the streets of Florence! In after-days he used to say that he foreknew those streets and squares were destined to be the scene of his labors.

But then, voiceless, powerless, without control of his own genius, without the consciousness of his prophetic mission, he brooded alone and out of harmony with the beautiful and mundane city.