deal with peasant scenes; and Albert Dürer and other artists of the times have sketched over and over again the peasant, his house and cot-yard, his village and his daily life. We can, in part, reconstruct the old peasant life and its surroundings. Only it must be remembered that the life varied not only in different parts of Germany, but in the same districts and decades under different rural proprietors; for the peasant was so dependent on his over-lord that the character of the proprietor counted for much in the condition of the people. The village artisan did not exist. The peasants lived by themselves apart from all other classes of the population. That is the universal statement. They carried the produce of their land and their live-stock to the nearest town, sold it in the market-place, and bought there what they needed for their life and work. They dwelt in villages fortified after a fashion; for the group of houses was surrounded sometimes by a wall, but usually by a stout fence, made with strong stakes and interleaved branches. This was entered by a gate that could be locked. Outside the fence, circling the whole was a deep ditch crossed by a “falling door” or drawbridge. Within the fence among the houses there was usually a small church, a public-house, a house or room (_Spielhaus_) where the village council met and where justice was dispensed. In front stood a strong wooden stake, to which criminals were tied for punishment, and near it always the stocks, sometimes a gallows, and more rarely the pole and wheel for the barbarous mediæval punishment “breaking on the wheel.” The houses were wooden frames filled in with sun-dried bricks, and were thatched with straw; the chimneys were of wood protected with clay. The cattle, fuel, fodder, and family were sheltered under the one large roof. The timber for building and repairs was got from the forest under regulations set down in the _Weisthümer_, and the peasants had leave to collect the fallen branches for firewood, the women gathering and carrying, and the men cutting and stacking under the eaves. All breaches of the forest laws were severely punished (in some of the _Weisthümer_ the felling of a tree without leave was punished by beheading); so was the moving of landmarks; for wood and soil were precious. Most houses had a small fenced garden attached, in which were grown cabbages, greens, and lettuce; small onions (cibölle, _Scotticé_ syboes), parsley, and peas; poppies, garlic, and hemp; apples, plums, and, in South Germany, grapes; as well as other things whose mediæval German names are not translatable by me. Wooden beehives were placed in the garden, and a pigeon-house usually stood in the yard.