was he forbidden to turn his face away from it in its affliction.  He knew that thousands of human souls, nigh to perishing, were daily turning towards him as their only hope on earth, and he was resolved, so long as he could dispense a single ray of light, that his countenance should never be averted.  It is difficult to contemplate his character, at this period, without being infected with a perhaps dangerous enthusiasm.  It is not an easy task coldly to analyse a nature which contained so much of the self-sacrificing and the heroic, as well as of the adroit and the subtle; and it is almost impossible to give utterance to the emotions which naturally swell the heart at the contemplation of so much active virtue, without rendering oneself liable to the charge of excessive admiration.  Through the mists of adversity, a human form may dilate into proportions which are colossal and deceptive.  Our judgment may thus, perhaps, be led captive, but at any rate the sentiment excited is more healthful than that inspired by the mere shedder of blood, by the merely selfish conqueror.  When the cause of the champion is that of human right against tyranny, of political ind religious freedom against an all-engrossing and absolute bigotry, it is still more difficult to restrain veneration within legitimate bounds.  To liberate the souls and bodies of millions, to maintain for a generous people, who had well-nigh lost their all, those free institutions which their ancestors had bequeathed, was a noble task for any man.  But here stood a Prince of ancient race, vast possessions, imperial blood, one of the great ones of the earth, whose pathway along the beaten track would have been smooth and successful, but who was ready to pour out his wealth like water, and to coin his heart’s blood, drop by drop, in this virtuous but almost desperate cause.  He felt that of a man to whom so much had been entrusted, much was to be asked.  God had endowed him with an incisive and comprehensive genius, unfaltering fortitude, and with the rank and fortune which enable a man to employ his faculties, to the injury or the happiness of his fellows, on the widest scale.  The Prince felt the responsibility, and the world was to learn the result.

It was about this time that a deep change came over his mind.  Hitherto, although nominally attached to the communion of the ancient Church, his course of life and habits of mind had not led him to deal very earnestly with things beyond the world.  The severe duties, the grave character of the cause to which his days were henceforth to be devoted, had already led him to a closer inspection of the essential attributes of Christianity.  He was now enrolled for life as a soldier of the Reformation.  The Reformation was henceforth his fatherland, the sphere, of his duty and his affection.  The religious Reformers became his brethren, whether in France, Germany, the Netherlands, or England.  Yet his mind had taken a higher flight than that of the most eminent Reformers.