e
magistrates of the place in Hesse where the robbers dwelt, helped their
flight; and the further ramifications of the band, which spread to
Bavaria and Silesia, could not be traced on account of the
unwillingness of the tribunals. And yet this trial was carried on with
great energy, and the person who had been robbed had made distant
journeys and offered large sums. Everywhere the multiplicity of rulers,
and the dismemberment of territories, were productive of weakness. The
Margravate of Brandenburg and a portion of Lower Saxony formed almost
the only great connected unity, except the Imperial possessions. In the
rest of Germany lay interspersed many thousands of large and small
domains, free cities, and parcels of land appertaining to the nobility.
But even a modest pride in their own province could not be cultivated
in individuals. For each of the countless frontiers occasioned far more
isolation than in the olden time. Even in the larger cities, excepting
in the cities on the Northern Ocean, municipal spirit had disappeared.
Besides his own interests, the German had little to occupy him but the
tittle-tattle of the day concerning family events and any remarkable
news. It may be seen from many examples how trifling, pedantic, and
malicious was the talk of the city for three generations, and how
morbidly sensitive, on the other hand, men had become. Anonymous
lampoons in prose and verse, an old invention, became ever more
numerous, coarse, and malicious; they stirred up not only families, but
the whole community of citizens; they became dangerous for the
propagators, if they ever ventured to, attack any influential person or
royal interests. Yet they increased everywhere; no government was in a
position to prevent them; for an artful publisher easily found
opportunity to print and distribute them on the other side of the
frontier.

Under such circumstances some qualities were developed in the German
character which have not yet quite disappeared. A craving for rank and
title, servility to those who, whether as officials, or as persons of
rank, lived in a higher position, fear of publicity, and above all a
striking inclination to form a morose, mean, and scornful judgment of
the character and life of others.

This gloomy, hopeless, discontented, and ironical disposition showed
itself everywhere, after the Thirty Years' War, by individuals giving
vent to their thoughts about the state within whose jurisdiction they
l