was for
the advantage of the peasant. The damage done by game indeed occasioned
great suffering, and there still continued much of the old bond-service
on the property of the impoverished nobles. But the greater part of the
country people were pronounced by lawyers, newly educated in the Roman
law, to be possessors of their property; it was the greatest blessing
bestowed by Roman law on the Germans in the sixteenth century. It is an
error to suppose that the bureaucratic rule is a production of modern
days; it already prevailed in those times, and the villages had often
to pay the small travelling expenses of the ducal messenger who brought
them their letters. It was already decided by superintending officials
how many fire buckets every one was to procure, and how many doves were
to be kept; they saw to the clearing of the fruit trees from
caterpillars, the cleansing of the ditches, and the annual planting of
young trees. The parish accounts had for nearly a hundred years been
kept in an orderly manner, and inspected by the government of the
country, as also the district certificates and registers of birth.
There was also a good deal of commercial intercourse. A large
commercial road passed through Thuringia, in a line almost parallel
with the mountains, from the Elbe to the Rhine and Maine; and from the
descent of the mountains near to the Werra, lay the military road which
united the north of Germany with the south. The traffic on these
unconstructed roads demanded numerous relays of horses, and brought to
the villages gain, and news from the distant world, and many
opportunities of spending money.

After the Reformation there were schools, at least in all the villages
where there was a church; the teachers were often divines, and
sometimes there were schoolmistresses for the girls. Small sums were
paid for the schooling, and a portion of the inhabitants of the village
were initiated into the secrets of reading and writing. The difference
between the countryman and the citizen was then still greater than now.
The "stupid peasant" was the favourite object of ridicule in the rooms
of the artisans, who attributed to him, as characteristic qualities,
roughness, simplicity, disingenuous cunning, drunkenness, and love of
fighting. But however retired his life then was, and poor in varied
impressions, we should do him great injustice if we considered him
essentially weaker or less worthy than he is now; on the contrary, hi