Her early troubadours, of whom Walther von der Vogelweide was the greatest, and the "Meistersänger," of whom Hans Sachs, who lived 1494-1576, was the most gifted, left no record of their melodies. The very existence of these Meistersänger guilds for hundreds of years shows vitality of purpose and high aim. Spurred on to ever higher accomplishment by friendly rivalry, these guilds doubtless contributed much to the lyric strain in the German nature, and therefore to the ultimate greatness of their "Fatherland." The last of these guilds was disbanded at Ulm in 1836. Bach was the mightiest man who has composed music. A writer who saw him says, "His black eyes, shining out of his massive head, looked like flames bursting from a rock." He was the descendant of a line that was both mentally and physically stalwart. His remotest traceable ancestor was a baker who migrated from Hungary to Saxony, and his son, Johann Sebastian's great-grandfather, was a carpet-weaver and musician. The two succeeding generations devoted themselves exclusively to music, and they furnished half Thuringia with capable musicians. Their conscientious work, however, gave no premonition of the coming sublime climax in their family achievements. Johann Sebastian Bach inherited an iron will, self-abnegation, and devotion to art. His conceptions soared so far above the existing traditions, and he did so little to attract public attention, that he was but slightly heeded during his lifetime; indeed, it required a century after his death and the appreciation of a Mendelssohn to make the world realize that a veritable god had lived among men. The modest cantor of Leipzig's St. Thomas' school was obliged to struggle to support his large family, but he made no concessions to prevailing taste; he did not depart from the lines of his ideal to secure popularity. He patiently submitted to whatever teaching-drudgery was necessary to earn bread for his children, but when seated on his organ-bench or when he took his quill in hand he admitted no other allegiance than that to art, and no other impulse than that which prompted him to serve her with his fullest powers. The force, dignity, simple loveliness, pathos, and grandeur which in turn characterize his conceptions are so wonderful, when considered as products of the eighteenth century, that they and his serene indifference to recognition stamp him a unique man,--a musical Messiah.