to have dirt thrown in her face. At all events, it is very different from the logic of Father Nicholas Copernicus on the same subject. The latter has proved to the world that he could be a good priest, and a pious man, and at the same time put much confidence in his reason. It is no part of our design, however, to disparage Luther; our object in presenting the different phases of his character is merely to show that, while he was undoubtedly a man of genius, there was certainly nothing in his conduct, or in his writings, which any unprejudiced person should regard as a sufficient cause of dividing Christianity into different sects.

And if this be admitted, it must also be admitted that he has shown no good reason why those different sects-at least the most moderate of them, should not unite again. We may consider the life and writings of Calvin, and other Reformers, perhaps including Henry VIII., in a future number with the same view; but if we cannot see from the works of Luther, who was the Reformer in Chief, that Christians should be divided into a score or more of sects, each more or less hostile to all the rest, we can hardly be convinced by his brethren or disciples.

Although we have merely glanced at the subject in this paper, we think we have shown, from Luther's own testimony, and that of his most zealous Protestant biographers-without one word from any Catholic historianthat, after all, the old Church was a pretty respectable institution, even when the great Reformer first began to fulminate his denunciations against it. Nay, we fear that all our Protestant churches put together could not present so many learned men, or so many profound thinkers at the present day, as the Church of Rome did at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The secret of Luther's success did not consist in the errors of the old church, or in his superior knowledge of Scripture, and the eloquence and earnestness with which he communicated that knowledge; but in the printing press, which was then a novelty, and, consequently, an attraction to the masses. All who knew how, read then with avidity. The multitude are never very critical as to what they should receive or reject; but they were particularly ready then to receive new impressions, and we have shown that it was the interest of the ruling classes-those who were not so credulous-to encourage an innovation which would enable them to replenish their nearly exhausted treasuries.

ART. VII.-1. Parcival. Rittergedicht von Wolfram von Eschenbach. Uebersetzt und erläutert von DR. K. SIMROCK. Dritte Aus gabe. J. G. COTTA. Stuttgart & Augsburg.

2. VILMAR'S Literatur-Geschichte. Elfte Auflage. Marburg & Leipsig.

3. GERVINIUS. Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. 7 vols. Leipsig.

THE darkness, which for so many centuries rested upon the achievements of the middle ages, on the fields of literature and general culture, had at last been sufficiently dissipated to do away forever with the conceit which regarded that period as one of saddest ignorance and barbarisin, from which our wonderful era has sprung as if by a miracle. The only question now is, whether our literature and culture are so very far in advance of that era of "darkness and superstition ?" It is not the gothic architecture alone, any longer, which looms up out of those middle ages with its proud, heaven-ascending spires, but likewise a gothic philosophy and a gothic poetry of equal grandeur and daring. Erdmann's recent History of Philosophy, the philosophers of those "dark ages" have assigned to them double the space devoted to the philosophy of the bright classic age; and popular editions of the German poets of the middle ages are beginning to find as rapid a sale in Germany as those of the poets of Greece and Rome.

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It is a doubtful question now-a-days, with German literary critics, whether Goethe's Faust or Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parcival, be the greater poetical work of art, so far as such a comparison can be instituted between an epic poem and a tragedy; whilst it is universally acknowledged that the second period of German literature has produced no humourist who can in the least compare with Johann Fischart, or Fischartum, as old Burton calls him, whose writings are again becoming as popular as they were in his own times, when edition after edition of his various works could but ill supply the demand, and when crowds thronged the printing-houses on their first day of publication. It is true that Fischart, the contemporary of Luther, is not properly a man of the "dark ages." But the Parcival is certainly a true production of that much abused

epoch, and its extraordinary merit as a work of art, and the many editions of the various translations of it, bear indisputable witness. A book like this cannot be made popular, it must have true popular element-art-spirit-in it, or it perishes like other inferior productions.

This popular element, this high-art value, the poem of "Parcival" possesses, both in regard to its form and contents. As regards the latter, it has been properly compared to "Faust." There is somewhat of the Faust-element in it. It is the story of Faust before the Faust saga had originated, of a Faust not clad as yet in the gloomy raiments of a worn-out student, but in the knightly fashion of Sir Amadis. Instead of the pale alchemist, we have a valourous knight, the bravest of the brave. Instead of a search for abstract knowledge and wild sensual pleasure, we have a search for a tangible reality, for the actual, visible Divine itself, for the holy Graal; and instead of the external mediation of the holy Virgin, we have the internal mediation of purification of the heart. SeParcival, the child-like, innocent, implicitly faithful, dreamy boy, who, by his holy mission, is favoured to see the St. Graal, but, from a foolish concession to worldly teachings, fails to become its chosen king and protector, and who, thereupon, having learned the value of what he has spurned, must reconquer it and his worthiness to its protectorship, through many years of hard struggle and knightly adventures, is certainly a very different person from Johannes Faust, the jolly magician, or from Doctor Faust, the melan holy student of sciences; but, nevertheless, he is a Faust in that he is in search for the solution to the world-riddle; and it is this mystic search which gives the work its popularity.

