offers of Italian princes; had obtained full
dispensation from the Pope for his deeds, and, it was even whispered, a
secret blessing which made him invulnerable. The lower orders began for
the first time to have an idea of their own strength and capacities;
they felt that they also were men; the hunting-spear hung in their
huts, and they carried the long knife in their belt. But what was their
position at home? The use of their hands and their teams was required
by the landed nobleman for his fields; to him belonged the forest and
the game within it, and the fish in their waters; and when the peasant
died, his heir was obliged to give up the best of his herd, or its
worth in money. In every feud in which the nobleman was engaged they
were the victims: the enemy's soldiers fell upon their cattle, and they
themselves were shot down with arrows, and imprisoned in dark dungeons
till they were able to pay ransom. The Church also sought after their
sheaves and concealed money. Dishonest, cunning, and voluptuous were
the deans, who rode through their villages, falcon on hand, with
troopers and damsels; the priests, whom the peasants could neither
choose nor dismiss, seduced their wives, or lived scandalously at home.
The mendicant monks forced their way into their kitchens, and demanded
the smoked meats from their chimneys, and the eggs from their baskets.
All the communities throughout Southern Germany were in a state of
silent fermentation, and already, at the end of the fifteenth century,
local risings had begun, the forerunners of the Peasant war.

But more wonderful still was the influence of the new art, through
which the poorest might acquire knowledge and learning. The method of
multiplying written words by thousands was discovered on the banks of
the Rhine in the middle of the fifteenth century. The printing of
patterns by means of wooden blocks had been practised for many
centuries, and frequently single pages of writing had in this way been
struck off; at last it occurred to a citizen that whole books might be
printed with cast metal type. Its first effect was to give intelligence
to the industry of the artisan, and a way was thus opened to the people
of turning their mental acquirements to profit.

The learning of the middle ages still occupied the professors' chairs
at the German universities, but it was without soul, and consisted in
dry forms and scholastic subtleties. There was little acquaintance with
the anc