The arts whereby Jesuits gained hold on families and individuals, inspired in him no less disgust than the illegal despotism of the Papacy.

This blending of sincere piety and moral rectitude with a passion for secular freedom and a hatred of priestly craft, has something in it closely akin to the English temperament.

Sarpi was a sound Catholic Christian in religion, and in politics what we should call a staunch Whig.

So far as it is now possible to penetrate his somewhat baffling personality, we might compare him to a Macaulay of finer edge, to a Dean Stanley of more vigorous build.

He was less commonplace than the one, more substantial than the other.