that he alone could have written it.

But during all these years, while elaborating opinions on the
weightiest matters of state for the Venetian Senate, and sending
out this series of books which so powerfully influenced the
attitude of his own and after generations toward the Vatican, he
was working with great effect in yet another field. With the
possible exception of Voltaire, he was the most vigorous and
influential letter-writer during the three hundred years which
separated Erasmus from Thomas Jefferson. Voltaire certainly
spread his work over a larger field, lighted it with more wit,
and gained by it more brilliant victories; but as regards
accurate historical knowledge, close acquaintance with statesmen,
familiarity with the best and worst which statesmen could do,
sober judgment and cogent argument, the great Venetian was his
superior. Curiously enough, Sarpi resembles the American
statesman more closely than either of the Europeans. Both he and
Jefferson had the intense practical interest of statesmen, not
only in the welfare of their own countries, but in all the
political and religious problems of their times. Both were keenly
alive to progress in the physical sciences, wherever made. Both
were wont to throw a light veil of humor over very serious
discussions. Both could use, with great effect, curt, caustic
description: Jefferson's letter to Governor Langdon satirizing
the crowned heads of Europe, as he had seen them, has a worthy
pendant in Fra Paolo's pictures of sundry representatives of the
Vatican. In both these writers was a deep earnestness which, at
times, showed itself in prophetic utterances. The amazing
prophecy of Jefferson against American slavery, beginning with
the words, "I tremble when I remember that God is just," which,