March 7.

On the 7th of March, 1755, died Thomas Wilson, the venerable bishop of Sodor and Man, in the ninety-third year of his age. He was born of humble parents, at Burton, a village in the hundred of Wirrel, Cheshire, where his ancestors had passed their unambitious lives for several ages. From Chester school he went to the university of Dublin, which was then a custom with Lancashire and Cheshire youths designed for the church. His first preferment was a curacy under Dr. Sherlock, his maternal uncle, then rector of Win

wick; whence he went into the family of the earl of Derby, as chaplain, and tutor to his lordship's sons. At that period he refused the rich living of Baddesworth in Yorkshire, because, in his then situation, he could not perform the duties of it. The bishopric of Sodor and Man, which had been long vacant, was so reluctantly received by him, that it might be said he was forced into it. Baddesworth was again offered to him in commendam, and again refused. In his sequestered diocese he was the father and the friend of his flock. He repeatedly rejected richer bishoprics, saying, “he would not part with his wife because she was poor." His works, in two volumes 4to., prove that he deserved whatever could have been offered to him.

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Bishop Horne, when Dean of Canterbury,gave the following character of Bishop Wilson's Works, in a letter to his son: am charmed with the view the books afford me of the good man your father, in his diocese and in his closet. The Life, the Sacra Privata, the Maxims, the Paro

chialia, &c., exhibit altogether a complete and lovely portrait of a Christian Bishop, going through all his functions with consummate prudence, fortitude, and pietythe pastor and father of a happy island for nearly threescore years. The Sermons are the affectionate addresses of a parent to his children, descending to the minutest particulars, and adapted to all their wants."

March 7. Day breaks

Sun rises.

sets

h. m. 4 30

6 23

5 27 7 30

Twilight ends Daffodilly, or double Lent lily, begins to blow, and in the course of the month makes a fine show in the gardens: thin pale contrasts well with the deep yellow of the crocus.

The Minnesingers, which literally signifies Love-singers, flourished in Germany badours of Provence, Castille, Catalonia, contemporaneously with the eminent trouand Italy. They sung, or wrote, first in the Saxon, the old Friesic, the more modern low German, comprehending the Anglonether-Saxon, and the Belgic, or Dutch dialect of the northern tribes; secondly, bian, and kindred dialects of the highthe Francic, Alemanic, Burgundian, SuaGerman, or south-western tribes. Minnesingers is in this latter, the highgreater portion of the poetry of the German, or Suabian tongue.

The

Under the Saxon emperors, the literature of Germany made great progress: its brightest age of poetry may be reckoned

from the commencement of the Suabian

dynasty, in the beginning of the twelfth century, and it flourished most amidst the storms of the empire. On the death of mily, his nephew, Frederick, duke of Conrad III., the first emperor of that faSuabia, surnamed Red-beard, was elected Under his reign the band of the Minneemperor, and bore the title of Frederick I. singers flourished, and at their head, as the earliest of date, Henry of Veldig, who, in one of his poems, remarkably laments the degeneracy of that early age. He says, "When true love was professed, then also was honor cultivated; now, by night and by day, evil manners are learnt. Alas! how may he who witnesses the present, and witnessed the past, lament the decay of virtue!" Frederick I. joined the third papal crusade, accomof the east, held his court in the poetic panied his armies through the fairy regions lands of the south of Europe, admired

⚫ 8vo. Longman and Co., 1825.

the lays of the troubadours of Provence, stimulated the muse of his native minnesingers, and fostered the literature of Germany. There is a little piece ascribed to this emperor which is "curious as a commentary on the manners of the age," and testifies discrimination derived from travel and observation

Plas my cavallier Francés,
E la donna Catallana,
E l' onrar del Gynoés,

E la cour de Kastellana,
Lo cantar Provensallés,

E la dansa Trevizana,
E lo corps Aragonés,

E la perla (?) Julliana,
Los mans e cara d' Anglés,
E lo donzel de Thuscana.
Translation.

I like a

cavalier Francés'

And a Catalonian dame;

The courtesy of the Genoese,

And Castilian dignity;

The Provence songs my ears to please,
And the dance of the Trevisan;
The graceful form of the Arragoneze,
And the pearl (?) of the Julian;
An English hand and face to see,

And a page of Tuscany. Frederick I. died suddenly in 1190. His memory is preserved by traditions of his popularity, and by grateful attachment to the ruins of his palace at Gelnhausen. A legend places him within a subterranean palace in the caverns of the Hartz Forest, reposing in a trance upon a marble throne, with his beard flowing on the ground, awakening at intervals to reward any child of song who seeks his lonely

court.

His son and successor, the emperor, Henry VI., was himself a minnesinger. Frederick II. called to his court the most celebrated poets, orators, and philosophers of the age. He wrote in the Provençal tongue, and there remain valuable memorials of his talents and zeal for the promotion of knowledge, while engaged in foreign wars and surrounded by domestic treachery. Heavy misfortunes befel the successors of his house. Conrad IV. struggled in vain; and Conrad the younger, another minnesinger, succeeded to the crown of Sicily and Naples only to perish on the scaffold, in 1268, by the machinations of the Pope and Charles of Anjou.

