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366 Reviews of Books a Jew-baiter (p. 43) might, however, be tempered by alluding to the way in which " usury " was decried on all hands in the Middle Ages and well into modern times, the authority of the Old Testament and of the Church being backed up by a false theory of the nature of money. Against Luther as a controversialist the author employs the deadly parallel: to turn from Wider Hans U'lirst or Contra Henriciini Rcgem " to any writing of Hiibmaier's, is like escaping from the mephitic odours of a slum into a garden of spices " (p. 158) ; though he admits that his hero " sometimes offends against a modern sense of propriety in speaking of and to his adversaries" (p. 217). Evidently no admirer of the Jesuits, Dr, Vedder designates their vigilant attitude toward heretics in Moravia as one of "persistent malignity" (p. 268). He shows similar sectarian bias in saying, " In an age of credulity and supersti- tion he [Hiibmaier] stood for the gospel proclaimed by the Apostles " (p. 271), The statement that, to remedy depopulation caused mainly by persecution, every man in Moravia was given " the extraordinary privilege of taking two wives " (pp. 269-270) should not pass unchal- lenged. The numerous illustrations, gathered for the most part by the author in 1904 while visiting the scenes depicted, are not all upon the high level attained in some of the other volumes of the series. To be told that a picture is " from an old woodcut " does not help one to know even its proximate source, to say nothing of estimating its historical value. After what Denifle has written concerning idealized portraits of Luther, one becomes a bit skeptical abcut the accuracy of Houston's mezzotint of Zwingli (reproduced p. 138) : how does that harmoniously aquiline profile agree with the portrait in the Zurich City Library (Samuel Simpson, Life of Ulrich Zwingli, New York, 1902, frontis- piece; cf. the anonymous contemporary woodcut in Gualther's edition of Zwingli's works, Ziirich, Froschauer, 1545) ? A serious hindrance to the enjoyment of the book is the manner in which extracts from the sources constantly block the flow of the nar- rative. If much of the material were relegated to foot-notes or ap- pendixes, the reader would feel more directly the charm, the tragedy, and the great significance of the career to which Dr. Vedder has de- voted so much sympathetic study. William Walker Rockwell. JoJui Calvin, the Organiser of Reformed Protestantism, ijOQ-1^6./. By WiLLisTON Walker. [Heroes of the Reformation, edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson.] (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1906. Pp. xviii, 456.) Since the publication of Dyer's Life in 1850, there has been no biog- raphy of Calvin of importance written in English. Since that time there have appeared the monumental fifty-nine volumes of Calvin's works by the Strasburg editors and a mass of other valuable docu-