scussed in the council chamber of the town, in
the hall of the castle, in the refectory of the monastery, at the
social board of the burgess, in the workroom, and, did it but touch
his interests, in the hut of the peasant. It was canvassed, too, at
church festivals (_Kirchweihe_), the only regular occasion on which
the inhabitants of various localities came together. In the absence of
all other distraction, men thought it out in all the bearings which
their limited intellectual horizon permitted. If calculated in any way
to appeal to them it soon struck root, and became a part of their very
nature, a matter for which, if occasion were, they were prepared to
sacrifice goods, liberty, and even life itself. In the present day a
new idea is comparatively slow in taking root. Amid the myriad
distractions of modern life, perpetually chasing one another, there is
no time for any one thought, however wide-reaching in its bearings, to
take a firm hold. In order that it should do so in the _modern mind_,
it must be again and again borne in upon this not always too receptive
intellectual substance. People require to read of it day after day in
their newspapers, or to hear it preached from countless platforms,
before any serious effect is created. In the simple life of former
ages it was not so.

The mode of transmitting intelligence, especially such as was
connected with the stirring up of political and religious movements,
was in those days of a nature of which we have now little conception.
The sort of thing in vogue then may be compared to the methods
adopted in India to prepare the Mutiny of 1857, when the mysterious
cake was passed from village to village, signifying that the moment
had come for the outbreak. The sense of _esprit de corps_ and of that
kind of honour most intimately associated with it, it must also be
remembered, was infinitely keener in ruder states of society than
under a high civilization. The growth of civilization, as implying the
disruption of the groups in which the individual is merged under more
primitive conditions, and his isolation as an autonomous unit having
vague and very elastic moral duties to his "country" or to mankind at
large, but none towards any definite and proximate social whole,
necessarily destroys that communal spirit which prevails in the former
case. This is one of the striking truths which the history of these
peasant risings illustrates in various ways and brings vividly home to