martyrdom and a death at the stake. He was not of the stuff of which
martyrs are made, as he handsomely confessed on more than one occasion.
"Let others affect martyrdom," he said, "for myself I am unworthy of the
honor;" and, at another time, "I am not of a mind," he observed
"to venture my life for the truth's sake; all men have not strength to
endure the martyr's death. For myself, if it came to the point, I should
do no better than Simon Peter." Moderate in all things, he would have
liked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he never
found it convenient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing age
diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he had
moderately indulged. Although awake to the abuses of the Church, he
thought Luther going too fast and too far. He began by applauding ended
by censuring the monk of Wittemberg. The Reformation might have been
delayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the only
reformers. He will long be honored for his elegant, Latinity. In the
republic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a sound
criticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of the
owlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through mediveval
cloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence. In the history of
the religious Reformation, his name seems hardly to deserve the
commendations of Grotius.

As the schism yawns, more and more ominously, throughout Christendom, the
Emperor naturally trembles. Anxious to save the state, but being no
antique Roman, he wishes to close the gulf, but with more convenience to
himself: He conceives the highly original plan of combining Church and
Empire under one crown. This is Maximilian's scheme for Church
reformation. An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor, the
Charlemagne and Hildebrand systems united and simplified--thus the world
may yet be saved. "Nothing more honorable, nobler, better, could happen