The youth now matures more and more to manhood. Poetry and science, commerce and industry, excited and promoted by the general intercourse and universal tendency to one aim among the European nations, become the ornament and bliss of human life. Let us not, then, look with a contemptuous smile upon an event, so important to the culture of mankind, as the crusades. Let us not deem them the climax of human folly. They form the Argonaut expedition of European history, and, like it, are a poetical meteor in the biography of mankind.

If we have seen in the emperor, as the head of chivalry or knighthood, the representative of worldly honour; and in the pope, as the head of the clergy, that of faith; we must now seek a representative of love, as the mediatrix between these two contending elements, as above stated. But, gentlemen, no lay or clerical dignitary steps forward in the field of history as the exclusive claimant of this honour. Love had, indeed, its representative in the poets, who were even styled the singers of love, minnesingers: but we find them wielding the sceptre, as well as the crosier, brandishing the sword, and administering the chalice; though it must be confessed that the clergy disputed, neither so eagerly nor so successfully, with the knighthood for the poetical laurel, as for other and more substantial advantages. Poetry it was, which became the ruler of the passions, that softened the horrors of rugged war,

and, borne on the wings of fancy and feeling, celebrated the triumphs of chivalric valour, of constant faith, of eternal and of earthly love. The silver tones of the Provençal troubadours called forth the sonorous and heaven-ascending voices of the German minne-singers. Read the lyrical songs of Heinrich von Veldeck; simple, innocent, and mild as the summer breeze, unclosing the floweret of the field. Read the three wonderful epics of Wolfram von Eschenbach, Percival, Titurel, and Lohengrim, and you will be undecided whether to admire more the skilful delineation of character, the heroic virtue and mental purity of his heroes, and the devotedness and gentle piety of his heroines, or the amazing power of imagination, by which he leads you through the mazes of fanciful adventure, and introduces you within the circle of domestic life. Read the romantic epos of Gottfried von Strasburg, Tristan and Isalde, or the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide, and even those of the last minne-singer of the thirteenth century, Conrad von Würzburg, and every where you will find the religion of life represented in poetry. Three hundred minne-singers were the choristers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose songs resounded through all the provinces of Germany, every where exciting the feeling of religion and of love, and the deepest veneration for the female sex; a veneration which, since that time, has ever remained a ground feature of the German national character and literature. The minne-song is one of the most

striking appearances in the history of poetry. In it, the lyrical is the prevailing tendency. Every where the life in nature and God is mysteriously celebrated and portrayed; and, bounded as is the lyrical horizon, the minne-singers displayed within it all the charms of a rich and luxuriant fancy. Life, with its wars and broils, its splendour of chivalry and love, and admiration of the fair, was always placed in relation with the mysteries of faith and heavenly love.

The middle ages had no detached class of spiritual songs, such as we find in later times. The earthly and the heavenly is so closely mingled as to be inseparable; and even in the epic poems of Eschenbach, Gottfried von Strasburg, and Conrad von Würzburg, religion is the basis ofthe power of the poet; evincing the tendency, conscious or unconscious, to unite the conflicting elements. Love, "minne," in the hands of the poet, is the cement for the construction of his fanciful buildings: by love he reconciles emperor and pope, chivalry and clergy, church and statę, honour and faith, earth and heaven. He, the herald of peace, standing on the neutral ground, is a conciliator, uniting in his breast the ideas of honour and faith, and combining them by the power of love. By the light of his songs alone, an otherwise incomprehensible age becomes intelligible for the historical inquirer.

In tracing the several degrees of human culture, we may mourn over the evil inclination of the boy and of the youth, while we rejoice at their occasional

exertions for the noble and the exalted; yet we cannot wonder that they thus err and sin. The boy conceives and acts as boy; the youth as youth. As little should this surprise us, as that we ourselves did not, in our boyhood, act as men.

In the strife between worldly power, as the representative of honour, and the hierarchy, as that of faith, we observe the same passionate conflict which is found in a youth endowed with an easily susceptive mind. In the youth of man, honour, as ambition, draws towards the earthly; religious feeling to the heavenly and when the latter gains the ascendant, still the youth has not won the true way to his safety; because reason is not yet awakened, as the leading principle in its full and perfect strength. Hence he often falls into error, on his progress to brighter regions. In one instance, superstition darkens his mind in another, bigotry paralyzes the power of vigorous action. He then seeks consolation in symbolic forms, which satisfy him in some measure, because they allude, however darkly, to the foreboding which fills his soul. On the way to light, though the sense of the celestial has decidedly awakened his thirst for truth, yet he so often goes astray in the darksome by-paths of error, that he not unfrequently appears lost for a higher life. In atonements and empty forms of prayer he would fain find something meritorious. Superstition and sophistry combine to his misguiding: but at length a clearer mental day begins to dawn within him. The more he expe

riences in life, the more he suffers and strives,the more does reason lift him into light, rending the darkling veil which overclouds his soul, and threatens its destruction.

Such, gentlemen, is the picture presented by history of the state of European mankind during the middle ages: but, before I offer you some general remarks, in further elucidation of this state, allow me to make particular allusion to the changes, which took place in the moral and intellectual life of Germany, during the fifteenth century.

When with the extinction of the glorious house of Hohenstaufen, in the middle of the thirteenth century, the struggle between the champions of worldly honour and of faith had subsided, the latter having gained an undisputed ascendancy,then the tones of the singers of love also died away, as nothing was left for them to reconcile-no theme for them to celebrate. Religious enthusiasm was breathing its last. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the plans and foundations of those monuments of devotion, the venerable domes of Germany-hymns, as it were, eternalized in that form, for the glorification of faith-were conceived and laid, but the fainting spirit of religion, in the succeeding centuries, was insufficient for inspiring the cooler descendants to execute and complete the grand conceptions of their forefathers; and thus the unfinished temples stand, the broken accents of expiring piety. The exalted spirit of chivalry, witnessed by historical appearances, such