ned there on
account of the horses; and had the deceased Hermann Lepper christianly
and honourably buried, after an inquest had been held. Towards evening
we left Ribbenitz, and drove at a foot's pace through the night, so
that we reached Stralsund towards noon on the following day. When
Master Joachim Geelhar, the celebrated surgeon, had properly dressed
the wounds, the patient was soon thoroughly cured."

CHAPTER IX.

THE MARRIAGE AND HOUSEKEEPING OF A
YOUNG STUDENT.
(1557.)

The chief charm of the life of the olden time consists in the graceful
manifestation of those feelings which give brightness to our life; the
passions of lovers, the deep affection of husband and wife, the
tenderness of parents, and the piety of children. We are enabled in
each period of the past to distinguish the universal attributes of
human nature, nay, even the specific German characteristics of love and
marriage, but these tender relations are precisely those which are
often enveloped in much that is transitory and enigmatical. We have
often to seek mild and humane feelings under repulsive forms.

But two things have always been valued in Germany. In the first place
it was a pre-eminent peculiarity of the Germans that they honoured the
dignity of the female sex. Their women were the prophetesses of the
heathen time, and, according to the laws of the people, whosoever
killed a maiden or widow had to atone for it by the severest
punishment. In times of strife and war, women enjoyed protection of
person and property. Whilst Totila, Prince of the Goths, destroyed the
men in Italy, the honour and life of the women were preserved, and the
misbehaviour of a Goth to a Neapolitan woman was punished with death.
It moreover appears from the Sachsenspiegel, that the same laws
prevailed in the North even during the time of the cruel Hussite wars.

Of all the misdeeds of the Spanish soldiers who accompanied Charles V.
into Germany in the sixteenth century, their ill-treatment of women
excited the greatest indignation. The infamous conduct of some Passau
soldiers of the Archduke Leopold towards the women of Alsace, even in
1611, was particularly repugnant to the people, and was commented on in
their news-sheets. It was not till the Thirty years' war that the
coarseness became universal, and women were looked upon as the booty of
lice