of friendship.  He was remarkable for every faculty of the mind except wit and imagination.  His memory was almost incredible; he remembered everything he ever read or heard; he would, after long intervals, recognize persons whom he had never seen but once or twice.  When employed in dictation, he would resume the thread of his discourse without being prompted, after the most vexatious interruptions.  His judgment was as sound as his memory was retentive; it was almost infallible,—­no one was ever known to have been misled by it.  He had a remarkable analytical power, and also the power of generalization.  He was a very learned man, and his Commentaries are among the most useful and valued of his writings, showing both learning and judgment; his exegetical works have scarcely been improved.  He had no sceptical or rationalistic tendencies, and therefore his Commentaries may not be admired by men of “advanced thought,” but his annotations will live when those of Ewald shall be forgotten; they still hold their place in the libraries of biblical critics.  For his age he was a transcendent critic; his various writings fill five folio volumes.  He was not so voluminous a writer as Thomas Aquinas, but less diffuse; his style is lucid, like that of Voltaire.

Considering the weakness of his body Calvin’s labors were prodigious.  There was never a more industrious man, finding time for everything,—­for an amazing correspondence, for pastoral labors, for treatises and essays, for commentaries and official duties.  No man ever accomplished more in the same space of time.  He preached daily every alternate week; he attended meetings of the Consistory and of the Court of Morals; he interested himself in the great affairs of his age; he wrote letters to all parts of Christendom.

Reigning as a religious dictator, and with more influence than any man of his age, next to Luther, Calvin was content to remain poor, and was disdainful of money and all praises and rewards.  This was not an affectation, not the desire to imitate the great saints of Christian antiquity to whom poverty was a cardinal virtue; but real indifference, looking upon money as impedimenta, as camp equipage is to successful generals.  He was not conscious of being poor with his small salary of fifty dollars a year, feeling that he had inexhaustible riches within him; and hence he calmly and naturally took his seat among the great men of the world as their peer and equal, without envy of the accidents of fortune and birth.  He was as indifferent to money and luxuries as Socrates when he walked barefooted among the Athenian aristocracy, or Basil when he retired to the wilderness; he rarely gave vent to extravagant grief or joy, seldom laughed, and cared little for hilarities; he knew no games or sports; he rarely played with children or gossiped with women; he loved without romance, and suffered bereavement without outward sorrow.  He had no toleration for human infirmities, and was neither