over the serf peasantry was lenient.

Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all
the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized
Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all
was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and
Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It
was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the
Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "_Erb-und
Gerichtsscholtiseien_," as they were still called in memory of the
circumstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper
aristocracy.

In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture
and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or
serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the
intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the
condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the
Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the
Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of
prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining
Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of
their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth
part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty
Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower
by one half than in the other provinces.

Undoubtedly those freemen were to be envied who felt the advantage of
their better position, but only a small portion were so fortunate.
Generally, even in the eighteenth century, freemen with little or no
land of their own, preferred being received as villeins on some great
landed property. When Frederick I. of Prussia, shortly after 1700,
wished to free the serfs in Pomerania, they refused it, because they
considered the new duties imposed upon them more severe than what they
had hitherto borne. And in fact the free peasants were scarcely less
burdened with new service than those who had been the villeins of the
old time.

It is difficult to judge impartially of the human condition which
developed itself under this oppression. For such a life looks very
different in daily intercourse, to what it does in the statute-book.
Much that appears insupportable to us was made bearable by ancient
custom. Undoubtedly the kind-