e.

Erasmus was at this time forty years old--the age when ambition becomes
powerful in men, and takes the place of love of pleasure. He was
received at Rome with princely distinction, and he could have asked for
nothing--bishoprics, red hats, or red stockings--which would not have
been freely given to him if he would have consented to remain.

But he was too considerable a man to be tempted by finery; and the
Pope's livery, gorgeous though it might be, was but a livery after all.
Nothing which Leo the Tenth could do for Erasmus could add lustre to his
coronet. More money he might have had, but of money he had already
abundance, and outward dignity would have been dearly bought by gilded
chains. He resisted temptation; he preferred the northern air, where he
could breathe at liberty, and he returned to England, half inclined to
make his home there.

But his own sovereign laid claim to his services; the future emperor
recalled him to the Low Countries, settled a handsome salary upon him,
and established him at the University of Louvaine.

He was now in the zenith of his greatness. He had an income as large as
many an English nobleman. We find him corresponding with popes,
cardinals, kings, and statesmen; and as he grew older, his mind became
more fixed upon serious subjects. The ignorance and brutality of the
monks, the corruption of the spiritual courts, the absolute irreligion
in which the Church was steeped, gave him serious alarm. He had no
enthusiasms, no doctrinal fanaticisms, no sectarian beliefs or
superstitions. The breadth of his culture, his clear understanding, and
the worldly moderation of his temper, seemed to qualify him above living
men to conduct a temperate reform. He saw that the system around him was
pregnant with danger, and he resolved to devote what remained to him of
life to the introduction of a higher tone in the minds of the clergy.

The revival of learning had by this time alarmed the religious orders.
Literature and education, beyond the code of the theological text-books,
appeared simply devilish to them. When Erasmus returned to Louvaine, the
battle was raging over the north of Europe.

The Dominicans at once recognised in Erasmus their most dangerous enemy.
At first they tried to compel him to re-enter the order, but, strong in
the Pope's dispensation, he was so far able to defy them. They could
bark at his heels, but dared not come to closer quarters: and with his
temper slightly ru