ter. "Never will I cease," he
expresses himself, "to be thankful for your kindnesses, especially when
a quartan fever troubled me of late, after my return from abroad and
because, on another occasion, when I had left my books behind in Basel,
you, although I would not out of modesty venture to be troublesome,
called me to you, encouraged me, and offered me your books, your
assistance and your influence. And thus your good will toward all
students was extended to me also and that not in a general way, for,
with special regard to my wants, your extensive and varied stores of
knowledge lay at my service." This Valentine Tschudi and Ludwig Rosch,
"a yet unbearded youth of the best kind," Zwingli had formerly
recommended to Vadianus in Vienna for the study of polite literature.
He did a similar favor for his brother Jacob, who "was possessed of
extraordinary gifts," and he charged his friend "to clip, to plane and
to polish the country youth as long as it was necessary, and should he
ever kick at it," he concluded, "you may throw him into prison, until
the fit is over."

Thus did this spirited man endeavor to stir up all around him to
improvement, and exerted the same influence over the older generation
as he did over the young. With the venerable Aebli, who on the first
march to Cappel prevented the shedding of fraternal blood, he formed a
close friendship. Of his own accord he traveled to Basel to become
personally acquainted with the celebrated Erasmus and gained his
undivided esteem, for, at a later period, he wrote to him, "Hail to the
Swiss people, whose character particularly pleases me, whose studies
and morals you and those like you will improve!" And the judge, Falk
of Freiburg, who was, it is true, a violent partisan of that period,
but at the same time a patron of science, offered him, in case he
desired to prosecute his studies for a season in quiet, a beautiful
country-seat, which he possessed in the neighborhood of Pavia, with the
gratuitous enjoyment of its revenues for two years. Nevertheless, it is
possible that he was actuated by the concealed design of winning over a
powerful champion to his own purposes.

With all the activity of his spirit, Zwingli appears, during his
stay in Glarus, to have kept within the limits of the established
church-doctrine in his public discourses. In the exposition of his
closing speech he himself places the first beginning of his attempt at
the reformation of the church in