he Nave
d'Oro. Here, after days spent in religious exercises, sacerdotal
duties, and prolonged studies, he relaxed his mind in converse with the
miscellaneous crowd of eminent persons who visited Venice for business
or pleasure. A certain subacid humor, combining irony without
bitterness, and proverbial pungency without sententiousness, added
piquancy to his discourse. We have, unfortunately, no record of the
wit-encounters which may have taken place under Morosini's or Secchini's
roof between this friar, so punctual in his religious observances, so
scrupulously pure in conduct, so cold in temperament, so acute in
intellect, so modest in self-esteem, so cautious, so impermeable, and
his contemporary, Bruno, the unfrocked friar of genius more daring but
less sure, who was mentally in all points, saving their common love of
truth and freedom, the opposite to Sarpi.

Sarpi entered the Order of the Servi, or Servants of the Blessed Virgin,
at the age of fourteen, renewed his vows at twenty, and was ordained
priest at twenty-two.[129] His great worth brought him early into
notice, and he filled posts of considerable importance in his Order.
Several years of his manhood were spent in Rome, transacting the
business and conducting the legal causes of the Fathers. At Mantua he
gained the esteem of Guglielmo Gonzaga. At Milan he was admitted to
familiar intimacy with the sainted Carlo Borromeo, who consulted him
upon matters of reform in the diocese, and insisted on his hearing
confessions. This duty was not agreeable to Sarpi; and though he
habitually in after life said Mass and preached, he abstained from those
functions of the priesthood which would have brought him into close
relation with individuals. The bent of his mind rendered him averse to
all forms of superstition and sacerdotal encroachments upon the freedom
of the conscience. As he fought the battle of political independence
against ecclesiastical aggression, so he maintained the prerogatives of
personal liberty. The arts whereby Jesuits gained hold on families and
individuals, inspired in him no less disgust than the illegal despotism
of the Papacy. This blending of sincere piety and moral rectitude with a
passion for secular freedom and a hatred of priestly craft, has
something in it closely akin to the English temperament. Sarpi was a
sound Catholic Christian in religion, and in politics what we should
call a staunch Whig. So far as it is now possible to penetrate