might not see it, he said, Come this way, and kindle it in my sight; for if I had been afraid of it, I should never have come to this place. Thus perished a man in every respect exemplary, except in the erroneousness of his faith. I was a witness of his end, and observed every particular of its process. He may have been heretical in his notions, and obstinate in persevering in them: but he certainly died like a philosopher. I have rehearsed a long story; as I wish to employ my leisure in relating a transaction which far surpasses the events of ancient history. For neither did Mutius suffer his hand to be burnt so patiently as Jerome endured the burning of his whole body; nor did Socrates drink the hemlock as cheerfully as Jerome submitted to the fire.” If it were really hoped to purge the dross of heresy from Bohemia by this fiery ordeal, the result is another lesson to prove the inutility of combating opinion by violence. The nobility considered the breach of the Emperor’s safe–conduct as an insult to the kingdom of Bohemia: the commons, prepared for rebellion against the spiritual dominion of Rome, and inflamed by the fate of their loved and venerated teachers, broke into acts of violence. Fresh measures of provocation on each side soon led to extremities; a crusade was proclaimed against Bohemia by Pope Martin V., and headed by the Emperor Sigismond; and the quarrel was thus fairly committed to the arbitration of the sword. Enthusiasm made up for the apparent inequality of force: the insurgents assumed the name of Taborites, named the mountain on which they pitched their tents Tabor, and stigmatized their neighbours by the names of the idolatrous nations from whom the Israelites won the Holy Land. They often defeated the armies of the church, and maintained their ground so firmly, that in 1433 the Council of Basle endeavoured to invite their leaders to a conference. This attempt at pacification failed; but it taught the Catholics how to avail themselves of the religious differences which distracted these enthusiastic men: and in 1436, the church and the Emperor gained the final ascendency, more by civil discord than by the sword. But in the fifteenth century, a numerous party in Bohemia preserved the faith for which Huss and Jerome had suffered, and their fathers had fought; and received with joy the ampler reformation preached by Luther.