apparently strange silence. Now this Nina was urged to do by her appreciation of the morality of the Gospel-in that noble and practical precept-" Do unto others as you would they should do unto you." She was urged, also, to do this by the disinterested nature of her love for Count Arensberg. She knew him to be strongly and gratefully attached to his mother, and that, therefore, it would be for his happiness that that mother should warmly and cordially receive to her affections, the lady of his choice. Nina felt that she possessed great influence over the Countess, though the latter would not have acknowledged it, even when acting under it.

She had never even allowed herself to indulge a hope of becoming the Count's wife. In the age in which she lived, especially in Germany, such a marriage would have been detrimental to him in many ways, and Nina, therefore, would not have desired it.

But the simple, hearty manner in which, while crushing every rebellious feeling in her bosom, she set herself by her gentle eloquence to smooth down all bitter feeling, whether in defending to Bianca, Count Arensberg's conduct during the Elector's prohibition, or in combating the prejudices of the Countess, was truly noble. Nina had but lately heard from a renovated Bible that, to use the emphatic language of St. Paul, the most costly offerings, even to giving the body to be burned, without charity availeth nothing; and this poor tried heart exhibited in this, her conduct, that charity without which all else is unacceptable to God. And oh! how true it is in the daily trials of domestic

life, woman is often called by God to show as much of real Christian heroism, as is displayed even by the martyrs for the faith, and more than is shown by the sternest ascetic of the cloister.

Yet Nina felt that she must, for her health's sake, have a respite from this hourly struggle; and therefore did she, as we have said, ask for and obtain the Countess's permission to retire to Wittemberg for a time.

In Wittemberg the interests of the Reformation and the fate of Martin Luther occupied nearly the whole population, for he was emphatically the man of the people, and the glorious doctrines he promulgated bore so immediately upon the civil and religious freedom of all ranks, that the excitement as to his fate and the progress of the Reformation was even more intense at Wittemberg, than in any other part of Germany. Nina, therefore, who with all the enthusiasm of her character had become a Lutheran Reformer, felt that the best relief for her private sorrows, would be the absorbing interest that was thrilling her own and every heart around her as to the proceedings of the Diet at Worms.

The state of public feeling throughout the country was as that of an all-pervading electric shock. Every individual who came within its influence, felt the current of its magnetic power as it flew from heart to heart; that influence which ultimately produced the mighty impulse which united so large a portion of the great German people in a protest against Papal practices and

errors, and, overleaping merely national boundaries, inspired afterwards the inhabitants of the Netherlands and of Britain to enter into an alliance against the common foe. How indomitable was that impulse we all may learn from the constancy with which men held their faith while the cruel Alva deluged the Netherlands with blood, and while England was illumined by the pyres of martyrs, through the relentless and bigoted cruelty of Queen Mary.

Bnt we must now leave Nina at Wittemberg.

CHAPTER XIX.

WE have at length arrived at the great crisis when the personal existence of Martin Luther, and when, above all, the interests of the still nascent Reformation were to be decided on.

It is not our province to give even a historical summary of the events that transpired when the great monk presented himself before the Emperor and his Estates at Worms. We have only to seize on sundry positions which he occupied, and whereon he showed those characteristics of self-distrust yet confidence in his cause of loyalty to his earthly sovereign, yet supreme fealty to the King of kings-of thorough consciousness of his individual danger, yet high countervailing courage in suppressing fear-of bold straightforwardness yet acute subtlety and forecast in the management of his defence of sternness and sometimes audacity, mingled with gentleness and a courteous spirit of honourable propitiation, for which latter qualities it would have been desirable that he had been more famed during his subsequent life.

On the night when Count Arensberg left him, as

we have described in a former chapter, so many and so tumultuous were his thoughts that sleep he could not. The Count had found him seated at the lattice of his room, playing upon his flute, and at intervals, either giving articulate voice to his music, or silently gazing on and communing with the bright stars and the azure depths above him.

But when left alone he threw himself upon the couch that had hospitably been prepared for him, yet the night brought him no opiate. Long before the stars of his evening's companionship had closed their eyelids he was up again, anxious, feverish, and reseeking for the calming influences of prayer, of music, and of psalmody.

That his feelings were thus tumultuous, and that in their result they left a profound depression is, to our minds, a high proof, not merely of his enduring courage, but especially of his sincerity. You may, on good reason too, suspect a man who, without being a braggart, is uncompromising in his mere animal courage. Whereas, he who has first of all to combat with himself and to triumph over himself to combat with and to triumph over his own doubts and anxieties and apprehensions, and self-questioning debates—such an one gives us at least a proof that his high masterhood is moral, and that his future prowess is not so much the consequence of physical impulse as of conviction.

Martin Luther was striving, we say, to dissipate by prayer, by psalmody, by music, those dark, leaden