life of Germany to a hollow form; it threw the
Germans almost two centuries back, in comparison with their English
kinsmen, in wealth, population, and political condition. It must again
be repeated that it destroyed at least two thirds, probably three
fourths of the population, and a still greater portion of their goods
and cattle, and deteriorated the morals, arts, education, and energies
of the survivors. Out of these remains of German life, the modern
character of Germans was slowly and feebly developed--individual life
under despotic government.

It is this period, in which our popular strength was slowly raised from
the deepest degradation, which will be here portrayed by the narratives
of contemporaries. Again a great time, but a period of German
development of which the last and highest results have not yet become
history.

The way in which the people raised themselves from this abyss is
peculiar to the Germans. Marvellous as was the destruction, so also was
the revival. More than one nation has been overpowered by outward
enemies or cast down under political oppression, each of which has had
to undergo special trials which have given them from time to time a
hopeless aspect, but through the whole course of history a renovation
has been effected, so that the strengthening of the State has gone
hand-in-hand with intellectual progress. When the Greeks during the
Persian war felt their own political worth, their science and art
blossomed almost simultaneously; when Augustus had given a new support
and constitution to the declining Roman republic, there began forthwith
a new Imperial culture in enjoyment-seeking Rome: the intellectual
life, from Horace and Virgil to Tacitus, followed the destiny of the
State; the increased expansive power of the Empire ever gave a wider
stretch and stronger independence to individual minds. And again in
England,--when the war of the Red and White Roses was ended, when the
people peacefully danced round the maypole, and a brilliant court life
enforced courtly manners upon the wild Barons, when daring merchants
and adventurers waylaid the Spanish galleons, and conveyed the spices
of India up the Thames,--then the popular energies found expression in
the greatest poetic soul of modern nations. Even in France the splendid
despotism of Louis XIV., after the wars of the Huguenots and the
Fronde, gave suddenly to the tranquillised country a brilliant courtly
bloom of art and literature.