As regards the form of "Parcival," it is that of an epic poem, and, as such, executed with great artistic skill, so far as the working out of the story and the connection of the parts into a whole are conerned; but it is deficient in beauty of metre, rhyme, melody, and style, wherein it falls sadly behind Dante's great poem, of which "Parcival" was the forerunner, and with which it is, in all other respects, worthy of comparison.

To properly appreciate this great work of the twelfth century, it will be necessary to dwell somewhat at length on the material which that age offered to the poet for his poem, for it is only by comparing the work of an artist with the crude material used for its construction, that we shall

be able to form a proper estimation of the power of the artist as such.

Two vast collections of sagas had been established at that time, and gathered around two of the world's greatest menKing Arthur and the Emperor Charlemagne. The literary excitement produced by the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicles, as well as the warlike character of the times and the movements of the crusaders, had scattered these romances over all Europe, and caused them to be intermixed with the legends and traditions of other nations. Thus it happened, for instance, that two strangers -Sir Tristram and Sir Parcival-were added to the list of the Knights of the Round Table; for originally neither the story of Tristram and Isold, nor the legend of Sir Parcival and the St. Graal, had connection with the story of King Arthur and his court. In the north of France particularly, where the French and the British met, the legends attached to King Arthur and to Charlemagne so interpenetrated each other, as often to be no longer distinguishable.

One fundamental distinction, however, always remains recognizable; a distinction, which amounts fully for the greater popularity enjoyed by the King Arthur legends, and which also explains, why Ariosto's famous poem, which celebrates the heroes of Charlemagne, has never become universally popular. This distinction is, moreover, curious in that it reverses the usual opinion respecting Northern and Southern characters, for it is the story of Charlemagne, which deals almost exclusively in adventures of prowess, of fights and battles; whereas the romance of King Arthur is constantly lit up by tales of love and of amorous passion. That, which is perhaps the only true historical moment of the Arthur legends, namely, the infidelity of his wife, has given thus, as it would seem, a colour to them, which made them the favourite romances of the people; for the sexual relations of all human relations the most important is also that which most interests in art. This love-colour of the Arthur legends, Tennyson, in his version, has likewise laid the principal stress upon. But while he thus remained true to the original character of these legends he sacrificed the interest of art. A great artist would have made Sir Parcival and his search for the St. Graal the centre of those adventures which Tennyson has merely strung together without

central unity. Tennyson's legends leave Prince Hamlet out. It is Eschenbach's great merit that he has arranged the adventures of the brilliant knights.of those legends in such a manner as to group them around the mystic central figure of Sir Parcival, who rides sadly over the world in search of that which is visible only to the pure of heart.

We have said that the figure of Sir Parcival did not originally belong to the Knights of the Round Table. Indeed, a mere glimpse at him, as he appears in the modern legend, shows his foreign character. His clumsiness, his fool's dress, his outspoken naiveté, his earnestness, his iguorance of wordly manners, and childish faith, his dreamy revery over the spots of blood-all this is utterly unlike the manners of the other knights; it has a German characteristic. The truth of it is, that Sir Parcival is an historical figure, like King Arthur, and that when he became legendary, many circumtances of old stories and traditious were attached to his history, and with such embellishments he was finally introduced into the rauks of the Round Table.

These legendary traits, which meet us constantly in the story of Sir Parcival, are easily traced. He is one of those favourite heroes of old Mother Goose stories, who are wise from sheer stupidity, whose frankness makes impropriety eminently proper, whose childish

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are more to the purpose than the wisdom of the learned, and whose general topsy-turviness of worldly behaviour and speech finally destroys the spell of some beautiful princess, by causing her to laugh, which she had not been able to do for many years. By means of these embellishments, the romantic Sir Parcival was created out of a certain Morvan Lez Breiz, of Brittany, who lived in the ninth century, and is celebrated in numerous ballads as the hero of many fights against Louis the Pious. The ballads tell how young Morvan was raised by his mother in strict seclusion from the world-she intending to keep him ignorant of its turmoils and battles-but how the child once went into the forest, and there met a knight, whom it took to be an angel; how the knight spoke kindly to the child, and thus awakened in the boy's heart a passionate desire for kuightly adventures; how, finally, the boy ran away from home, and became the successful knight known in history. But when, after ten years of adventure, he returned to his home, he found that his mother had died of a broken heart.