the cities, and even in the country
increase of prosperity; there was regular government everywhere, better
order and greater security of existence, luxury and an inordinate love
of enjoyment had undoubtedly increased, together with riches; even
among the lower strata of the people greed was awakened, life became
more varied and dearer, and much indifference began to be shown
concerning the quarrels of ecclesiastics. The best began to be gloomy,
and even cheerful natures, like the honest Bartholomaeus Ringwald,
became prophets of misfortune, and wished for death.

And there was good reason for this gloom. There was something diseased
in the life of Germany, an incomprehensible burden weighed it down,
which marred its development. Luther's teaching, it is true, produced
the greatest spiritual and intellectual progress which Germany had ever
made through one man, but the demands of life increased with every
expansion of the soul. The new mental culture must be followed by a
corresponding advance in earthly condition, a greater independence in
faith, demanded imperiously a stronger power of political development
But it was precisely this teaching, which appeared like the early
dawn of a better life, that conveyed to the people the consciousness
of their own political weakness, and by this weakness they became
one-sided and narrow minded. Germany being divided into countless
territories under weak princes, its people everywhere involved in and
occupied with trifling disputes, were deficient in that which is
indispensable to a genial growth; they needed a general elevation, a
great united will, and a sphere of moral duties, which alone makes men
pre-eminently cheerful and manly. The fatherland of the Germans
extended probably from Lorraine to the Oder, but in no single portion
of it did they live like the citizens of Elizabeth or Henry IV.

Thus already inwardly diseased, Germany entered upon a war of thirty
years. When the war ended, there was little remaining of the great
nation. For yet a century to come, the successors of the survivors were
deficient in that most manly of all feelings,--political enthusiasm.

Luther had raised his people out of the epic life of the middle ages.
The Thirty years' war had destroyed the popular strength, and forced
the Germans into individual life, the mental constitution of which one
may truly call lyrical. That which will here be depicted from the
accounts of cotemporaries, is a sad jo