hypocrisy should be
made public, he confined his inclinations to his own breast.
    It was by no means his nature to be timid: but his education had impressed
his mind with fear so strongly, that apprehension was now become part of his
character. Had his youth been passed in the world, he would have shown himself
possessed of many brilliant and manly qualities. He was naturally enterprizing,
firm, and fearless: he had a warrior's heart, and he might have shone with
splendour at the head of an army. There was no want of generosity in his nature:
the wretched never failed to find in him a compassionate auditor: his abilities
were quick and shining, and his judgment vast, solid, and decisive. With such
qualifications he would have been an ornament to his country: that he possessed
them he had given proofs in his earliest infancy, and his parents had beheld his
dawning virtues with the fondest delight and admiration. Unfortunately, while
yet a child, he was deprived of those parents. He fell into the power of a
relation, whose only wish about him was never to hear of him more: for that
purpose he gave him in charge to his friend, the former superior of the
Capuchins. The abbot, a very monk, used all his endeavours to persuade the boy
that happiness existed not without the walls of a convent. He succeeded fully.
To deserve admittance into the order of St. Francis was Ambrosio's highest
ambition. His instructors carefully repressed those virtues, whose grandeur and
disinterestedness were ill suited to the cloister. Instead of universal
benevolence, he adopted a selfish partiality for his own particular
establishment: he was taught to consider compassion for the errors of others as
a crime of the blackest dye: the noble frankness of his temper was exchanged for
servile humility; and in order to break his natural spirit, the monks terrified
his young mind, by placing before him all the horrors with which superstition
could furnish them: they painted to him the torments of the damned in colours
the most dark, terrible and fantastic, and threatened him at the slightest fault
with eternal perdition. No wonder that his imagination constantly dwelling upon
these fearful objects should have rendered his character timid and apprehensive.
Add to this, that his long absence from the great world, and total
unacquaintance with the common dangers of life, made him form of them an idea
far more dismal than the reality. While the monks were busied in rooting out his
virtues, and narrowing his sentiments, they allowed every vice which had fallen
to his share to arrive at full perfection. He was