unimportant, and a deep significance to occurrences in any other view as trivial as a border raid, or the palaver of an African village.

guage of reproach and insult, but, harder still, described as a buffoon. It is, perhaps, well for the dignity of the stern reformer that the Take, for example, the life of Ulric de Hut- taunt was unknown to the object of it; for, ten, a noble, a warrior, and a rake; a theolo- great as he was, Hutten would not have spared gian withal, and a reformer; and at the same him; and as the quiver of few satirists has time the author, or one of the authors, of a been stored with keener or more envenomed satire to be classed amongst the most effective shafts, so, few illustrious men have exposed which the world has ever seen. Had the to such an assailant a greater number of vulrecreative powers of Walter Scott been exer- nerable points. But of these, or of his other cised on Hutten's story, how familiar would private habits, little is generally recorded. all Christendom have been with the stern History having claimed Luther for her own, Baron of Franconia, and Ulric, his petulant biography has yielded to the pretensions of boy; with the fat Abbot of Foulde driving the her more stately sister; and the domestic and fiery youth by penances and homilies to range interior life of the antagonist of Leo and of a literary vagabond on the face of the earth; Charles yet remains to be written. The matewith the burgomaster of Frankfort, avenging rials are abundant, and of the highest interest;by a still more formidable punishment the a collection of letters scarcely less voluminous pasquinade which had insulted his civic dig- than those of Voltaire; the Colloquia Mensalia, nity. How vivid would be the image of Hut- in some parts of more doubtful authenticity, ten at the siege of Pavia, soothing despair yet, on the whole, a genuine record of his conitself by writing his own epitaph; giving com-versation; his theological writings, a mine of bat to five Frenchmen for the glory of Maximilian; and receiving from the delighted emperor the frugal reward of a poetic crown. Then would have succeeded the court and princely patronage of "the Pope of Mentz," and the camp and the castle of the Lord of Sickengen, until the chequered scene closed with Ulric's death-bed employment of producing a satire on his stupid physician. All things were welcome to Hutten; arms and love, theology and debauchery, a disputation with the Thomists, a controversy with Erasmus, or a war to the knife with the dunces of his age. His claim to have written the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum, has, indeed, been disputed, though with little apparent reason. It is at least clear that he asserted his own title, and that no other candidate for that equivocal honour united in himself the wit and learning, the audacity and licentiousness, which successively adorn and disfigure that extraordinary collection. Neither is it quite just to exclude the satirist from the list of those who lent a material aid to the Reformation. It is not, certainly, by the heartiest or the most contemptuous laugh that dynasties, whether civil or religious, are subverted; but it would be unfair to deny altogether to Hutten the praise of having contributed by his merciless banter to the successes of wiser and better men than himself. To set on edge the teeth of the Ciceronians by the Latinity of the correspondents of the profound Ortuinus, was but a pleasant jest; but it was something more to confer an immorality of ridicule on the erudite doctors who seriously apprehended, from the study of Greek and Hebrew, the revival at once of the worship of Minerva, and of the rite of circumcision. It was in strict satirical justice, that characters were assigned to these sages in a farce as broad as was ever drawn by Aristophanes or Moliere; and which was destitute neither of their riotous mirth, nor even of some of that deep wisdom which it was their pleasure to exhibit beneath that mask.

egotisms of the richest ore; and the works of Melancthon, Seckendorf, Cochlous, Erasmus, and many others, who flourished in an age when, amongst learned men, to write and to live were almost convertible terms. The volume whose title-page we have.transcribed, is, in fact, an unfinished life of Luther, closing with his appeal from the pope to a general council. We have selected it as the most elaborate, from a long catalogue of works on the Reformation, recently published on the conti nent, by the present inheritors of the principles and passions which first agitated Europe in the beginning of the sixteenth century. By far the most amusing of the series is the collection of Lutheriana by M. Michelet, which we are bound to notice with especial gratitude, as affording a greater number of valuable references than all other books of the same kind put together. It was drawn up as a relaxation from those severer studies on which M. Michelet's historical fame depends. But the pastime of some men is worth far more than the labours of the rest; and this compilation has every merit but that of an appropriate title; for an auto-biography it assuredly is not, in any of the senses, accurate or popular, of that much abused word. Insulated in our habits and pursuits, not less than in our geographical position, it is but tardily that, within the entrenchment of our four seas, we sympathize with the intellectual movements of the nations which dwell beyond them. Many, however, are the motives, of at least equal force in these islands as in the old and new continents of the Christian world, for diverting the eye from the present to the past, from those who would now reform, to those who first reformed, the churches of Europe. Or, if graver reasons could not be found, it is beyond all dispute that the professors of Wittemburg, three hundred years ago, formed a group as much more entertaining than those of Oxford at present, as the contest with Dr. Eck exceeded in interest the squabble with Dr. Hampden.

