the open air. He discoursed of a second flood in a series of sermons. And when the day came when he should take for his text, "I will bring a flood of waters upon the whole earth," the vast church was filled with a crowd that had been waiting since the early morning. The next greatest preacher of the time said that a cold shiver ran through him and his hair stood on end as this voice resounded through the church like a peal of thunder, and Savonarola declared that he himself was no less agitated than his hearers.

His prophecies were being fulfilled with literalness. A prince and a pope had died, and now armies were pouring over the Alps to the conquest of Italy. The terrified inhabitants saw the vision of the drawn sword of the wrath of God. But the Friar of St. Mark's had de

clared all these things before. Therefore all Italy rang with his name, and all eyes were turned toward him. The full effect of his preaching cannot be apprehended. Men and women of every age and condition, workmen, poets and philosophers, made the church reêcho with their lamentations. A reporter writes, "At this point

But the imperestimate of such

I was overcome and could not go on." fect report furnishes no basis for the eloquence, nor justifies the effect that it produced upon the Florentine public. It is the old story of personality over again, with its power that vanishes. The chief point of all his utterances is a belief that a great regeneration was near at hand through conflict and chastisement. Yet in the absence of complete records there is abundant testimony as to the effect of his words, and

this is perhaps the truest test of their fitness to the people whom he addressed. In no other way can a just estimate of their real power be made.

He had changed the whole aspect of the city from gay to grave, from evil ways to sober behaviour. Women threw aside their finery, riotous young men became religious, usurers restored ill-gotten gains. All men were amazed at this almost miraculous change. It was the day of Savonarola's triumph, and he might have died content. With a greater victory won than that of the Hermit or of Bernard, because harder to accomplish, he might have rested from his labors. But an evil fate awaited him in prolonged persecutions by the papacy and the civil authorities under the pope's direction. Mock trials, torture, and martyrdom end his days at the age of forty-five.

For eight years he had preached almost uninterruptedly in Florence for the moral and material benefit of those who at last condemned him to a temporary, and then to a perpetual, silence. The time came when they saw his prophecies fulfilled and his wisdom justified. Then they worshiped his garments, cherished his relics, wrote and rewrote his biography, composed services in his honor, and invoked his aid as a prophet and martyr.

It was his mission "to dare to believe amid general doubt, and to uphold against the scandal and scepticism of the time the derided rights of Christianity, of liberty, and reason." It was his to proclaim to his contemporaries that without virtue, self-sacrifice, and moral grandeur both mankind and society must fall to ruin. It is the manner of this proclamation that places him in the

upper rank of the world's great orators, among the exalted few who have known how to stir the hearts and direct the wills of their fellowmen. It has not always been in precisely the same way, as the Greeks and the Italians, two thousand years apart, were not similar people. On the other hand the same principles of our common nature were wrought upon, the same hopes, fears, ambitions; but in a different degree and with larger scope and higher aim as new centuries revealed new and wider fields of truth and achievement.

XVII.

ORATORY OF THE REFORMATION.

HILE Savonarola was preaching repentance and

WHILE

the doom of the Medici at Florence, mediæval philosophy and religion and oratory were drawing to a close. The Reformation was about to usher in the beginning of modern history with the year 1500. Around that year is grouped a company of names which were to be identified with a revolution in ecclesiasticism that should make a new order of the ages and give a new inspiration to human thought and activity. The ancient church had been under the patronage of the state for four centuries; the medieval church had subjected the state to itself; the modern church was to keep pace with the nations in their civil and social development, and to follow the course of maritime discovery with its enlightening and elevating influence. The men who initiate this. movement on the continent are Luther, Zwingli, Melancthon, Calvin; all born between 1483 and 1509.

Contemporary with these continental reformers is a group in England of equal zeal and greater wisdom and greater eloquence, who will be noticed later.

Preeminent in this company of continental leaders is MARTIN LUTHER, who, as early as his sixteenth year, manifested, according to Melancthon, a "keen power of intellect, and was, above all, gifted for eloquence."

The habit of monasticism was still upon the times, and the place of such a man would naturally be in the religious house where his eloquence would be confined to the limited circle of the brethren, or at most in the University of Wittenburg where he lectured on philosophy. It was while there that he became an assistant to the city preacher, and preached with great vigor and earnestness. Especially when Tetzel began the sale of indulgences not far from the city did Luther warn the people against their purchase, in words that had no uncertain significance.

In all the controversy that followed he speaks as a man with irrepressible convictions, freely and fearlessly. He is fertile in words and full of illustration, with a wonderful freshness and vigor of expression, coupled with a dauntless boldness and a rude vehemence that was invincible. His language is pungent, simple, and clear, equally free from exuberance of fancy and dialectic subtlety. He did much in the way of learned treatises in the Latin tongue to forward the Reformation in the literary world; but it was his public preaching that carried it beyond university walls to the popular assembly and among men of all trades and professions, who knew little or nothing of the language employed by scholars. preached several times in a day and his eloquence called out crowds to hear him. It was a rare sight in those times, when all interest in spiritual things had centered in ceremonial. There was no Basil or Gregory, no Augustine or Bernard. The great Florentine prophet was beyond the mountains. Geiler of Kaisersberg had gathered great concourses of people along the Rhine by

He