and the severity of the holy canons.' The result was the reconcilement
of Henry with Bertha, in Saxony. And though Alexander was Pope, Peter
received his instructions from Hildebrand. But there is a wide
difference between your hostility to Henry of Austria and the resistance
of Gregory VII to his encroachments: your motives all flow from human
considerations, and seek a human revenge; his, on the contrary, proceed
from the knowledge of his duty, to God, and breathe forgiveness: you
seek the king's destruction and your own aggrandizement--Gregory, the
king's welfare, and the independence and prosperity of the Christian
Church."

We will no longer continue a conversation which, to be intelligible to
all, would require a more intimate acquaintance with the history of the
times than can be obtained from the books in free circulation among us.
Though Gregory VII has been reproached by all Protestants, and by some
Catholics, with an undue assumption of temporal power, and an
unnecessary severity against Henry IV of Austria, it is certain that, in
his own day, he was charged by many of his own friends, particularly, in
Saxony and Suabia, with too tender a regard for a monarch who violated
his most solemn engagements the moment he fancied he could do so with
impunity, and whose court, already openly profligate, threatened to
present the appearance of an Eastern seraglio. A hasty glance at the
prominent facts of the dispute will leave us in doubt whether to admire
most the dignified and Christian forbearance of the Pope while a hope of
saving his adversary remained, or the unwavering resolution he
displayed, even to death in exile, when convinced that mercy to the king
would be injustice to God.

No sooner had Gregory assumed the tiara, than he addressed letters to
different persons, in which he assured them of his earnest desire to