conceive that there was any
sufficient reason for his continuing to lie there, when by merely doing
what the King required of him, he might at once enjoy his liberty,
together with his fine house at Chelsea, his library, his orchard, his
gallery, and the society of his wife and children. "I marvel," said she
to him one day, "that you, who have been alway hitherto taken for wise,
should now so play the fool as to lie here in this close filthy prison,
and be content to be shut up amongst mice and rats, when you might be
abroad at your liberty, if you would but do as the bishops have done?"
But More saw his duty from a different point of view: it was not a mere
matter of personal comfort with him; and the expostulations of his wife
were of no avail. He gently put her aside, saying cheerfully, "Is not
this house as nigh heaven as my own?"--to which she contemptuously
rejoined: "Tilly vally--tilly vally!"

More's daughter, Margaret Roper, on the contrary, encouraged her father
to stand firm in his principles, and dutifully consoled and cheered
him during his long confinement. Deprived of pen-and-ink, he wrote his
letters to her with a piece of coal, saying in one of them: "If I were
to declare in writing how much pleasure your daughterly loving letters
gave me, a PECK OF COALS would not suffice to make the pens." More was
a martyr to veracity: he would not swear a false oath; and he perished
because he was sincere. When his head had been struck off, it was placed
on London Bridge, in accordance with the barbarous practice of the
times. Margaret Roper had the courage to ask for the head to be taken
down and given to her, and, carrying her affection for her father beyond
the grave, she desired that it might be buried with her when she died;
and long after, when Margaret Roper's tomb was opened, the precious
relic was observed lying on the dust of what had been her bosom.

Martin Luther was not called upon to lay down his life for his faith;
but, from the day that he declared himself against the Pope, he daily
ran the risk of losing it. At the beginning of his great struggle, he
stood almost entirely alone. The odds against him were tremendous. "On
one side," said he himself, "are learning, genius, numbers, grandeur,
rank, power, sanctity, miracles; on the other Wycliffe, Lorenzo Valla,
Augustine, and Luther--a poor creature, a man of yesterday, standing
wellnigh alone with a few friends." Summoned by the Emperor to appear at