we, of this age of steam, estimate what was
slowly revolving in society in those years? In 1271 we find an order of
the bishop of Freising requiring the parish rector to have a school in
each parish of the city; half a century later than this we meet
documentary evidence that school teaching had assumed a rank with other
worldly occupations, and was no longer subject to the rector of the
parish. If I could but set the reader down in a school room of that day,
I might forego any attempt to portray the times; but, alas! I cannot. He
would, however, doubtless see there groups of boys--for I half suspect
that this was before girls had generally developed the capability of
learning--the faces and garments clean or smutty, showing the grade of
social progress which had been gained, for we may presume that the use
of soap and water had been to some extent introduced, and if so, I have
erred again, for the dirty and the ragged did not go to school. These
could do without education. We should see, too, the beaming or the dull
and leaden eye--if, indeed, the eye spoke then as now--proclaiming the
master's success or failure. And then the schoolmaster, the chief figure
in the group, would be found to have the _otium cum dignitate_, and
especially the former, in a higher sense than is now known. And what was
the staple information which circulated among the people? Of this we
know more. It was made up of adventures of knights, miracles wrought by
the host, by crucifixes and Madonnas, and apparitions of saints, leading
some emperor or prince to found a church or monastery--a kind of history
which few churches or other religious institutions want. If there was
less of life in the humanity of that age than we have at present, there
was as much more in other things; for even those holy pictures and
statues could move their eyes and other parts. They found various ways
of expressing approbation of the pious, and frowning upon scoffers.
Crucifixes and Madonnas, carried by freshets over barren fields, brought
fertility. The devil, too, figured more largely in the narratives of
days before printed books formed the basis of education. He generally
appeared in the persons of giants and witches, which latter were his
agents by special contract. Their freaks had all shades of enormity,
from the slight teasing of the housewife in her baking and churning to
the peril of life and limb and endless perdition. The devil sometimes
coming in one of thes