Much as Luther, himself, asper, incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit, he received with little The old Adam in Martin Luther (a favourite relish these sallies of his facetious ally; whom subject of his discourse) was a very formidahe not only censured for employing the lan- | ble personage; lodged in a bodily frame of

I am, I am not going to sound a retreat. I trust I shall do still more to spoil their merriment."

This indiscreet, if not criminal marriage, searcely admitted a more serious defence. Yet Luther was not a man to do any thing which he was not prepared to justify. He had inculcated on others the advantages of the conjugal state, and was bound to enforce his precepts by his example. The war of the peasants had brought reproach on the principles of the Reformation; and it was incumbent on him to sustain the minds of his followers, and to bear his testimony to evangelical truth by deeds as well as words. Therefore, it was fit that he should marry a nun. Such is the logic of inclination, and such the presumption of uninterrupted success. "Dr. Ortuinas" himself never lent his venerable sanction to a stranger sophistry, than that which could thus discover in one great scandal an apology for another far more justly offensive.

surpassing vigour, solicited by vehement appe- | bics, the learned Eccius himself chiming into tites, and alive to all the passions by which the loud chorus with an elaborate epithalaman is armed for offensive or defensive war- mium. The bridegroom met the tempest, with fare with his fellows. In accordance with a the spirit of another Benedict, by a countergeneral law, that temperament was sustained blast of invective and sarcasms, which, afterby nerves which shrunk neither from the wards collected under the head of "the Lion endurance nor the infliction of necessary pain; and the Ass," perpetuated the memory of this and by a courage which rose at the approach redoubtable controversy. "My enemies," he of difficulty, and exulted in the presence of exclaimed, “triumphed. They shouted, lo, Io! danger. A rarer prodigality of nature com-I was resolved to show that, old and feeble as bined with these endowments an inflexible reliance on the conclusions of his own understanding, and on the energy of his own will. He came forth on the theatre of life another Samson Agonistes "with plain heroic magnitude of mind, and celestial vigour armed;" ready to wage an unequalled combat with the haughtiest of the giants of Gath; or to shake down, though it were on his own head, the columns of the proudest of her temples. Viewed in his belligerent aspect, he might have seemed a being cut off from the common brotherhood of mankind, and bearing from on high a commission to bring to pass the remote ends of Divine benevolence, by means appalling to human guilt and to human weakness. But he was reclaimed into the bosom of the great family of man, by bonds fashioned in strength and number proportioned to the vigour of the propensities they were intended to control. There brooded over him a constitutional melancholy, sometimes engendering sadness, but more often giving birth to dreams so wild, that, if vivified by the imagination of Dante, they might have passed into visions as awful and majestic as those of the Inferno. As these mists rolled away, bright gleams of sunshine took their place, and that robust mind yielded itself to social enjoyments, with the hearty relish, the broad humour, and the glorious profusion of sense and nonsense, which betoken the relaxations of those who are for the moment abdicating the mastery, to become the companions of ordinary man. Luther had other and yet more potent spells with which to exorcise the demons who haunted him. He had ascertained and taught that the spirit of darkness abhors sweet sounds not less than light itself; for music, while it chases away the evil suggestions, effectually baffles the wiles of the tempter. His lute, and hand, and voice, accompanying his own solemn melodies, were therefore raised to repel the more vehement aggressions of the enemy of mankind; whose feebler assaults he encountered by studying the politics of a rookery, by assigning to each beautiful creation of his flowerbeds an appropriate sylph or genius, by the company of his Catherine de Bora, and the sports of their saucy John and playful Magdalene.

