The tide of the time is with us.[73] Our once famous Godfrey of Strasburg is forgotten. Wolfram von Eschenbach is the universal model. His _Parzival and Titurel_ live on the lips of the many rhymesters and minstrels who wander from town to town now, as once they did from court to court and castle to castle. It is the religiousness and the learning of Wolfram that finds favour for him and countless imitators. This is the good sign I mean. Our singers have turned preachers. They are practical, after their fashion. They are a Book of Proverbs, and give us maxims, riddles, doctrines, science, in their verses. If they sing of chivalry, it is to satirize chivalry—such knighthood as now we have. They are spreading and descending towards the people. Men may have their songs of chivalry in Spain, where, under the blessed St. Iago, good knights and true have a real crusade against those heathen hounds the Moors, whom God confound. But here each petty lord in his castle has nothing to do but quarrel with his neighbour and oppress all weaker than himself. What to such men, robbing, drinking, devouring their living with harlots, are Arthur and the Round Table, or Oliver and Roland? So the singers come to us. In good sooth, the old virtues of knighthood—its truth and honour, its chastity and courage—are found far more among the citizens than with the nobles. We relish the sage precepts and quaint abstruseness of Reimar of Zweter, though he be somewhat of a pedant. Albertus Magnus is the hero with him, instead of Charlemagne. His learning is a marvel, and he draws all morality by allegory out of the Seven Sciences in most wondrous wise. Frauenlob himself (alas! I heard last year that he was dead) could not praise fair ladies more fairly. He assails, in the boldest fashion, the Pope and Rome, and their daughters Cologne and Mayence. The last time he was over here from Bohemia, we laughed nigh to bursting at his caricature of a tournament, and applauded till the rafters rang again when he said that not birth, but virtue, made true nobleness. Then our ballads and popular fables are full of satire on the vices of ecclesiastics. All this tends to keep men awake to the abuses of the day, and to deepen their desire for reform. We shall need all the strength we can gather, political and religious, if in the coming struggle the name of German is not to be a shame. Our Holy Father promises to indemnify himself for the humiliation he suffers at Avignon by heaping insults upon Germany. If Louis of Bavaria conquers Frederick, I should not wonder if we Strasburgers wake up some morning and find ourselves excommunicate. All true hearts must be stirring—we shall have cowards and sluggards enow on all hands.