and other works, but, better than they, a name enrolled among the generous, the honourable, and the brave. Stromer thought it a pity that the wise and witty things which Hutten scattered so freely in conversation about courts and courtiers should not take a shape and substance somewhat more abiding. At Stromer's request therefore Ulrich wrote a Latin dialogue, entitled "Misaulus," in which the interlocutors are an old and a young courtier, and in which, with much humour and satirical keenness, the discomfort and bondage incident to attendance at Court are portrayed. He could not expect this satire to give any offence to the Archbishop, as he presented him with a copy of it, and in the dedicatory epistle to Stromer he pronounces on Albert a most eloquent eulogium. It was during the Diet at Augsburg that "Misaulus" was composed. Eneas Sylvius, who under the name of Pius II. was Pope from 1458 to 1464, had treated the same subject. As Pius II. had himself been a courtier, what he had to say, "De Miseria Curialium," was the more attentively listened to. The fifth edition of "Misaulus," which was printed at Basle in 1519, had a preface addressed to Sir Thomas More, by the celebrated printer Frobenius. While Frobenius speaks of Pius the Second's work disparagingly, he praises that of Hutten in the warmest terms, maintaining that in him the genius of Lucian had been revived, a compliment all the more graceful, as Lucian in one of his dialogues had painted the court and the courtier with a force and a fidelity such as, says Frobenius, no Apelles, no Parrhasius would have surpassed with the pencil. Frobenius informs More that he had been occupied in printing the Utopia, so that the Englishman "might know that his gifted mind was appreciated not by his countrymen only, but by

all the world."

Hutten sent a copy of the Misaulus to Bilibald Pirkheimer, one of the many illustrious men whose cordial regard and fraternal advice made the dark hours bright and the bitter moments sweet in a career full of vicissitude. His life deserves a brief record, not merely from his having cast the gleam of a noble valiant nature, a fine

and furnished intellect, across Hutten's path, but from his showing by what irresistible necessity in that age men of action were forced to be men of thought, in order that they might be the better men of action. There are periods when the man of thought must remain wholly such, while the man of action cuts himself off as widely as he can with his sword from the region of the speculative. At such periods thought is deep while action is heroic, and social existence has poetic fullness, unity, and breadth. In feudalism there were properly two worlds only, the cloister and the camp; for the city was merely a fortified camp, and the castle nothing more than a fortified cloister. When feudalism began to decay the boundaries between the two worlds were broken down. The spirit of the camp passed into the cloister, the spirit of the cloister passed into the camp. Something was gained, but much was lost by the transition. Treasures of contemplation, which had long been hidden and hoarded as the delights of a few lonely but holy souls, were scattered into the common bosom of mankind, to bless, it may be, but also to be vulgarised and wasted. Depth departed as popularity grew. And what sacred delicacy, how many divine idealisms, how many angelic devotions, how many miraculous associations and memories, must have vanished for ever, when the warrior's remorseless tread, and the citizen's coarse laugh, came to desecrate the cloistral sanctuary! From the commixture of the cloister and the camp arose something partaking of both, the polemical spirit; something aggressive as the latter, yet aggressive only that it might realise the meditative tendencies of the former. The new spirit generated a new race. The soldier became the student, the student became the soldier. Having to carry the burden of an idea, in addition to his armour, the soldier was thereby the weaker. But the student, if he did not pierce so far down into the mysterious essence and beautiful affinity of things, immensely extended his empire on the surface of that soil into the mines of which he no longer cared or dared to penetrate. Philosophy deserted her sister Religion to become the handmaid of Science. De

barred from any longer nourishing with profoundest thoughts tender and pious hearts, that had elected monastic seclusion at once as a dwelling and a defence, philosophy hammered into weapons of conflict the precious vessels in which she had presented spiritual food to those hearts. It is in this polemical atmosphere that for good or evil we have been living for three centuries.

Bilibald Pirkheimer sprang from an ancient and distinguished family. He was born at Eichstadt in 1470, and was the son of Johannes Pirkheimer, who was in the service and stood high in the favour of the Archbishop Sigmund of Austria. For music he early displayed an ardent relish and exceeding talent. But the clangour of arms had soon more attraction for him than music, and he gave himself up with passion to all military exercises and feats. It was very unwillingly, therefore, that he went, at his father's desire, to learn law at the university of Padua, where, however, not law but the Greek language formed his principal study. After residing at After residing at Padua three years he went thence to Pavia. Here he greatly extended the range of his literary and scientific pursuits, including mathematics, astronomy, history, but especially archæ ology. When he had spent four years at Pavia in learned labours he returned to his native country. In the year 1499 the war broke out between the Swiss and the Suabian Alliance. At the head of the Alliance stood the Emperor Maximilian. Pirkheimer was chosen commander of the troops which the city of Nurnberg contributed to the Alliance, and, though the campaign ended disastrously for the allies, his skill and bravery were cordially confessed by friends and by foes. He carried back with him from the war something better than the shame of defeat. He was inspired with the warmest respect for the Swiss, though he had seen them only by the light of clashing swords. He wrote a history of Switzerland and also of the war in which he had just been engaged, and both with such impartiality and even with such fervent praise of the enemy, that no one could have suspected that he had stood face to face with the Swiss in hot and deadly strife. By the GENT. MAG. VOL. XXXVII.

