358 



ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATCil^!. 



the space of four years, extended itself from Hfungary and Bohemia to 

 France and Great Britain. That, in the infancy of its progress, various 

 enormities were perpetrated, and that even the conduct of its mighty 

 leader was, in this respect, not at all times irreproachable, must be equally 

 admitted and lamented ; but they were enormities merely incidental to the 

 inexperienced season of infancy, and which disappeared as the cause 

 ripened into mature age ; while, whatever may have been the occasional 

 violence of Martin Luther, all parties must unite in admiring and vene- 

 rating the man who, undaunted and alone, could stand before such an 

 assembly, and vindicate with unshaken courage, what he conceived to be 

 the cause of religion, of liberty, and of truth ; fearless of any reproaches 

 but those of his own conscience, or of any disapprobation but that of his 

 God."* 



Such is a brief glance at the wonderful periods that anticipated and have 

 introduced our own unrivalled era. Long and doubtful was the conflict 

 between intellectual life and death ; ghmmering slowly succeeding to 

 ghmmering ; light still struggling with suffocating darkness, not for weeks, 

 or months, or years, but for centuries upon centuries, before the day-spring 

 became manifest. Yet, no sooner had the long-delayed and long-wished- 

 for fulness of the times at length arrived, than the marble tomb of igno- 

 rance and error gave way, as it were, of a sudden ; a thousand glorious 

 events and magnificent discoveries thronged upon each other with pressing 

 haste, to behold and congratulate the mighty birth, the new creation of 

 which they were the harbingers ; when, with a steady and triumphant step, 

 the peerless form of human intellect rose erect ; and throwing off from its 

 freshening limbs the death-shade and the grave-clothes by which it was 

 enshrouded, ascended to the glorious resurrection of that noontide lustre 

 which irradiates the horizon of our own day, rejoicing like a giant to run 

 bis race. 



* Roficoe's Life of Leo X. vol. iy. p. 36. 



