ns of such bodily temperament, he was enabled with so
little merit of his own, to keep up an exterior severity of demeanour
closely resembling a holy asceticism,--led him at last to confound the
abuse of religion with religion itself; and, under the further
influence of his insatiable thirst for notoriety, to broach
schismatical views, and then a plan of ecclesiastical as well as
political reform for the world, of which, he persuaded himself, he was
marked out to be the apostle.

That reform, as we have seen, was simply the return of society,
politically, under the republican institutions of pagan Rome; and,
spiritually under the religious government of the apostolic ages. A
fanatic of this description, endowed in an extraordinary manner with
eloquence to announce his views, and with boldness and energy to
pursue the career of carrying them out,--as was Arnold of Brescia's
case,--may well be imagined to have seduced the multitude, at all
times giddy,--but in his day oppressed and shocked by many gross
abuses,--in the way he did; and so to have elicited the stern
hostility of the constituted authorities in church and state, who,
naturally perceiving in the progress of such a man only "confusion
worse confounded," and ruin to the temporal and eternal interests of
society, were in duty bound to eradicate the evil before it was too
late, and, in doing so, not to shun harsh means where gentle ones
failed; but, if words proved fruitless, to use the sword. The
obstinacy, the infatuated obstinacy of Arnold of Brescia in the face
of so many warnings, as from time to time were given to him, plainly
proved that he was incorrigible; and that, therefore, as it was no
more possible for society to prosper, as it should do, while he
continued to infect it with his wild theories, than for the bodily
health to nourish while eaten into by a cancer, to extirpate him, like
it, was the only course left,--a course which thus became morally as
much a duty in his case, as it would physically become so in that.

IV.

In the mean time, much had still to be negotiated between Frederic and
Adrian, before the latter felt satisfied to confer on the former the
imperial crown. Adrian was too well acquainted with the character of
Barbarossa, not to feel it a paramount duty to require every
guarantee, before adding to the power and greatness of a man who, like
him, thirsted for universal sway, under which not only the State, but
the Church also s