enemies than friends. It is much easier to accept things as they are, to think of your own enjoyment first and foremost, and let others do the wrangling while you look on. But the mere spectators in life are no help to any one, not even to themselves. Life is conflict. It is to the fighters who, with a clear vision of better things, have bravely fought the evil around them that we owe any changes for the better in the history of the world.
Savonarola, the Italian monk, was by no means a spectator; he was a fighter of the most strenuous type. Historians may differ in their accounts of his character and his work. But one thing is certain: few men have lived a life of such vigorous activity or one that was so filled with exciting incidents: few men have stood by their convictions with such courage and persistence or suffered more cruelly for their opinions. He spent the best part of his life fighting authority, upsetting public opinion, and defying his superiors. He was defeated in the end because those who were for the moment stronger than he killed him. But perhaps his death, as in other cases that may occur to you, was his greatest triumph. Men may kill the body of their victim, but they cannot kill the spirit he has roused by his influence and example. That lives on when all his persecutors are dead and forgotten.
Girolamo Savonarola was born in Ferrara, a town in Northern Italy, in the year 1452. He was the