Upon the extinction of the Suabian line of emperors, the minnesingers and literature of Germany declined. Rodolph

of Hapsburgh ascended the throne in 1273; and, about that period, Conrad of Wurtzburgh, an eminent minnesinger, lamented the failure of his art to attract, in lines of which the following are a translation:

Unwilling stays the throng
To hear the minstrel's song;
Yet cease I not to sing,

Though small the praise it bring;
Even if on desert waste
My lonely lot were cast,
Unto my harp, the same,
My numbers would I frame;
Though never ear were found
To hear the lonely sound,
Still should it echo round;
As the lone nightingale
Her tuneful strain sings on
To her sweet self alone,
Whiling away the hour
Deep in her leafy bow'r,
Where night by night she loves
Her music to prolong,

And makes the hills and groves
Re-echo to her song.

With the fourteenth century commenced a freebooting age, and an entire change in the literature of Germany. Minstrels could not travel amidst the turbulence of wars and feuds. The "meisters," masters, or professors of poetry, and their “songschools," prescribed pedantic rules, which fettered the imagination; poetry sunk into silly versifying, and the minnesingers became extinct.

In the fourteenth century, Rudiger von Manesse, a senator of Zurich, and his sons, formed a splendid MS. collection of lyric poets, which is repeatedly noticed during the sixteenth century, as seen at different places by inquirers into the antiquities of German song, and was at last found in the king's library at Paris. The songs of each poet are introduced by an illumination, seeming to represent an event in the poet's life, or to be illus-, trative of his character; and accompanied by heraldic decorations, executed with a care and precision usual to such ornaments in the albums of Germany. The elder Manesse appears to have corresponded with the most eminent men of his country, and held a kind of academy or conversazione, where all poetry which could be collected was examined, and the best pieces were enrolled in his "lieder-buoch."

The lyric poetry of the minnesingers combines and improves upon all the pleasing features of the Provençal muse;

and is more highly and distinctively characteristic of subdued and delicate feeling. It breathes the sentiments of innocent and tender affection-admiration of his lady's perfections, joy in her smiles, grief at her. frowns, and anxiety for her welfareexpressed by the poet in a thousand accents of simplicity and truth. These ancient "love-singers" seem to revel in the charms of nature, in her most smiling forms: the gay meadows, the budding groves, the breezes and the flowers, songs of birds, grateful odors, and delightful colors, float and sparkle in their song, and the bounding rhythm and musical elegance of the verse often correspond with the beauty and effervescent passion of the words. The following verse, by the minnesinger Von Buwenburg, exemplifies the spirit with which these topics were often selected and dwelt upon. Say, what is the sparkling light before us

O'er the grassy mead, all bright and fair, As the spirit of mirth did wanton o'er us? Well, well, I see that summer is there; By the flow'rs upspringing, and birds sweet : singing,

And animals playing :-and, lo! the hand Of Nature her beautiful offspring bringing,

All ranged in their seasons at her command! May heav'n complete thee, thou fair creation, For such pleasures as these are joy's true foundation!

In common with the fashion of the day, and in the manner of the troubadours, the minnesingers blended religious, with amatory ideas, without any seeming of irreverent intention; and some of their lyric pieces are devoted entirely to religious topics, such as praises of the Virgin, or of a favorite saint.

With the ascendancy of chivalric feelings, there arose a spirit of devotion for the sex, which, in France, was carried extravagantly high. To women were ascribed all the attributes of sovereignty; and courts of justice were created to enforce obedience to a new code of laws, and to dignify all sorts of caprice with the mimic consequence of judicial solemnity. These follies never attained to such a height among the Germans, who were not, in the eleventh or twelfth century, to be taught the respect and esteem due to the female sex. Even in their barbarian days Tacitus had extolled an example which Rome might have copied. Chivalry and civilization only mellowed ancient sympathies, and aroused purer and more social affections than those

which usually characterize contemporary French society and literature.

There is a marked distinction between the lyric poetry of the two countries. The German is more chaste, tender, and delicate. The lays of the troubadours, whenever they emerge from cold and fanciful conceits, much oftener require pruning for modern eyes. The German songs are less metaphysical and spiritualized. They are less classical in their allusions, and may be ruder, but they breathe more of feeling, more of love for the beautiful in nature, and more of joy in her perfections. Among the lyrics of the troubadours there are very few if any instances of entire songs of joy, floating on in buoyancy of spirit, and glowing with general delight in natural objects-in the bursting promise of spring, or the luxu riant profusion of summer-like some of those of the minnesingers.

The metaphorical language of the minnesingers is often spirited. Thus, Henry of Morunge sings

Where now is gone my morning star?
Where now my sun? Its beams are fled.
Though at high noon it held afar
Its course above my humble head,
Yet gentle evening came, and then
It stoop'd from high to comfort me;
And I forgot its late disdain,
In transport living joyfully.
And, again, the same author-

Mine is the fortune of a simple child
That in the glass his image looks upon;
And, by the shadow of himself beguil❜d,
Breaks quick the brittle charm, and joy is

The

On the bright image of my lady fair: But ah! the dream of my delight is past, And love and rapture yield to dark despair. In the construction of their verses, the Germans seem entitled to the merit of great originality. Their versification is almost universally different, and must have required tunes as various. Iambus is the only foot of the troubadours; the minnesingers have almost as many as the classical writers. The subject, not the form, characterizes the German song; and every poet gives vent to his joys or his sorrows, in such strains as may be most accordant to his feelings, unshackled by such laws as were imposed in the decay of the art, when the "meisters" or masters," began to make a trade of the

muse.