eir hours between the chapel, the
pothouse, and the brothel.

I do not think that, in its main features, the truth of this sketch can
be impugned; and if it be just even in outline, then a reformation of
some kind or other was overwhelmingly necessary. Corruption beyond a
certain point becomes unendurable to the coarsest nostril. The
constitution of human things cannot away with it.

Something was to be done; but what, or how? There were three possible
courses.

Either the ancient discipline of the Church might be restored by the
heads of the Church themselves.

Or, secondly, a higher tone of feeling might gradually be introduced
among clergy and laity alike, by education and literary culture. The
discovery of the printing press had made possible a diffusion of
knowledge which had been unattainable in earlier ages. The
ecclesiastical constitution, like a sick human body, might recover its
tone if a better diet were prepared for it.

Or, lastly, the common sense of the laity might take the matter at once
into their own hands, and make free use of the pruning knife and the
sweeping brush. There might be much partial injustice, much violence,
much wrongheadedness; but the people would, at any rate, go direct to
the point, and the question was whether any other remedy would serve.

The first of these alternatives may at once be dismissed. The heads of
the Church were the last persons in the world to discover that anything
was wrong. People of that sort always are. For them the thing as it
existed answered excellently well. They had boundless wealth, and all
but boundless power. What could they ask for more? No monk drowsing over
his wine-pot was less disturbed by anxiety than nine out of ten of the
high dignitaries who were living on the eve of the Judgment Day, and
believed that their seat was established for them for ever.

The character of the great ecclesiastics of that day you may infer from
a single example. The Archbishop of Mayence was one of the most
enlightened Churchmen in Germany. He was a patron of the Renaissance, a
friend of Erasmus, a liberal, an intelligent, and, as times went, and
considering his trade, an honourable, high-minded man.

When the Emperor Maximilian died, and the imperial throne was vacant,
the Archbishop of Mayence was one of seven electors who had to choose a
new emperor.

There were two competitors--Francis the First and Maximilian's grandson,
afterwards the well-known Charles t