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, Io, Io! danger. A rarer prodigality of nature com-I was resolved to show that, old and feeble as bined with these endowments an inflexible I am, I am not going to sound a retreat. I reliance on the conclusions of his own under-trust I shall do still more to spoil their merristanding, and on the energy of his own will. ment." 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 sove reignty 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 before Luther's irrevocable vows were pledged, Jerome received from his great rival an intimation that he still possessed the heart, and, with common activity, might even vet secure

the hand of Catherine. But honest Jerome was the devils. Yet, dear little fellow, he troubles. not a man to be hurried. He silently resigned himself not a whit for all these powerful enehis pretensions to his illustrious competitor, mies, he gayly sucks the breast, looks round who, even in the moment of success, had the him with a loud laugh, and lets them storm as discernment to perceive, and the frankness to they like." There were darker seasons, when avow, that his love was not of a flaming or even theology and polemics gave way to the ungovernable nature. more powerful voice of nature; nor, indeed, has the deepest wisdom any thing to add to his lamentation over the bier of his daughter Magdalene. "Such is the power of natural affection, that I cannot endure this without tears and groans, or rather an utter deadness of heart. At the bottom of my soul are engraved her looks, her words, her gestures, as I gazed at her in lifetime and on her death-bed. My dutiful, my gentle daughter! Even the death of Christ (and what are all deaths compared to his?) cannot tear me from this thought as it should. She was playful, lovely, and full of love!"

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 luxuries 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 manuer 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 his native land. This remark is made and tonsure too large, and produced a monk." A illustrated by M. Henry Heine, with that curious cup composed of five hoops or rings of glass knowledge of such lore as none but a denizen of different colours circulated at his table. of Germany could acquire. In the mines of Eisleben, an Antinomian, was of the party. Mansfield, at Eisenach and Erfurth, the visible Luther pledged him in the following words :- and invisible worlds were aimost equally pop"Within the second of these rings lie the ten ulous; and the training of youth was not merely commandments; within the next ring the creed; a discipline for the future offices of life, but an then comes the paternoster; the catechism lies initiation into mysteries as impressive, though at the bottom." So saying, he drank it off. not quite so sublime, as those of Eleusis. The When Eisleben's turn came, he emptied the unearthly inhabitants of every land are near cup only down to the beginning of the second akin to the human cultivators of the soil. The ring. "Ah!" said Luther, "I knew that he killkropff of Saxony differed from a fairy or a would stick at the commandments, and there- hamadryad as a Saxon differs from a Frenchfore would not reach the creed, the Lord's man or a Greek; the thin essences by which prayer, or the catechism." 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 really ing 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 drawn from these humble sources, to the was profuse in extolling the opposite disposi- machinery of the great epic of revelation, with tion. "The birds," he says, "must fly over but little change or embellishment; and thus our heads, but why allow them to roost in our contrived to reduce to the level of very vulgar hair?" 66 Gayety and a light heart, in all vir- prose some of the noblest conceptions of intue and decorum, are the best medicine for the spired poetry. 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