The name of Catherine has long enjoyed a wide but doubtful celebrity. She was a lady of noble birth, and was still young when she renounced the ancient faith, her convent, and her vows, to become the wife of Martin Luther. From this portentous union of a monk and nun, the "obscure men" confidently predicted the birth of Antichrist; while the wits and scholars greeted their nuptials with a thick hail-storm of epigrams, hymns, and dithyram

Catherine was a very pretty women, if Holbein's portrait may be believed; although even her personal charms have been rudely impugned by her husband's enemies, in grave disquisitions devoted to that momentous question. Better still, she was a faithful and affectionate wife. But there is a no less famous Catherine to whom she bore a strong family resemblance. She brought from her nunnery an anxious mind, a shrewish temper, and great volubility of speech. Luther's arts were not those of Petruchio. With him reverence for woman was at once a natural instinct and a point of doctrine. He observed, that when the first woman was brought to the first man to receive her name, he called her not wife, but mother-"Eve, the mother of all living"-a word, he says, "more eloquent than ever fell from the lips of Demosthenes." So, like a wise and kind-hearted man, when his Catherine prattled, he smiled; when she frowned, he playfully stole away her anger, and chided her anxieties with the gentlest soothing. A happier or a more peaceful home was not to be found in the land of domestic tenderness. Yet, the confession must be made, that, from the first to the last, this love-tale is nothing less than a case of læsa majestas against the sovereignty of romance. Luther and his bride did not meet on either side with the raptures of a first affection. He had long before sighed for the fair Ave Shonfelden, and she had not concealed her attachment for a certain Jerome Baungartner. Ave had bestowed herself in marriage on a physician of Prussia; and be fore Luther's irrevocable vows were pledged, Jerome received from his great rival an inti mation that he still possessed the heart, and, with common activity, might even yet secure

Give my love to your Aunt Magdalene, and kiss her for me. From your papa who loves you,-Martin Luther."

If it is not a sufficient apology for the quotation of this fatherly epistle to say, that it is the talk of Martin Luther, a weightier defence may be drawn from the remark that it illustrates one of his most serious opinions. The views commonly received amongst Christians, of the nature of the happiness reserved in another state of being, for the obedient and faithful in this life, he regarded, if not as erroneous, yet as resting on no sufficient foundation, and as ill adapted to "allure to brighter worlds." He thought that the enjoyments of heaven had been refined away to such a point of evanescent spirituality as to deprive them of their necessary attraction; and the allegory invented for the delight of little John, was but the adaptation to the thoughts of a child of a doctrine which he was accustomed to inculcate on others, under imagery more elevated than that of drums, crossbows and golden bridles.

There is but one step from the nursery to the servant's hall; and they who have borne with the parental counsels to little John, may endure the following letter respecting an aged namesake of his, who was about to quit Luther's family:

leaving God to think for him." The following parable, in a letter to Spalatin, is in a more ambitious strain.

"You are going to Augsburg without having taken the auspices, and ignorant when you will be allowed to begin. I, on the other hand, am in the midst of the Comitia, in the presence of illustrious sovereigns, kings, dukes, grandees, and nobles, who are solemnly debating affairs of state, and making the air ring with their deliberations and decrees. Instead of imprisoning themselves in those royal caverns which you call palaces they hold their assemblies in the sunshine, with the arch of heaven for their tent, substituting for costly tapestries the foliage of trees, where they enjoy their liberty. Instead of confining themselves in parks and pleasure-grounds, they range over the earth to its utmost limits. They detest the stupid luxurics of silk and embroidery, but all dress in the same colour, and put on very much the same looks. To say the truth, they all wear black, and all sing one tune. It is a song formed of a single note, with no variation but what is produced by the pleasing contrast of young and old voices. I have seen and heard nothing of their emperor. They have a su preme contempt for the quadruped employed by our gentry, having a much better method for setting the heaviest artillery at defiance. As far as I have been able to understand their

