asis, would be wide of the truth on one side, just as the narratives
and philosophical disquisitions which come to us under that name are on
the other. History generally relates those things in which all ages have
been most alike--the same which have 'been from the beginning and ever
shall be'--the intrigues of courts and of diplomacy--varied mainly by
the influence of the religion of the Bible, as at first persecuted, then
rising by degrees to a rank either with or above the state, and becoming
a persecuting power, and then finally modifying and softening down the
native rudeness of the human race, until mutual and universal tolerance
is the result; court life, diplomacy, and war, however, remaining and
still to remain the perpetual subjects of historical composition. But
between this elevated range and the humble one of burghers' tools and
costumes, lies a boundless field of aspect, variegated with all the
forms which checker social and domestic life. Oh!--thought a little
group of American spectators occupying a room near the corner of Ludwig
and Theresien streets--could we but rend the veil of time which conceals
Munich's seven hundred years of burgher and peasant life, how odd, how
rude a scene would present itself! The reader's fancy may make the
attempt. I will aid a little if I can, and there was indeed some
material furnished in addresses prepared for that occasion, and in some
other papers which have come into my hands.

The people of that little village on the banks of the Isar were but the
owners and tillers of the barren soil. Nearly a century (1238) after
Henry the Lion had surrounded it with walls, and a local magistracy had
been chosen; when two parishes--those of St. Peter and St. Mary--had
been already long established, we find a schoolmaster signing, doubtless
by virtue of his office, a certificate of the freedom of a certain
monastery from the city customs. That the school teacher must, _ex
officio_, sign such papers, spoke volumes. How few could have had the
learning, for it must indeed be done in Latin. And then the history of
the city runs nearly a century back of this date. What was the burgher
life of that first century of Munich's history? It is but the faintest
echo that answers. Schools there were at that day and long before. Nay,
the cloister schools were already in decay; but more than three hundred
years were yet to elapse before the rise of the Jesuit schools. Three
hundred years! How can