It is still more remarkable that this new national cultivation helped, in an indirect way, to turn the Germans into political men. From it the enthusiasm and struggle for an endangered German State, passions, parties, and at last political institutions were developed. Never did literature play such a part or solve such great problems, as the German, from 1750 to the present day. For it is thoroughly unlike the modern endeavours of other nations, who from patriotism, that is to say, from the need of political progress, mature an objective literature. In these cases art and poetry serve, from the beginning, as handmaids to politics; they are perhaps artificially fostered, and the artistic and scientific worth is probably less than the patriotic aim. In Germany, science, literature, and art only existed for their own sake: the highest creative power and the warmest interests of the educated classes were engrossed with them alone; they were always German and patriotic, in opposition to the overpowering French taste; but, with the exception of a few outbreaks of political anger or popular enthusiasm, they had no other aim than to serve truth and beauty. Nay, the greatest poets and scholars considered the political condition under which they lived, as a common reality out of which art alone could elevate mankind. As therefore in Germany art and science desired nothing but honourable exertion within their own sphere, their pure flames refined the sensitive disposition of Germans till it was hardened for a great political struggle. Before giving pictures of the German character during the last two centuries, we will endeavour to portray the peculiarities which are developed in the family relations of the different classes of ancient Germany, both the peasantry, the nobility, and the citizens. But the aim of the book is to show how, by means of the Hohenzollern State, Germans changed gradually from private to public men; how dramatic power and interest entered into lyrical individual life; how the Burgher class was strengthened by increasing education, and the nobility and peasantry submitted to its influence; finally, how it cast aside the specialities of classes, and began to form characters according to its own needs and points of view. CHAPTER I. THE LIFE OF THE GERMAN PEASANT. (1240-1790.)