unwilling to take part in great meetings, I do not know how it was that I was always driven, as if by force, to the diets, where, whether I liked it or no, I always found myself in the company of many people.' In a recent and very intelligent history of Calvin by a German author, I find the following passage: 'The young Frenchman, with his reserved and rather shy manners, must have been a singular apparition among the princes and most eminent men of learning in the German empire amongst whom he was suddenly thrown. As they often spoke in German he did not always understand what was being discussed, and his position was rather that of a learned and reliable man whom his friends had summoned to give them valuable advice, than that of one who took an active part in official debates.' [Footnote 81] [Footnote 81: Stähelin, vol. i. p. 233.] Calvin had not attended these meetings long before he acquired a very strong feeling of their inefficiency, and of his want of power to give predominance to his own views: 'Certainly,' he wrote, after the first meeting of the Diet of Ratisbon, 'if this results in anything satisfactory it will be greatly opposed to my expectations.' In fact, he did not succeed in harmonizing the doctrines of the reformed German, Swiss, and French churches, nor could he reconcile the Lutherans and Zwinglians on the question of the Eucharist. Neither side had yet learnt, either by experience or common danger, to unite in their great common ground of Christian belief, and to concede mutual liberty in the points on which they differed in knowledge as a nation, or as a sect. {241} Chapter XI. Calvin, Luther, And Melancthon. Calvin In Search Of A Wife.