nsiderably larger at
present than in 1634.

Thus Germany, in comparison with its happier neighbours in England and
the Low Countries, was thrown back about two hundred years.

Still greater were the changes which the war made in the intellectual
life of the nation. Above all among the country people. Many old
customs passed away, life became aimless and full of suffering. In the
place of the old household gear the rudest forms of modern furniture
were introduced; the artistic chalices, and old fonts, and almost all
the adornments of the churches, had disappeared, and were succeeded by
a tasteless poverty in the village churches, which still continues. For
more than a century after the war the peasant vegetated, penned in,
almost as much as his herds, whilst his pastor watched him as a
shepherd, and he was shorn by the landed proprietors and rulers of his
country. There was a long period of gloomy suffering. The price of corn
in the depopulated country was, for fifty years after the war, even
lower than before. But the burdens upon landed property rose so high,
that for a long time, land together with house and farm, bore little
value, and sometimes were offered in vain as acquittance for service
and imposts. Severer than ever was the pressure of vassalage, worst of
all in the former Sclave countries, in which the peasantry were kept
down by a numerous nobility. With respect to their marriages, they were
placed under an unnatural and compulsory guardianship; strict care was
taken that the son of the countryman should not evade by flight the
servitude which was to weigh down his future. He could not travel
without a written permission; even ship and raft masters were forbidden
under severe penalties to take such fugitives into their service.

Much to be lamented is the injury to civilization which took place in
the devastated cities, especially the return to luxury, love of
pleasure, and coarse sensuality, the want of common sense and
independence, the cringing towards superiors and heartlessness towards
inferiors. They are the ancient sufferings of a decaying race. That the
self-government of cities was more and more infringed upon by the
princes, was frequently fortunate, for the administrators were too
often deficient in judgment and feeling of duty.

The new constitution of governments which had arisen during the war,
laid its iron hands on town and country. The old territories of the
German empire were changed in