he Fifth.

Well, of the seven electors six were bribed. John Frederick of Saxony,
Luther's friend and protector, was the only one of the party who came
out of the business with clean hands.

But the Archbishop of Mayence took bribes six times alternately from
both the candidates. He took money as coolly as the most rascally
ten-pound householder in Yarmouth or Totnes, and finally drove a hard
bargain for his actual vote.

The grape does not grow upon the blackthorn; nor does healthy reform
come from high dignitaries like the Archbishop of Mayence.

The other aspect of the problem I shall consider in the following
Lectures.

LECTURE II.

In the year 1467--the year in which Charles the Bold became Duke of
Burgundy--four years before the great battle of Barnet, which
established our own fourth Edward on the English throne--about the time
when William Caxton was setting up his printing press at
Westminster--there was born at Rotterdam, on the 28th of October,
Desiderius Erasmus. His parents, who were middle-class people, were
well-to-do in the world. For some reason or other they were prevented
from marrying by the interference of relations. The father died soon
after in a cloister; the mother was left with her illegitimate infant,
whom she called first, after his father, Gerard; but afterwards, from
his beauty and grace, she changed his name--the words Desiderius
Erasmus, one with a Latin, the other with a Greek, derivation, meaning
the lovely or delightful one.

Not long after, the mother herself died also. The little Erasmus was the
heir of a moderate fortune; and his guardians, desiring to appropriate
it to themselves, endeavoured to force him into a convent at Brabant.

The thought of living and dying in a house of religion was dreadfully
unattractive; but an orphan boy's resistance was easily overcome. He was
bullied into yielding, and, when about twenty, took the vows.

The life of a monk, which was uninviting on the surface, was not more
lovely when seen from within.

'A monk's holy obedience,' Erasmus wrote afterwards, 'consists in--what?
In leading an honest, chaste, and sober life? Not the least. In
acquiring learning, in study, and industry? Still less. A monk may be a
glutton, a drunkard, a whoremonger, an ignorant, stupid, malignant,
envious brute, but he has broken no vow, he is within his holy
obedience. He has only to be the slave of a superior as good for nothing
as himself, and he is an exc