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 his somewhat baffling personality, we might compare him to a Macaulay of finer edge, to a Dean Stanley of more vigorous build.  He was less commonplace than the one, more substantial than the other.  But we must be cautious in offering any interpretation of his real opinions.  It was not for nothing that he dedicated himself to the monastic life in boyhood, and persevered in it to the end of his long career.  The discipline of the convent renders every friar inscrutable; and Sarpi himself assured his friends that he, like all Italians of his day, was bound to wear a mask.[130]

[Footnote 129:  It was under the supervision of the Servites that Sarpi gained the first rudiments of education.  Thirst for knowledge may explain his early entrance into their brotherhood.  Like Virgil and like Milton, he received among the companions of his youthful studies the honorable nickname of ‘The Maiden.’  Gross conversation, such as lads use, even in convents, ceased at his approach.  And yet he does not seem to have lost influence among his comrades by the purity which marked him out as exceptional.]

[Footnote 130:  Lettere, vol. i. p. 237.]

Be this as it may, Sarpi was not the man to work his way by monkish intrigue or courtly service into high place either in his Order or the Church.  Long before he unsheathed the sword in defense of Venetian liberties, he had become an object of suspicion to Rome and his superiors.  Some frank words which escaped him in correspondence, regarding the corruption of the Papal Curia, closed every avenue to office.  Men of less mark obtained the purple.  The meanest and poorest bishoprics were refused to Sarpi.  He was thrice denounced, on frivolous charges, to the Inquisition; but on each occasion the indictment was dismissed without a hearing.  The General of the Servites accused him of wearing cap and slippers