citizens of Nurnberg he was elected to the highest offices which they had it in their power to confer upon him, and was frequently sent by them as Ambassador, first to the Emperor Maximilian and afterwards to Charles the Fifth. He likewise represented Nurnberg at several of the Imperial diets with the sagacity of the statesman and the eloquence of the orator. His political occupations however did not diminish his zeal in the cause of science nor interrupt his literary progress. He purchased for large sums the best editions of the Greek and Latin classics, and made a collection of rare and valuable manuscripts. His love for art led to an intimate friendship between him and Albert Durer, which continued to the death of the latter about two years before his own. The early decease of a beloved wife clouded a life whose general flow was prosperous and serene. He also suffered excruciating torments from frequent attacks of the gout. The greatest and best men of his time gave him their affection and esteem. To him Ulrich von Hutten breathed all his troubles and perplexities, and gladly accepted his counsels, in which the tenderness of the brother and the wisdom of the father were beautifully blended. Pirkheimer died in his sixtieth year as universally lamented as he had been universally honoured; his last words were, "May God bless my native land, and send to the Church peace!" Eoban Hess celebrated his virtues in a noble Latin elegy.

Hutten, when sending the Misaulus to Pirkheimer, requested his friend's honest impartial opinion regarding it. This he freely communicated in a brief Latin letter plentifully interlarded with Greek, which was then as lavishly used to spoil good Latin as French is now used to spoil good English. He expressed, half in jest half in earnest, his wonder that Hutten, whose experience of court life had been so small, should venture to speak with so knowing an air of its secrets. Only after moving hourly in it for long years ought the author to have thought of delineating its peculiarities and unveiling its corruptions. He breathed an ardent wish that Hutten would escape its dangers and deceptions, and concluded with generous admiration of

D

Ulrich's genius, character, and learning.

To Pirkheimer's letter Hutten replied in a long Latin epistle, written with great eloquence and earnestness, and containing many interesting details respecting his past history, his present mode of life, and the ruling aspirations of his nature. A portion of this epistle will always retain much value, that which describes the miserable and monotonous existence led by the feudal lords in their strongholds. Those who are so enchanted by reading historical romances whose subjects are drawn from the Middle Ages, will find nothing of the romantic here. Something between the gloomiest prison and the filthiest farmhouse, such was the feudal stronghold, according to Ulrich von Hutten, who had been born and had spent his early years in one. Now and then into the gloom and the filth was a supply of hard knocks thrown by way of variety, and hard knocks are romantic enough to read about. Still we are no Utilitarians, and would not deprive our brethren of the pleasure which they find in idealising all history into fable. There must have been in Hutten an unconquerable spirit, such as is seldom found in a mortal. During long years, besides his other sorrows, afflictions, and misfortunes, he had suffered an amount and intensity of physical torment such as, if delineated with as much detail as his German biographers have bestowed on it, would appal the least sensitive of our readers. The numerous remedies which he tried were often more painful than the disease itself. The sight of such incessant and accumulated pangs induced a friend to counsel him to terminate with his own hand a life crowded only with misery. From this dark and desperate deed Hutten's principles and his stoical energy of character alike shrank. The kind friend then thought that it would be an act of signal mercy to do for him what his silly scruples restrained him from doing for himself. The scheme was not accomplished, as the kind friend probably did not find other kind friends ready to cooperate with him in it. About the time that the Misaulus was published Hutten was persuaded by the physician Stromer to submit to a more

regular and lengthened course of treatment than he had yet tried. This was followed by the most beneficial effects, not the least striking the prodigious intellectual activity which Hutten at this time displayed. But, while hurling his impetuous polemical energy in all directions, now throwing a fatal dart at monks and monkery, now at courts and courtiers, now at the lethargy of the German princes and their political indifference, now at the corruptions and despotic pretensions of Rome, he was summoned by a concourse of events to directer and deadlier warfare than that of the pen with his old foe and the foe of his race, Duke Ulrich of Wurtemberg.

