ratified the choice.

Through Rappersweil, where he preached his first sermon; through Wildhaus, where he read his first mass, he passed on towards the close of the year, to his new home. Glarus, the chief town of the canton, was inhabited by an active, intelligent population, full of energy and independence. The new teacher, who does not intend to act the part of an unprincipled hireling, must count on finding watchful enemies as well as friends. There is only one means, by which to maintain an erect position, under such circumstances, in a firm adherence to duty and principle, and that is an unfailing support,--trust in a higher power, which never deserts an honest endeavor. With this resolve, under this shield, Zwingli began the practice of his calling, not at all anxious about the judgments of men, nor troubled at the remarks of the multitude. In him ruled the ardent spirit of vigorous youth, averse to every thing that smacked of devotional hypocrisy, full of life and mirth, sometimes verging even on wantonness, and yet so earnest, where the affairs of science, so profound, where those of faith, and so conscientious, where those of the congregation entrusted to his care, were concerned, or those of his country, in whose welfare and honor his heart was bound up. If on this account he was called a friend of sport; if Glareanus wrote to him gaily in monk's Latin: "I am coming to you shortly, and then we will be of good cheer and play on the jews' harp;" and if Dingnauer, who promised him, that neither envy, nor jealousy, nor the moroseness of old age, nor gold, nor iron should cripple his friendship, believed that he must add the warning: "Watch over your heart, conceal your glowing wishes, lest joy be turned into bitter vexation;" we yet read, on the other hand, what he himself wrote to Vadianus at Vienna: "I am now resolved to devote myself to the Greek language and to be drawn away from it no more. This is not done out of vanity, for how little does pretension become me! but from the necessity of a thorough understanding of the Holy Scriptures." We find also that he wrote off the original Greek text of the Epistles of Paul in the form of a small book, in order to have it continually with him, and added in the margin the observations of the most approved commentators. In the year 1522, we hear him thus speak of the manner, in which he tried at that time to penetrate into the spirit of these records: "In my youth I made as much advance in human learning as any one of my age, and when, six or seven years ago, I devoted my whole strength to the study of the Holy Scriptures, the philosophy and theology of the controversialists threw continual difficulties in my way. At last I came to this conclusion. I thought: Thou must lay aside all these and get the meaning of God fresh from his own, simple word. Then I began to implore God for his light, and the Scripture became much clearer to me, although I read it merely, as I would have read many commentaries and interpreters." The letters written by him and to him at this time show us plainly, that those who were committed to his training, especially young men of promise, crowded around him, full of love and reverence, and that he never was weary of giving them counsel, support and recommendation in foreign countries, of watching over their progress and morals, whilst there, and of rejoicing in every evidence of talent and noble purpose and helping to turn them to practical account. Glareanus thanked him for permission to continue his studies abroad, though obliged to give up a benefice in Mollis, where, "like a goat-herd," he had to receive a new election every year. The same friend wrote to him on another occasion: "You are always helping those, who deserve it." Argobast Strub of Vienna was about to dedicate a commendatory poem to him, when death surprised the ingenious youth and the sorrowful Vadianus sent his literary remains to his former teacher as a pledge of love from the departed one. Peter Tschudi wrote to him from Paris, "You are like a tutelar god to us;" and his brother Aegidius in Basel begged him, "Help, that I may be called back to you again, for with no one have I wished rather to live than with you." Valentine Tschudi, the cousin of the two first named, was yet more strongly attached to their beloved master. "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 the year 1516, the same, in which he had already received a call to Einsiedeln. He must first stand firm on his own feet, before he can begin the attack. Hitherto, the Holy Scriptures had been his daily and nightly study, and he knew the greater part of them literally by heart. Before this, he had made his debut as a political reformer, but of his doings in this sphere, we will only be able to judge rightly, when we have taken a view of the relations of the confederates to their neighbors in Upper Italy.

Long before the original articles of the confederacy, the alliance of the three Forest Cantons of Dec. 9, 1315, were concluded, the highways over Mt. Gotthard had become the channels of an active commerce between Germany and Italy. When they were opened for this purpose cannot be clearly shown, but they were certainly so used in the twelfth century. The inhabitants of Uri, and partly also those of Schwytz and Unterwalden supplied the Italian markets with their cattle, and the mountain-valley of Urseren flourished particularly by means of this trade. But they had dangerous neighbors in the turbulent Lavinians on the south side of Gotthard. Here the Swiss and Italians met each other in hostile attitude at an early period; for the first time, as far as we know, in the year 1331. The