It was at such festivals as Heinrich von Veldecke describes at Mayence, in 1184, under Frederick I., that French and German poetry were brought face to face. It was here that high-born German poets learnt from French poets the subjects of their own romantic compositions. German ladies became the patrons of German poets; and the etiquette of French chivalry was imitated at the castles of German knights. Poets made bold for the first time to express their own feelings, their joys and sufferings, and epic poetry had to share its honors with lyric songs. Not only France and Germany, but England and Northern Italy were drawn into this gay society. Henry II. married Eleanor of Poitou, and her grace and beauty found eloquent admirers in the army of the Crusaders. Their daughter Mathilde was married to Henry the Lion, of Saxony, and one of the Provençal poets has celebrated her loveliness. Frenchmen became the tutors of the sons of the German nobility. French manners, dresses, dishes, and dances were the fashion everywhere. The poetry which flourished at the castles was soon adopted by the lower ranks. Travelling poets and jesters are frequently mentioned, and the poems of the “Nibelunge” and “Gudrun,” such as we now possess them, were composed at that time by poets who took their subjects, their best thoughts and expressions, from the people, but imitated the language, the metre, and the manners of the court poets. The most famous courts to which the German poets resorted, and where they were entertained with generous hospitality, were the court of Leopold, Duke of Austria (1198-1230), and of his son Frederick II.; of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, who resided at the Wartburg, near Eisenach (1190-1215); of Berthold, Duke of Zähringen (1186-1218); and of the Swabian Emperors in general. At the present day, when not only the language, but even the thoughts of these poets have become to most of us unintelligible and strange, we cannot claim for their poetry more than an historical interest. But if we wish to know the men who took a leading part in the Crusades, who fought with the Emperors against the Pope, or with the Pope against the Emperors, who lived in magnificent castles like that of the Wartburg, and founded cathedrals like that of Cologne (1248), we must read the poetry which they admired, which they composed or patronized. The subjects of their Romances cannot gain our sympathy. They are artificial, unreal, with little of humanity, and still less of nationality in them. But the mind of a poet like Wolfram von Eschenbach rises above all these difficulties. He has thoughts of his own, truly human, deeply religious, and thoroughly national; and there are expressions and comparisons in his poetry which had never been used before. His style, however, is lengthy, his descriptions tiresome, and his characters somewhat vague and unearthly. As critics, we should have to bestow on Wolfram von Eschenbach, on Gottfried von Strassburg, even on