leading, and the necessity of buying exemption from their burdens. On the other hand, the right of the landed proprietor over the inheritance of villeins existed to the greatest extent. As late as the year 1800 the country-people, who--exceptionally--desired to save money, endeavoured to preserve their property to their heirs, by fictitious transactions with the citizens; consequently more than a fourth portion of the Muenster land remained uncultivated. A similar condition, in a somewhat milder form, existed in the bishopric of Osnabruck. Among the races of the interior, Hessians, Thuringians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Allemanni, the number of free peasants was continually decreasing during the whole of the middle ages: it was only in Upper Bavaria that they still formed a powerful part of the population. In Thuringia also the number of freemen was not inconsiderable. There the rule of the princes over the serf peasantry was lenient. Far worse, except in a large part of Holstein, was the condition of all the countries east of the Elbe,--in fact wherever Germans colonized Sclave countries, that is almost half present Germany; but worst of all was the life of the villeins in Bohemia and Moravia, in Pomerania and Mecklenberg: in the last province villeinage is not yet abolished. It was in these countries that villeinage became more oppressive after the Thirty Years' War; only the free peasants, and the "_Erb-und Gerichtsscholtiseien_," as they were still called in memory of the circumstances of the old Germanization, formed themselves into a pauper aristocracy. In the last century it might easily be perceived, from the agriculture and the prosperity of the villagers, whether they were freemen or serfs; and even now we may sometimes still discover, from the intelligence and personal appearance of the present race, what was the condition of their fathers. The peasants on the Lower Rhine, the Westphalian inhabitants of the marshes, the East Frieslanders, the Upper Austrians and Upper Bavarians, attained a certain degree of prosperity soon after the war; on the other hand, the remaining Bavarians, about the year 1700, complained that the third portion of their fields lay waste, and we learn of Bohemia in 1730 that the fourth part of the ground which had been under culture before the Thirty Years' War was overgrown with wood. The value of land there was lower by one half than in the other provinces.