al education. It was the nation
itself, when forsaken by its clergy and harassed by its nobility, which
called these schools into life; and it is in these schools and
universities that the great men who inaugurate the next period of
literature--the champions of political liberty and religious freedom--were
fostered and formed.

The invention of printing was in itself a reformation, and its benefits
were chiefly felt by the great masses of the people. The clergy possessed
their libraries, where they might read and study if they chose; the
castles contained collections of MSS., sacred and profane, illuminated
with the most exquisite taste; while the citizen, the poor layman, though
he might be able to read and to write, was debarred from the use of books,
and had to satisfy his literary tastes with the sermons of travelling
Franciscans, or the songs of blind beggars and peddlers. The art of
printing admitted that large class to the same privileges which had
hitherto been enjoyed almost exclusively by clergy and nobility: it placed
in the hands of the third estate arms more powerful than the swords of the
knights, and the thunderbolts of the priests: it was a revolution in the
history of literature more eventful than any in the history of mankind.
Poets and philosophers addressed themselves no longer to emperors and
noblemen, to knights and ladies, but to the people at large, and
especially to the middle classes, in which henceforth the chief strength
of the nation resides.

The years from 1450 to 1500 form a period of preparation for the great
struggle that was to inaugurate the beginning of the sixteenth century. It
was an age "rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and
barren of strong thinkers." One of the few interesting men in whose life
and writings the history of that preliminary age may be studied, is
Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous "Ship of Fools."

With the sixteenth century, we enter upon the modern history and the
modern literature of Germany. We shall here pass on more rapidly, dwelling
only on the men in whose writings the political and social changes of
Germany can best be studied.

With Luther, the literary language of Germany became New High-German. A
change of language invariably betokens a change in the social constitution
of a country. In Germany, at the time of the Reformation, the change of
language marks the rise of a new aristocracy, which is henceforth to
re