"We must dismiss old John with honour. We know that he has always served us faith-resolutions by the aid of an interpreter, they fully and zealously, and as became a Christian servant. What have we not given to vagabonds and thankless students who have made a bad use of our money? So we will not be niggardly to so worthy a servant, on whom our money will be bestowed in a manner pleasing to God. You need not remind me that we are not rich. I would gladly give him ten florins, if I had them, but do not let it be less than five. He is not able to do much for himself. Pray help him in any other way you can. Think how this money can be raised. There is a silver cup that might be pawned. Sure I am that God will not desert us. Adieu."

Luther's pleasures were as simple as his domestic affections were pure. He wrote metrical versions of the Psalms, well described by Mr. Hallam, as holding a middle place between the doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, and the meretricious ornaments of the later versifiers of the Songs of David. He wedded to them music of his own, to which the most obtuse ear cannot listen without emotion. The greatest of the sons of Germany was, in this respect, a true child of that vocal land; for such was his enthusiasm for the art that he assigned to it a place second only to that of theology itself. He was also an ardent lover of painting, and yielded to Albert Durer the homage which he denied to Cajetan and Erasmus. His are amongst the earliest works embellished by the aid of the engraver. With the birds of his native country he had established a strict intimacy, watching, smiling, and thus moralizing over their habits. "That little fellow," he said of a bird going to roost, "has chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking himself to sleep without a care for to-morrow's lodging, calmly holding by his little twig, and

have unanimously determined to wage war through the whole year against the wheat, oats and barley, and the best corn and fruits of every kind. There is reason to fear, that victory will attend them every where, for they are a skilful and crafty race of warriors, equally expert in collecting booty by violence and by surprise. It has afforded me great pleasure to attend their assemblies as an idle looker on. The hope I cherish of the triumphs of their valour over wheat and barley, and every other enemy, renders me the sincere and faithful friend of these patres patriæ, these saviours of the commonwealth. If I could serve them by a wish, I would implore their deliverance from their present ugly name of crows. This is nonsense, but there is some seriousnesss in it. It is a jest which helps me to drive away painful thoughts."

The love of fables, which Luther thus indulged at one of the most eventful eras of his life, was amongst his favourite amusements. Esop lay on the same table with the book of Psalms, and the two translations proceeded alternately. Except the Bible, he declared that he knew no better book; and pronounced it not to be the work of any single author, but the fruit of the labours of the greatest minds in all ages. It supplied him with endless jests and allusions; as for example,-"The dog in charge of the butcher's tray, unable to defend it from the avidity of other curs, said,—Well, then, I may as well have my share of the meat, and fell-to accordingly; which is precisely what the emperor is doing with the property of the church.”

Few really great men, indeed, have hazarded a larger number of jokes in the midst of a circle of note-taking associates. They have left

on record the following amidst many other | not be correctly understood by those who are memorabilia :-"God made the priest. The wholly ignorant of the legendary traditions of devil set about an imitation, but he made the tonsure too large, and produced a monk." A cup composed of five hoops or rings of glass of different colours circulated at his table. Eisleben, an Antinomian, was of the party. | Luther pledged him in the following words:"Within the second of these rings lie the ten commandments; within the next ring the creed; then comes the paternoster; the catechism lies at the bottom." So saying, he drank it off. When Eisleben's turn came, he emptied the cup only down to the beginning of the second ring. "Ah!" said Luther, "I knew that he would stick at the commandments, and therefore would not reach the creed, the Lord's prayer, or the catechism."

