beard, grown long, swept his breast. It was as if decay had not dared to approach him; he was too great to crumble into dust; the tomb-breakers recoiled abashed. It is a fine subject for Kaulbach, who renders it with great power, - the gloom of the sepulchre, the recoiling revellers, and before them the towering form of the buried emperor, with his sweeping beard, and the golden book of the Gospels resting upon his knees.

At Vienna the visitor goes to see the treasurechamber of the House of Hapsburg. It is an Aladdin's cave, where, from the heaped-up abundance of gold and precious stones, the heads of people are well-nigh turned, and the guards stationed everywhere are obliged to watch, not only those who might rob, but those who might become insane. There one may see extraordinary relics by the hundred. The metal circlet yonder, Wallenstein held when he dealt with incantations in his gloomy seclusion. This cradle the great Napoleon rocked, his heart full of the tenderest yearning that ever filled it, for it held for him his only child, the baby king of Rome. There hangs the great Florentine diamond, the fourth in the world, which was worn in battle as a talisman by Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and found upon his body after the battle of Nancy, in 1477; and there, more interesting than these, is the great imperial crown of Germany, coming down from an unknown antiquity, passed from brow to brow down the long line of kaisers, with its huge uncut jewels and heavy masses of gold, rudely wrought by some primeval artificer. But more interesting than all,

to me, was a relic side by side with this, the golden book of the Gospels which rested so long upon the knees of Charlemagne in the tomb at Aachen!

The great empire of Karl the Great fell, at his death, into confusion, and at first all that had been gained seemed to be lost. Not until one hundred years later do we see signs that once more a spirit of order is beginning to move on the face of the chaos. At the beginning of the tenth century appears Henry the Fowler, a Saxon, and for the next hundred years the rulers of the empire come from the tough race which Karl the Great had found it such a task to subdue. There are great names in the time during which the Saxon dynasty is powerful; so too among the Franconian princes who succeed them. As regards the present subject, however, those ages are nearly dumb; the history of their literature is almost a blank. When Karl the Great had gone, the monks destroyed the collection he had made of the poetry of the nation. In the cloister of Reichenau, in the year 821, we know that twelve heroic poems were preserved which were part of it, and scholars are not entirely without hope of some day finding them; but it has not yet come to pass. The sole fragment of heroic song extant from this period is the Hildebrand's Lied,-Lay of Hildebrand, cerning which the interesting and probable conjecture has been made that its preservation is due to the leisure-probably the ennui — of two old monks who had once been soldiers. Hundreds of the rough fighters of those days, when the strength of youth had departed, sought the asylum of the monasteries, –

con

the head that had worn the helmet submitting to the tonsure. The songs of their warrior life would remain in their memories, and in the tedium of the cloister what more natural than that they should sometimes be sung under the breath, full of heathenism though they were! Once, at such a time, while one veteran sang or dictated another wrote down on blank leaves at the beginning and end of a service-book the profane, half-Pagan lines of the Hildebrand's Lied. It was its fate to be handed down, and the parchment is kept at Cassel as one of the principal manuscript treasures of Germany.1

To the songs of the heroes succeeds a literature of the Church. Of such culture as existed the monasteries were the seats, noteworthy among which were Fulda, in Hesse, and Saint Gallen, in Switzerland. From these came many translations and paraphrases which have no interest except of a linguistic kind. A work of a different order is the Heliand, meaning the Saviour, a poem of the tenth century, from the lately converted Saxons, which has interesting traits, representing Christ in the character of a great prince of the German people. The Ludwig's Lied celebrates a victory of Louis the Pious, son of Karl the Great, over the Normans. Now too, at Weissembourg, in Alsace, the monk Otfried writes his gospel harmony, a paraphrase of the evangelists, of some interest as being the first example of German rhyme.

With these few pages the beginnings of our subject are sufficiently considered. To the twelfth

Vilmar: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur.

century the story of German literature is a meagre one; and who will wonder? The wild Teutons, wandering through unknown ages, in unknown places, encounter at length the outposts of Rome. With eyes unopened to civilization, they strike at the new foe, who at length goes down before their barbarian fury. Little by little Goth and Vandal penetrate to the centre of Roman power; gradually to their savage souls comes a sense of the grace and majesty they are overwhelming, and at length they stand before the ruins they have made, awe-struck.1 For a next step they reverently appropriate the culture and faith of the empire they have vanquished. Upon the brow of the warrior the brazen helmet takes the place of the head of the wolf or the bear slain in the chase; life is no longer regulated by the rude forest legislation, but by the Pandects ; in place of the victims offered to Tuisco and Mannus comes the symbolic sacrifice of the mass. But as the Teutons pressed upon Rome, they in turn are pressed upon. To the eastward the Avars must be beaten back; to the westward the fanatic Saracens, sweeping through Spain toward the heart of Europe. Soon comes war to the death with the encroaching Sclave; and scarcely is he restrained when the Hun is upon the people with sword and scourge. The story of those times is one of mighty striving for life and place. The rudely wrought gold and uncut jewels of that old imperial crown at Vienna rest upon the head of many a powerful leader. The

1 Bryce: The Holy Roman Empire.

pages of the chroniclers are dark now with tales of treachery, now bright with heroism; now lamentation over a province devastated, now rejoicing over success. The Teuton wins the mastery; rapine and death are no longer constantly near at hand; tumult and anxiety subside; there is space at length for the graces and refinements of life.

It has been said that German poetry has had two great periods: the later, from the middle of the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the nineteenth; the earlier, from the end of the first quarter of the twelfth century to the middle of the thirteenth. To this earlier period we have now come. We leave behind the Old High German, which has been the vehicle of the earliest literature; the Middle High German has supplanted it. In place of the few memorials nearly valueless except for historical and linguistic purposes, we come upon a literature abundant in quality, and in every way interesting in its character. From the year 1137 to 1254 the emperors of Germany were from the great family of Hohenstauffen, rulers superbly gifted, under whom the land attained such grandeur as it has never since possessed. First of the line stands the mighty Barbarossa, Red-Beard. Unmatched was his power in Germany, Italy, the Holy Land. Great in council he was, great in strife. Before the door of his tent was hung, high upon a lance, his shield, as a sign that he was ready, upon summons,

1 D. F. StrauзS,