While Erasmus was studying, writing, planning, and travelling, with Louvain as the centre of his manifold activities, the great assault was gathering its force in a quarter of the world from which it might least have been expected. The north of Germany lay almost entirely beyond the circle of vision of Erasmus and such as he. The Universities of Leipzig and Erfurt, the most important of the Saxon schools, had thus far contributed little to the advance of general culture. They were still mainly under the influence of the scholastic traditions, guided by such men as those who had been made the butts of the _Epistolæ obscurorum virorum_. The University of Wittenberg, founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederic of Saxony, was just in time to gain for its chairs some of the first-fruits of the revived classical spirit, which men like Reuchlin and Rudolf Agricola had imported into Germany from the Italian fountainhead. The call of Martin Luther in 1508 from the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt to a professorship of theology at Wittenberg, while it cannot be described as a demonstration in favour of the New Learning, brought a young man into active professional work who was already familiar with the new spirit of study and who was likely to apply it to his theological teaching, without being seduced by its æsthetic charm. The invitation of Philip Melanchthon four years later to teach Greek was a more pronounced declaration that Wittenberg was to look forward and not back in setting the tone of its instruction. Melanchthon was a promising youth of twenty-one, a relative and pupil of Reuchlin and recommended by him for this place. He was already well known as an accomplished Grecian, an amiable, but decided personality, destined to be through a lifetime of contention the balance-wheel of the Lutheran party. [Illustration: PHILIP MELANCHTHON. FROM THE DRAWING BY HOLBEIN, IN WINDSOR CASTLE.] It cannot be our purpose to rehearse here the familiar story of Luther's early career. Friends and enemies alike have done their utmost to set before us the engaging but often mysterious personality of the man. Our only interest can be to review very briefly such aspects of his development as may serve to illustrate the similarities and the differences between his course and that of Erasmus and thus prepare us to understand the connection of the latter with the reform movement of Luther. If our earlier judgments as to the youth of Erasmus are correct we shall have to believe that Luther's years of apprenticeship were far more truly years of hardship and struggle than were his. Poverty, stern discipline, and unsatisfied desire left their lifelong marks upon a physical constitution none too strong, but could not crush the inherent cheerfulness and courage which proved his dominant characteristics.