s, and utterly
annihilating the mental repose needful to the growth and to the just
appreciation of literature. Books were destroyed as relentlessly in
those sad times as flourishing cornfields were down-trodden by the iron
heel of the invader. It was a fearful period of anarchy and
retrogression, under the baneful effects of which Germany still
labours. Peace was at last restored in 1648 by the Treaty of
Westphalia, but it found the nation broken in spirit and vigour, and
where material needs entirely absorb the mental energies of a people
the Muses cannot flourish. And not only was the spirit of the people
broken by the war, their national feeling seemed totally extinct. The
bold fine language wherewith Luther had endowed them was neglected and
despised by the better classes, who deemed servile imitation of the
foreigner the true and only criterion of good taste. It grew, at last,
to be held quite a distinction for a German to be unable to speak his
own language correctly, and it seems probable that but for the
religious utterances of the hymn-writers, who thus provided the poor
oppressed people with ideal consolations, the very essence of the
language, in all its purity, might have perished. It is among these
hymn-writers that we must seek and shall find the finest, truest, and
most national expressions of that time. Shortly before Lessing's birth
there had awakened a sense of this national degradation, and some
princes and nobles formed themselves into a society to suppress the
fashionable Gallicisms and reinstate the people's language. Their
efforts met with some little success, but their powers were too
limited, and their attempts too artificial and jejune to exert any
considerable influence either in the direction of conservation or of
reform. It needed something stronger, bolder, to dispel the apathy of a
century. Still these associations, known as the two Silesian schools,
bore their part in sowing the good seed, and though most of it fell on
stony ground, because there was little other ground for it whereon to
fall, still some fell on fruitful earth, and brought forth in due
season. An excessive interest in French literature was opposed by an
equal interest in English literature. The adherents of these two
factions formed what was known as the Swiss and Leipzig schools. They
waged a fierce paper warfare, that had the good effect of once more
attracting popular attention to the claims of letters, as well as
sho