n, and served the place of
newspapers. They were bright and characteristic enough for that; and
indeed newspapers in Germany date from this time, and from the doggerel
broadsides of satire and description which then supplanted minstrels
of whatsoever name or guild, as they were carried by post, and read in
every hamlet.[A] But the best of these poems were pompous, dull, and
tediously elaborated. They have met the fate of newspapers, and are now
on file. The more considerable poets themselves appeared to be jealous
of the war; they complained bitterly that Mars had displaced Apollo; but
later readers regret the ferocious sack of Magdeburg, or the death of
Gustavus Adolphus, more than the silencing of all those pens.

[Footnote A: Newspapers proper appeared as early as 1615 in Germany. But
these rhymed gazettes were very numerous. They were more or less bulky
pamphlets, with pithy sarcastic programmes for titles, and sometimes a
wood or copper cut prefixed. A few of them were of Catholic origin, and
one, entitled _Post-Bole_, (_The Express_,) is quite as good as anything
issued by the opposite party.]

On the other hand, Spain, while fighting for religion and a secure
nationality, had her Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon, all of whom
saw service in the field, and other distinguished names, originators
of literary forms and successful cultivators of established ones. They
created brilliant epochs for a bigoted and cruel country. All that was
noble or graceful in the Spanish spirit survives in works which that
country once stimulated through all the various fortunes of popular
wars. But they were not wars for the sake of the people; the country has
therefore sunk away from the literature which foretold so well how great
she might have become, if she had been fortunate enough to represent, or
to sympathize with, a period of moral and spiritual ideas. Her literary
forms do not describe growth, but arrested development.

A different period culminated in the genius of Milton, whose roots were
in that golden age when England was flowering into popular freedom. He
finally spoke for the true England, and expressed the vigorous thoughts
which a bloody epoch cannot quench. Some of his noblest things were
inspired by the exigencies of the Commonwealth, which he saw "as an
eagle nursing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the
full mid-day beam."

The Dutch people, in their great struggle against Philip II., se