r peer and equal, without envy of the accidents of
fortune and birth. He was as indifferent to money and luxuries as
Socrates when he walked barefooted among the Athenian aristocracy, or
Basil when he retired to the wilderness; he rarely gave vent to
extravagant grief or joy, seldom laughed, and cared little for
hilarities; he knew no games or sports; he rarely played with children
or gossiped with women; he loved without romance, and suffered
bereavement without outward sorrow. He had no toleration for human
infirmities, and was neither social nor genial; he sought a wife, not so
much for communion of feeling as to ease him of his burdens,--not to
share his confidence, but to take care of his house. Nor was he fond,
like Luther, of music and poetry. He had no taste for the fine arts; he
never had a poet or an artist for his friend or companion. He could not
look out of his window without seeing the glaciers of the Alps, but
seemed to be unmoved by their unspeakable grandeur; he did not revel in
the glories of nature or art, but gave his mind to abstract ideas and
stern practical duties. He was sparing of language, simple, direct, and
precise, using neither sarcasm, nor ridicule, nor exaggeration. He was
far from being eloquent according to popular notions of oratory, and
despised the jingle of words and phrases and tricks of rhetoric; he
appealed to reason rather than the passions, to the conscience rather
than the imagination.

Though mild, Calvin was also intolerant. Castillo, once his friend,
assailed his doctrine of Decrees, and was obliged to quit Geneva, and
was so persecuted that he died of actual starvation; Perrin,
captain-general of the republic, danced at a wedding, and was thrown
into prison; Bolsec, an eminent physician, opposed the doctrine of
Predestination, and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; Gruet spoke
lightly of the ordinances of religion, and was beheaded; Servetus was a
moral and learned and honest man, but could not escape the flames. Had
he been willing to say, as the flames consumed his body, "Jesus, thou
eternal Son of God, have mercy on me!" instead of, "Jesus, thou son of
the eternal God!" he might have been spared. Calvin was as severe on
those who refused to accept his logical deductions from acknowledged
truths as he was on those who denied the fundamental truths themselves.
But toleration was rare in his age, and he was not beyond it. He was not
even beyond the ideas of the Middl