The complaints against the Duke accumulated in number and in force at the Emperor's throne; the Hutten family and the German nobility were loud in their cry for revenge; the Dukes of Bavaria demanded satisfaction for the injuries and insults which had been heaped on their sister, now a fugitive with them; denunciations of the Duke's violence arose from every quarter; the Emperor himself had frequently been offended by the rebellious spirit which the Duke had displayed toward him; he resolved therefore to chastise Ulrich, signally and potently, for his turbulence, depravity, and disobedience, and he appointed the celebrated Francis von Sickingen commander of the troops to be sent against the haughty and lawless prince.

Sickingen was the accomplished type of the true and valorous knight: most a hero when most abounded around him the unheroic; great in prosperity, but far greater in misfortune; boundlessly ambitious in an age when not to be ambitious would have been a cowardice and a crime, his magnanimity transcended his ambition. From his earliest youth men remembered how much his heart was fixed, not on high things alone, but on the highest. In all his enterprises, however insignificant they might be in themselves, there was something marvellous and extraordinary from the plenitude of pith which he poured into them, and from the Titan's stamp which he left on his most trifling actions. Rich, in possession of some of the noblest castles along the Rhine, joining to the thirst for military re

nown military skill, only surpassed by his military daring, with a clear glance and a political sagacity, which were never at fault except when the chivalry of his character too grandly predominated, he had not to reveal by colossal feat all that he had of colossal faculty before acquiring wide__and kingly influence in Suabia and Fran

conia.

With a weighty arm he had a no less weighty speech; a speech raised like his entire manhood above the little, the mean, and the vulgar. He expressed himself with exceeding dignity; yet the deeper and the distincter impression he gave of his dignity by word or utterance, the less could the most jealous and envious eye and the most sensitive temper detect an insatiate arrogance or an aristocratic pride. Frank, genial, and with the grace of the high-born, the less he claimed honour and obedience from others the more promptly were obedience and honour offered. The virtues of a time which, with its good and its evil, was passing for ever away, he aggrandised and embellished with the aspirations of an age whose budding developments promised such grand and hallowing results for humanity. Still he was a feudal nobleman, and could not break away from the harsh and rude necessities of his position. Nor could he be expected to be free from the prejudices of his class. And as more than half of every man's strength lies in his prejudices, such freedom in him would have been a sign of weakness not of vigour. Much of his life had been spent in what was then considered a glory, not a disgrace, perpetual feuds with cities and princes; but he never degenerated, as was then but too common with feudal lords, into the mere freebooter, who differed from other robbers only by taking his spoil to a castle instead of a cave, and who did not make a bad deed better by simply having a coat of arms to emblazon or to conceal it. Scorning such ignoble pursuits of his noble brethren, it was rather Sickingen's generous aim and strenuous effort to be a refuge for the persecuted and a champion of the oppressed. And at a season when there was little law but the imperious will of persons in exalted station, and amid the confusion

springing from the crash of so many opposing wills, the shield of men like Sickingen must often have been salvation and guard to many a defenceless head, and the gleam of their sword must often have brought light and order into the chaos. It is a pity to take our notions of what the feudal system was in its origin, its growth, and its decline, from such books as Guizot's Lectures on Civilization. The ancients were perhaps wise in confining history entirely to the chronicle of events. To record under a general name, and that an abstraction, a crowd of most diverse circumstances, and to present likewise a picture of many institutions no less diverse, can lead to little but pedantry, sophistry, and falsehood. Allow a Frenchman method and analysis, and he will make a book for you on any subject, but especially on the feudal system. Allow a German three pages of quotations and six pages of notes to every page of text, and he will do the same. How much better would the ingenuity of the one and the learning of the other be employed in portraying for us with most faithful energy stalwart souls like Francis von Sickengen.

Sickingen was born on the 1st of March, 1481, of a family no less ancient than distinguished. He received a careful education, one not merely suited to his rank, but one introducing him to those new lights of science which were breaking forth upon the world. He served when young with so much bravery under the imperial banner in a campaign against the Venetians, as to attract the attention of Maximilian, who had the true knight's glance for all knightly qualities. Sickingen's daring and energetic character and brilliant achievements had already made him a famous man in Germany, when in 1513 he became involved in one of those affairs which so well illustrate the period at which he lived. For a long time a deadly feud had existed between the Bishop and the Municipal Council of Worms. Among other results flowing from that feud was the expulsion of the chief magistrate by a democratic faction. The magistrate appealed for justice and aid to the Emperor. An imperial commission restored him and his satel