is ancient and quiet occupation--only
disturbed by the covetousness of men--as the guardian of hidden
treasures. Much money and property had been buried during the long war,
and was discovered by lucky accidents after the peace.

The poverty-stricken people lusting after gold, and unused to quiet
labour, were powerfully excited by these treasure-troves, and the hopes
of still greater. There had always been, from ancient times, treasure
seekers, and magicians who were to conjure away the evil one from the
treasure; and it is probable that this superstition had been imported
into Germany from Rome.

Gradually the popular conception of the form and working of the devil
became less vivid. In a more enlightened age it was thought wrong to
speak mockingly of him, and the greatest poet of Germany gracefully
idealized his image as it had been handed down from antiquity. Some of
the musical composers also introduced him into their operas.

Thus did the German people seek earnestly after their God at the
commencement of this great sixteenth century, and thus powerful was the
devil at the close of it. Lofty exaltation was followed by enfeebling
relaxation, and the striving after Christ, by the fear of hell; and the
opponent of the Holy One pressed himself as a spectre into the whole
life of man. Other countries were infected with these superstitions;
but in Germany, for many years, the burning of witches was almost the
only public action in which the deluded people showed a strong
spiritual interest. The want of unity, public spirit and great
political aims, was the destruction of the nation.

By the disputes of priests, the selfishness of princes, and the unhappy
political position of Germany, the course of Protestantism was checked
and the Roman Catholic reaction with fresh vigour raised its head.
Throughout the country, in politics, in the pulpit, and in the closets
of the ecclesiastics, there was more hatred than love. The minds of men
languished under a spiritless dogmatism, and the hearts of believers
were oppressed by gloomy forebodings. The wisest felt deep anxiety for
the unhappy condition of the German Fatherland, and the devout were
kept by the ecclesiastics and countless calendar-makers in continued
anxiety, and fear that the end of the world was at hand, and the
frequent interference of the devil appeared to many as an additional
sign of its approach. Meanwhile the mass of the people of all ranks
lived in a state