branch of poetry in which we find a certain originality, the didactic and satiric. The first beginnings of this new kind of poetry carry us back to the age of Walther von der Vogelweide. Many of his verses are satirical, political, and didactic; and it is supposed, on very good authority, that Walther was the author of an anonymous didactic poem, “Freidank’s Bescheidenheit.” By Thomasin von Zerclar, or Tommasino di Circlaria, we have a metrical composition on manners, the “Italian Guest,” which likewise belongs to the beginning of the thirteenth century.(7) Somewhat later we meet, in the works of the Stricker, with the broader satire of the middle classes; and toward the close of the century, Hugo von Trimberg, in his “Renner,” addresses himself to the lower ranks of German society, and no longer to princes, knights, and ladies. How is this to be accounted for? Poetry was evidently changing hands again. The Crusades had made the princes and knights the representatives and leaders of the whole nation; and during the contest between the imperial and the papal powers, the destinies of Germany were chiefly in the hands of the hereditary nobility. The literature, which before that time was entirely clerical, had then become worldly and chivalrous. But now, when the power of the emperors began to decline, when the clergy was driven into taking a decidedly anti-national position, when the unity of the empire was well-nigh destroyed, and princes and prelates were asserting their independence by plunder and by warfare, a new element of society rose to the surface,—the middle classes,—the burghers of the free towns of Germany. They were forced to hold together, in order to protect themselves against their former protectors. They fortified their cities, formed corporations, watched over law and morality, and founded those powerful leagues, the first of which, the Hansa, dates from 1241. Poetry also took refuge behind the walls of free towns; and at the fireside of the worthy citizen had to exchange her gay, chivalrous, and romantic strains, for themes more subdued, practical, and homely. This accounts for such works as Hugo von Trimberg’s “Renner,” as well as for the general character of the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Poetry became a trade like any other. Guilds were formed, consisting of master-singers and their apprentices. Heinrich Frauenlob is called the first Meistersänger; and during the fourteenth, the fifteenth, and even the sixteenth centuries, new guilds or schools sprang up in all the principal towns of Germany. After order had been restored by the first Hapsburg dynasty, the intellectual and literary activity of Germany retained its centre of gravitation in the middle classes. Rudolf von Hapsburg was not gifted with a poetical nature, and contemporaneous poets complain of his want of liberality. Attempts were made to revive the chivalrous poetry of the Crusades by Hugo von Montfort and Oswald von