When he was thirty-nine years old he inherited the estate and castle of Montaigne near Bordeaux. He married, and except for the few years, when against his inclination he served as Mayor of Bordeaux, he spent the remainder of his days in private life, looking after his estate and enjoying hours of unbroken meditation in his tower library, reading his Horace and Plutarch and the ancient poets and philosophers generally. He says he was not a great reader, but that he liked to have his books about him. He especially enjoyed the privacy of his library, from which, he gives us to understand, his wife and the rest of the household were excluded. Montaigne began writing brief essays when he was forty-five years old, not at first for publication but rather so that he might present a true picture of himself to his family and friends. The writing evidently amused him for as the years passed the essays grew longer and their content more serious. If we are to see the full significance of the essays as the revelation of an achievement in education--and that is our present interest in them--we must remember what was happening in the world at the time they were written. The struggle of the Reformation was in full swing. Montaigne’s lifetime coincides with what was doubtless the most bitter and acrimonious period of that religious conflict. Everywhere there was persecution, riot, intrigue, retaliation; men seemed to have lost utterly the liberal spirit of the Renaissance and to have forgotten that there was such a virtue as tolerance. Montaigne was an exception. It is said that during the years of bloodshed in France, his castle was never fortified, nor closed, and that both Catholics and Protestants were welcome there. The battle does not disturb Montaigne’s equanimity, nor warp his judgment; it remains to him a little more than a fight in the street. I should like to call attention to this indifference to the great mass movement of the times, for there are those who contend that philosophy, art and letters are but the by-products of such movements. At a time when nearly every one is eaten up with partisan zeal, Montaigne hardly mentions the Reformation. He says, “I perswade you, in your opinions and discourses, as much as in your custom, and in every other thing, to use moderation and temperance, and avoid all newfangled inventions and strangenesses. All extravagant wais displease me.” While others are resorting to torture and massacre for the sake of a faith which they do not question, Montaigne quietly retires and has time to see when he is making himself ridiculous.