and effective spell of the spiritual weapons, they employed them for the defence and extension of their temporal power; and Gregory VII. must be said to have merited the rod of empire, because he wielded it so well. It is, however, erroneous to suppose that he was the sole author of hierarchical supremacy, any more than Luther was that of the Reformation. Centuries had worked in the rise of that supremacy, and centuries were necessary to its decline.

The abuse of power must eventually operate as a furtherance of human civilization; and the popes, once in possession of the spell of spiritual dominion, by their intemperate and flagrant abuse of it, caused its overthrow; for a remedy grows out of the excess of every evil. When the popes employed their spiritual power solely for the increase of earthly domination,―when in mind, manners, and morals, they had become mere temporal princes, when their champions stood far below the children of this world in moral dignity,-then no surrounding halo, no excommunicating spells, could protect or assist them; and the sun of papal power set, never again to rise with pristine brightness on the christian horizon. In the gradual decline of this spiritual power, which abused the temporal means in its possession, we find one of the most splendid triumphs which human nature has effected. For neither worldly might, nor emperor, nor king, subdued the pope; but that eternal tendency of the human mind towards per

fection, by which the hierarchy first rose, and by which, alone, it fell.

After the imperial power, which was about to become injurious to mankind through the proud and heedless emperor Henry IV. (at the close of the eleventh century) had been suppressed by the hierarchy; this latter body opened to European Christendom, at that period impatient for action, a field, wherein religious and poetical activity were equally called into exercise. I allude to the crusades, which, though they certainly display the bewilderment of youth, yet, at the same time, evince the highest exercise of the human mind-self-denial; and before the historical tribunal they should be judged with reference to the religious and poetical enthusiasm, out of which they arose, instead of being coldly deemed a mischievous error in mankind. They may, indeed, have sprung from sources, which the utilitarian intellect of modern times condemns as fantastic; still the fact of this immense exertion of moral strength remains undisturbed, a beautiful monument of human disinterestedness in the pursuit of one grand idea. The crusades were called forth, not by the power of the popes, nor by the fanaticism of Peter the Hermit, but by the spirit of the time. As in the first centuries of the christian era, we see the north-eastern nations, till then unknown to the civilized world, set in motion by an undefined and instinctive impulse, for which no political cause can be given; so, in the middle ages, we see the nations

as it were electrically moved, and though the movement may, in great measure, be attributed to religious feeling, still this would have scarcely sufficed, had not the want of an universally pervading agitation been felt among mankind. The popes perceived this feeling, and gave it the direction most to their advantage; acting herein like man, who cannot create the lightning, yet conducts it where he pleases.

Without these crusades, during the struggle between the spiritual and temporal power, first excited by Hildebrand and continued by his successors in the papacy, Europe might have been subjected to the mighty arm of the German emperor. A sort of Roman universal empire would have established itself; and to this, as we have seen, the spirit of Christianity was diametrically opposed. The crusades made a salutary diversion in favour of the hierarchy, and preserved the nations from an universal despotism. How wonderfully, during the ferment of this stormy time, we see the germs of modern European civilization develop themselves! Beside the class of knights, that of the burgesses stands forth in perfect form, while the distinctions of bond and freeman gradually disappear. The rapid advance, made by the class of burgesses, in power and influence, is seen in the struggle between the emperor Barbarossa and the confederate towns of Lombardy, as also in the more recent confederacy of the Suabian towns, and that of the Hans towns.

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