lled with evil forces, against which generation
after generation, so far as our records go, struggled, yet finally
conquered _per aspera ad astral_.

Every German historian of culture, especially Scherr, who sought the
truth and stated it fearlessly, has been attacked, reviled by captious
critics, but strong is the truth and it will prevail! _veritas
prevalebit_!

In this period of German decadence the moral sense seems indeed
frequently to have entirely vanished. In a mutual confession by a
peasant and his wife of their moral shortcomings, which are treated
jestingly, the demoralization appears plainly, without any apparent
conception of its impropriety. At a peasant wedding, we hear of brutish
drinking and gluttony, coarse speeches and actions, consummation of
marriage before church consecration, brutal and deadly fights.

The character of the peasantry of the time appears most distinctly from
Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_, a Bavarian village story, which depicts the
ambitions, sorrows, and joys, and the dissatisfaction of that class.
Young Helmbrecht, an ambitious peasant boy, who had been spoiled by
mother and sister, proud as a peacock in knightly raiment, desires to
play a role at the court. In spite of his father's warnings, he joins a
robber knight. After one year of debauch and degradation, he returns
home as a braggart, and the old and the new generation of peasants are
contrasted. The father, who in his youth had known court life, when he
went to the castle to sell his products, tells of knightly noble games,
chaste dances with beautiful song and music, and the reading of the
ancient heroic lays. The son reports heavy drinking, impure speeches,
lies, quarrels, frauds. He replies to the exhortations of his father
with vile threats. He induces his sister to follow him secretly, to be
married to his comrade Lamsling; but the crisis comes at the wedding.
The judge and sheriffs come and capture the robbers. Helmbrecht is
blinded, driven away from home, and hanged by the peasants.

In the cities the state of affairs is even worse. Pandering is a common
and thriving business, though the laws against it are of barbaric
severity. In Brunswick, those convicted of the heinous crime of
fostering prostitution were buried alive. But when did laws and police
measures ever do away with crime when moral putrefaction once
impregnated a social structure? The clerics and monks play a prominent
role in the literature of the sex