perly, so as not to be misled,--on the one hand by a
false admiration, and on the other by a false disgust,--the youth
Arnold devoured the pages of Livy; and imbibed from him, as well as
from other Roman classics, those principles of heathen republicanism,
which he subsequently sought to restore to practice, in the metropolis
of Christendom, with such fatal results to society and himself.

On the completion of his studies at home, he repaired, thirsting for
deeper draughts of knowledge, to Paris; and became one of the most
devoted scholars of Abailard; whose rationalist invasions of the
domain of theological doctrine,--by which the supreme authority of the
Church in matters of faith was threatened,--accorded with Arnold's
tone of mind. In fact, he soon arrived, by the line of argument which
the lessons of his master and his own feelings led him to adopt, at
the firm persuasion that he alone had hit upon the true plan for
reforming, not only the political, but the religious abuses of the
age; and, moreover, that none but he could carry that plan out. Under
this hallucination, which the fumes of pagan principles of
statesmanship and rationalist principles of Christianity, fermenting
together, had hatched in his brain, he returned, after a few years'
stay at Paris, to Brescia; not failing to visit, at his passage of the
Alps, the Waldenses, and other sects, with whose tenets he secretly
sympathized.

On his arrival at Brescia, he opened his career by a series of pulpit
philippics against the temporal government of the Prince Bishop, and
the immoral lives of the clergy. With fiery eloquence, that told all
the more by reason of the sanctity of the preacher's exterior--a
precaution which he took so well that even St. Bernard admitted its
success--Arnold opposed the doctrines and practice of Holy Writ to the
vices and luxuries which he denounced; affirming that the corruption
of the Church was caused by her having overstepped the boundaries of
her domain. That she had done so, was proved, he said, by the wealth
and political power which she had acquired, contrary to the spirit and
example of apostolic times; to whose simplicity she must return if she
was to be reformed as she ought to be, and as, for the good of
society, it was indispensable she should be. Of course, this line of
argument received all that applause which it never fails to do
whenever urged. For the reformation of the Church, by reducing her to
the poverty of