his native land. This remark is made and illustrated by M. Henry Heine, with that curious knowledge of such lore as none but a denizen of Germany could acquire. In the mines of Mansfield, at Eisenach and Erfurth, the visible and invisible worlds were aimost equally populous; and the training of youth was not merely a discipline for the future offices of life, but an initiation into mysteries as impressive, though not quite so sublime, as those of Eleusis. The unearthly inhabitants of every land are near akin to the human cultivators of the soil. The killkropff of Saxony differed from a fairy or a hamadryad as a Saxon differs from a Frenchman or a Greek; the thin essences by which these spiritual bodies are sustained being disIt must be confessed, however, that Luther's tilled according to their various national tastes, pleasantries are less remarkable for wit or from the dews of Hymettus, the light wines of delicacy than for the union of strong sense Provence, and the strong beer of Germany. At and honest merriment. They were the care- the fireside around which Luther's family less, though not inconsiderate sport of a free- drew, in his childhood, there gathered a race spoken man, in a circle where religion and of imps who may be considered as the presidmodesty, protected by an inbred reverence, did ing genii of the turnspit and the stable; witches not seek the doubtful defence of conventional expert in the right use of the broomstick, but outworks. But pensive thoughts were the more incapable of perverting it into a locomotive habitual food of his overburdened mind. engine; homely in gait, coarse in feature, Neither social enjoyments, nor the tenderness sordid in their habits, with canine appetites, of domestic life, could ever long repel the and superhuman powers, and, for the most melancholy which brooded over him. It breaks part, eaten up with misanthropy. When, in his out in every part of his correspondence, and twentieth year, Luther for the first time opened tinges all his recorded conversation. "Be- the Bible, and read there of spiritual agents, cause," he says, "my manner is sometimes the inveterate enemies of our race, these spectra gay and joyous, many think that I am always were projected on a mind over which such treading on roses. God knows what is in my legends had already exercised an indestructible heart. There is nothing in this life which influence. Satan and his angels crowded upon gives me pleasure: I am tired of it. May the his imagination, neither as shapeless presences Lord come quickly and take me hence. Let casting their gloomy shadows on the soul, nor him come to his final judgment-I wait the as mysterious impersonations of her foul and blow. Let him hurl his thunders, that I may cruel desires, nor as warriors engaged with be at rest. Forty years more life! I would the powers of light and love, and holiness, in not purchase Paradise at such a price." Yet, the silent motionless war of antagonist enerwith this lassitude of the world, his contempla-gies. Luther's devils were a set of athletic, tions of death were solemn, even to sadness. cross-grained, ill-conditioned wretches, with "How gloriously," said his friend, Dr. Jonas, vile shapes and fiendish faces; who, like the "does St. Paul speak of his own death. I can- monsters of dame Ursula's kitchen, gave buffet not enter into this." "It appears to me," re- for buffet, hate for hate, and joke for joke. His plied Luther, "that when meditating on that Satan was not only something less than archsubject, even St. Paul himself could not have angel ruined, but was quite below the society felt all the energy which possessed him when of that Prince of Darkness, whom mad Tom he wrote. I preach, write, and talk about in Lear declares to be a gentleman. Possessdying, with a greater firmness than I reallying a sensitive rather than a creative imaginapossess, or than others ascribe to me." In tion, Luther transferred the visionary lore, common with all men of this temperament, he was profuse in extolling the opposite disposition. "The birds," he says, "must fly over our heads, but why allow them to roost in our hair?" "Gayety and a light heart, in all virtue and decorum, are the best medicine for the young, or rather for all. I who have passed my life in dejection and gloomy thoughts, nor catch at enjoyment, come from what quarter it may, and even seek for it. Criminal pleasure, indeed, comes from Satan, but that which we find in the society of good and pious men is approved by God. Ride, hunt with your friends, amuse yourself, in their company. Solitude and melancholy are poison. They are deadly to all, but, above all, to the young.

The sombre character of Luther's mind can

drawn from these humble sources, to the machinery of the great epic of revelation, with but little change or embellishment; and thus contrived to reduce to the level of very vulgar prose some of the noblest conceptions of inspired poetry.

At the castle of Wartburg, his Patmos, where he dwelt the willing prisoner of his friendly sovereign, the reformer chanced to have a plate of nuts at his supper-table. How many of them he swallowed, there is, unfortunately, no Boswell to tell; yet, perhaps, not a fewfor, as he slept, the nuts, animated as it would seem by the demon of the pantry, executed a sort of waltz, knocking against each other, and against the slumberer's bedstead; when, lo! the staircase became possessed by a hundred