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

barrels rolling up and down, under the guid-sition, and to suppose it a mere pleasantry. ance, probably, of the imp of the spigot. Yet So constantly was he haunted with this midall approach to Luther's room was barred by night crew of devils, as to have raised a sechains and by an iron door-vain intrench-rious doubt of his sanity, which even Mr. Halments against Satan! He arose, solemnly lam does not entirely discountenance. Yet the defied the fiend, repeated the eighth Psalm, hypothesis is surely gratuitons. Intense study and resigned himself to sleep. Another visit deranging the digestive organs of a man, from the same fearful adversary at Nurem- whose bodily constitution required vigorous burg led to the opposite result. The reformer exercise, and whose mind had been early stored flew from his bed to seek refuge in society. with such dreams as we have mentioned, suffiOnce upon a time, Carlostadt, the sacrament- ciently explains the restless importunity of the arian, being in the pulpit, saw a tall man enter goblins amongst whom he lived. It is easier the church, and take his seat by one of the for a man to be in advance of his age on any burgesses of the town. The intruder then other subject than this. It may be doubted retired, betook himself to the preacher's house, whether the nerves of Seneca or Pliny would and exhibited frightful symptoms of a disposi- have been equal to a solitary evening walk by tion to break all the bones of his child. Think- the Lake Avernus. What wonder, then, if ing better of it, however, he left with the boy a Martin Luther was convinced that suicides message for Carlostadt, that he might be looked fall not by their own hands, but by those of for again in three days. It is needless to add diabolical emissaries, who really adjust the that, on the third day, there was an end of the cord or point the knife-that particular spots, poor preacher, and of his attacks on Luther as, for example, the pool near the summit of and consubstantiation. In the cloisters at the Mons Pilatus, were desecrated to SatanWittemburg, Luther himself heard that pecu- that the wailings of his victims are to be heard liar noise which attests the devil's presence. in the howlings of the night wind-or that the It came from behind a stove, resembling, for throwing a stone into a pond in his own neighall the world, the sound of throwing a fagot on bourhood, immediately provoked such strugthe fire. This sound, however, is not invaria-gles of the evil spirit imprisoned below the ble. An old priest, in the attitude of prayer, water, as shook the neighbouring country like heard Satan behind him, grunting like a whole an earthquake? herd of swine. 66 Ah! ha! master devil," said the priest, "you have your deserts. There was a time when you were a beautiful angel, and there you are turned into a rascally hog." The priest's devotions proceeded without further disturbance; "for," observed Luther, "there is nothing the devil can bear so little as contempt." He once saw and even touched a killkropff or supposititious child. This was at Dessau. The deviling,-for it had no other parent than Satan himself,-was about twelve years old, and looked exactly like any other boy. But the unlucky brat could do nothing but eat. He consumed as much food as four ploughmen. When things went ill in the house, his laugh was to be heard all over it. If matters went smoothly, there was no peace for his screaming. Luther sportively asserts that he recommended the elector to have this scapegrace thrown into the Moldau, as it was a mere lump of flesh without a soul. His visions sometimes assumed a deeper significance, if not a loftier aspect. In the year 1496, a frightful monster was discovered in the Tiber. It had the head of an ass, an emblem of the pope; for the church being a spiritual body incapable of a head, the pope, who had audaciously assumed that character, was fitly represented under this asinine figure. The right hand resembled an elephant's foot, typifying the papal tyranny over the weak and timid. The right foot was like an ox's hoof shadowing forth the spiritual oppression exercised by doctors, confessors, nuns, monks, and scholastic theologians; while the left foot armed with griffin's claws, could mean nothing else than the various ministers of the pope's civil authority. How far Luther believed in the existence of the monster, whose mysterious significations he thus interprets, it would not be easy to decide. Yet it is difficult to read his expo

The mental phantasmagoria of so illustrious a man are an exhibition to which no one who reveres his name would needlessly direct an unfriendly, or an idle gaze. But the infirmi ties of our nature often afford the best measure of its strength. To estimate the strength by which temptation is overcome, you must ascertain the force of the propensities to which it is addressed. Amongst the elements of Luther's character was an awe verging towards idolatry, for all things, whether in the works of God or in the institutions of man, which can be regarded as depositories of the Divine power, or as delegates of the Divine authority. From pantheism, the disease of imaginations at once devout and unhallowed, he was preserved in youth by his respect for the doctrines of the church; and, in later life, by his absolute surrender of his own judgment to the text of the sacred canon. But as far as a pantheistic habit of thought and feeling can consist with the most unqualified belief in the uncommunicable unity of the Divine nature, such thoughts and feelings were habitual to him. The same spirit which solemnly acknowledged the existence, whilst it abhorred the use, of the high faculties, which, according to the popular faith, the foul fiends of earth, and air, and water, at once enjoy and pervert, contemplated with almost prostrate reverence the majesty and the hereditary glories of Rome; and the apostolical succession of her pontiff, with kings and emperors of his tributaries, the Catholic hierarchy as his vicegerents, and the human mind his universal empire. To brave the vengeance of such a dynasty, wielding the mysterious keys which close the gates of hell and open the portals of heaven, long appeared to Luther an impious audacity, of which nothing less than wo, eternal and unutterable, would be the sure and appropriate penalty