fortune to be saved from such a life of
adventure. George Binzli, his teacher in Basel, was, in the words of an
old writer, an excellent, not unlearned man, of a very amiable
disposition. He took a great liking to Zwingli, who soon stood in the
foremost rank among his school-fellows, a master in debate and the
possessor of an extraordinary talent for music. At the end of three
years he finished his course in the Theodore School, and departed,
cherishing an esteem and gratitude, not lost in after life, toward
Binzli, by whose advice also he now went to Bern, and entered a higher
class under the care of Henry W[oe]lfli.

At an earlier day Latin was taught chiefly for the purposes of divine
worship, which consisted, for the most part, of chanting and the saying
of masses in this language, to the common people an unknown tongue. A
knowledge of it was derived from stupid manuals, that only furnished
the scholars with a stock of words, which, though not well understood
even by themselves, were stuffed into their sermons, in order to gain
credit for learning with the ignorant multitude.

But after the invention of the art of printing, the most important
works of the ancient Romans, extant only in a few very costly
manuscripts, were given to the world by the press. These, teachers of
ability first took up and studied, and then explained to their
scholars. What a wide contrast between such education and that of a
former period! Here, instead of corrupt monk's Latin, the young men
became acquainted with a highly cultivated, clear, powerful language,
and, at the same time also, with the history of the most celebrated
republic of antiquity, which, to the Swiss, themselves the citizens of
a free country, was full of interest. W[oe]lfli, we know, followed this
path in his teaching. "From him," says Myconius, the biographer and
friend of Zwingli, "he obtained his first knowledge of the classic
authors (so well preserved through so many centuries), acquired a
flowing, harmonious style, and learned how to distinguish facts and
exercise his judgment upon them." W[oe]lfli had visited Jerusalem as a
zealous pilgrim, and would often speak of the journey to his scholars,
who also saw that he was busied with the history of his native land and
that every story of the olden time was sacred in his eyes. But to
Zwingli the most pleasant hours were those spent in the practice of
music. With astonishing rapidity he learned to play on all the kinds