We note this versatility of feeling, but hardly for the purpose of blaming it; for indeed it is the peculiar characteristic of the middle ages thus to play with our sympathies. They present so many and such different phases, their institutions are capable of being viewed under such opposite lights, that it requires more care and watchfulness than is perhaps consistent with simple honesty of thought and feeling, to preserve one's self from these fluctuations of sentiment. One who yields unaffectedly to the genuine impressions which the history of this period produces, will find his _Ohs_ and his _Hahs_ breaking out in a very contradictory manner. That knight, with lance at rest which challenges the whole fighting world--whatever can be tilted at,--who would not be that knight? But the man cannot read; and thinks an old woman can bewitch him by her spells, and that his priest, by some spell also, can absolve him. That monk, with folded arms over a heart so well folded too--who would not be that monk? But the man has mingled asceticism with his piety till he knows not which is which; and let a woman in her youth and beauty traverse his path, he crosses himself, as if not the angel of this world, but the demon of another had appeared before him. In looking at these phantasmagoria of the past, we must be content to see and to feel for the moment; there is no stereotyped expression of face with which we can regard the whole. We have soon exhausted our critical cavils, and shall look at leisure through these volumes for some of those points which interested us during their perusal. Amongst the first things we had noted for quotation is an account of our old friend Gotz von Berlichingen--him of the Iron Hand--which we somehow liked the better for there being no allusion to the drama of Goethe. Nobody whom the information could in the least interest, needed to be told that it was the hero of the drama whose real life and adventures he was getting acquainted with. We find, however, on re-perusal, that this account is too long to be extracted: we leave it untouched for those who peruse the work; and shall make our first quotation from the description of the Hanse Towns. Here is a curious passage, which shows that the mere collecting together in towns, and making some advance in the great art of money-getting, is no guarantee against superstitions as gross and ridiculous as any that haunt the boor in his cottage.