for the pure interest of Protestantism.  The German intellect did eventually gain something from this political result, because it interrupted the literary absolutism which reigned at Vienna; no doubt literature grew more popular and German, but it did not very strikingly improve the great advantage, for there was at last exhaustion instead of a generously nourishing enthusiasm, and the great ideas of the period became the pieces with which diplomatists carried on their game.  The Volkslied (popular song) came into vogue again, but it was not so fresh and natural as before; Opitz, one of the best poets of this period, is worth reading chiefly when he depicts his sources of consolation in the troubles of the time.  Long poetical bulletins were written, in the epical form, to describe the battles and transactions of the war.  They had an immense circulation, and served the place of newspapers.  They were bright and characteristic enough for that; and indeed newspapers in Germany date from this time, and from the doggerel broadsides of satire and description which then supplanted minstrels of whatsoever name or guild, as they were carried by post, and read in every hamlet.[A] But the best of these poems were pompous, dull, and tediously elaborated.  They have met the fate of newspapers, and are now on file.  The more considerable poets themselves appeared to be jealous of the war; they complained bitterly that Mars had displaced Apollo; but later readers regret the ferocious sack of Magdeburg, or the death of Gustavus Adolphus, more than the silencing of all those pens.

[Footnote A:  Newspapers proper appeared as early as 1615 in Germany.  But these rhymed gazettes were very numerous.  They were more or less bulky pamphlets, with pithy sarcastic programmes for titles, and sometimes a wood or copper cut prefixed.  A few of them were of Catholic origin, and one, entitled Post-Bole, (The Express,) is quite as good as anything issued by the opposite party.]

On the other hand, Spain, while fighting for religion and a secure nationality, had her Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon, all of whom saw service in the field, and other distinguished names, originators of literary forms and successful cultivators of established ones.  They created brilliant epochs for a bigoted and cruel country.  All that was noble or graceful in the Spanish spirit survives in works which that country once stimulated through all the various fortunes of popular wars.  But they were not wars for the sake of the people; the country has therefore sunk away from the literature which foretold so well how great she might have become, if she had been fortunate enough to represent, or to sympathize with, a period of moral and spiritual ideas.  Her literary forms do not describe growth, but arrested development.

A different period culminated in the genius of Milton, whose roots were in that golden age when England was flowering into popular freedom.  He finally spoke for the true England, and expressed the vigorous thoughts which a bloody epoch cannot quench.  Some of his noblest things were inspired by the exigencies of the Commonwealth, which he saw “as an eagle nursing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam.”