The horrible slanders put in circulation abroad, in justification of the atrocities with which the unoffending Protestants of France were visited, furnished the motive for the composition and publication of an apology that instantly achieved unprecedented celebrity, and has long outlived the occasion that gave it birth. The apology was the "Institutes;" the author, John Calvin. With the appearance of his masterpiece, a great writer and theologian, destined to exercise a wide and lasting influence not only upon France, but over the entire intellectual world, enters upon the stage of French history to take a leading part in the unfolding religious and political drama. [Sidenote: His birth and training.] [Sidenote: Studies at Paris;] [Sidenote: also at Orleans and Bourges.] John Calvin was born on the tenth of July, 1509, at Noyon, a small but ancient city of Picardy. His family was of limited means, but of honorable extraction. Gérard Cauvin, his father, had successively held important offices in connection with the episcopal see. As a man of clear and sound judgment, he was sought for his counsel by the gentry and nobility of the province--a circumstance that rendered it easy for him to give to his son a more liberal course of instruction than generally fell to the lot of commoners. It is not denied by Calvin's most bitter enemies that he early manifested striking ability. In selecting for him one of the learned professions, his father naturally preferred the church, as that in which he could most readily secure for his son speedy promotion. It may serve to illustrate the degree of respect at this time paid to the prescriptions of canon law, to note that Charles de Hangest, Bishop of Noyon, conferred on John Calvin the _Chapelle de la Gésine_, with revenues sufficient for his maintenance, when the boy was but just twelve years of age! Such abuses as the gift of ecclesiastical benefices to beardless youths, however, were of too frequent occurrence to attract special notice or call forth unfriendly criticism. With the same easy disregard of churchly order the chapter of the cathedral of Noyon permitted Calvin, two years later, to go to Paris, for the purpose of continuing his studies, without loss of income; although, to save appearances, a pretext was found in the prevalence of some contagious disease in Picardy. Not long after, his father perceiving the singular proficiency he manifested, determined to alter his plans, and devoted his son to the more promising department of the law, a decision in which Calvin himself, already conscious of secret aversion for the superstitions of the papal system, seems dutifully to have acquiesced. To a friend and near relation, Pierre Robert Olivetanus, the future translator of the Bible, he probably owed both the first impulse toward legal studies and the enkindling of his interest in the Sacred Scriptures. Proceeding next to Orleans, in the university of which the celebrated Pierre de l'Étoile, afterward