The Septuagint (Fac-simile) 3124
Luiz Vaz de Camoens (Portrait) 3130
"Hohenlinden" (Photogravure) 3178
"Homer" (Photogravure) 3209
Thomas Carlyle (Portrait) 3232
"Charlotte Corday in Prison" (Photogravure) 3290
Benvenuto Cellini (Portrait) 3374
Cervantes (Portrait) 3464

VIGNETTE PORTRAITS

Thomas Campbell
George Canning
Emilia Flygare-Carlen
Bliss Carman
Bartolorneo de las Casas
Baldassare Castiglione
Jacob Cats
Valerius Catullus

JOHN CALVIN

(1509-1564)

BY ARTHUR CUSHMAN McGIFFERT

John Calvin was born in the village of Noyon, in northeastern France,
on the 10th of July, 1509. He was intended by his parents for the
priesthood, for which he seemed to be peculiarly fitted by his
naturally austere disposition, averse to every form of sport or
frivolity, and he was given an excellent education with that calling
in view; but finally at the command of his father--whose plans for his
son had undergone a change--he gave up his theological preparation and
devoted himself to the study of law. Gifted with an extraordinary
memory, rare insight, and an uncommonly keen reasoning faculty, he
speedily distinguished himself in his new field, and a brilliant
career was predicted for him by his teachers. His tastes however were
more literary than legal, and his first published work, written at the
age of twenty-three, was a commentary on Seneca's 'De Clementia,'
which brought him wide repute as a classical scholar and as a clear
and forceful writer.

Though he had apparently renounced forever all thoughts of a clerical
life, he retained, even while he was engaged in the study of law and
in the more congenial pursuit of literature, his early love for
theology; and in 1532, under the influence of some of Luther's
writings which happened to fall into his hands, he was converted to
the Protestant faith and threw in his fortunes with the little
evangelical party in Paris. His intellectual attainments made him a
marked man wherever he went, and he speedily became the leading spirit
in the circle to which he had attached himself. Compelled soon
afterward by the persecuting measures of King Franci