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our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather of elect scholars, in whom God the Creator and Nature His handmaid planted the roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom the poverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the frown of adverse fortune the seeds of excellence, so fruitful in the cultivated field of youth, not being watered by the rain that they require, are forced to wither away. Thus it happens that "bright virtue lurks buried in obscurity," to use the words of Boethius, and burning lights are not put under a bushel, but for want of oil are utterly extinguished. Thus the field, so full of flower in Spring, has withered up before harvest time; thus wheat degenerates to tares, and vines into the wild vines, and thus olives run into the wild olive; the tender stems rot away altogether, and those who might have grown up into strong pillars of the Church, being endowed with the capacity of a subtle intellect, abandon the schools of learning. With poverty only as their stepmother, they are repelled violently from the nectared cup of philosophy as soon as they have tasted of it and have become more fiercely thirsty by the very taste. Though fit for the liberal arts and disposed to study the sacred writings alone, being deprived of the aid of their friends, by a kind