It was a great thing to be able to show at such a time, when the coarse and the commonplace overlaid the German life, that there was still something beautiful on earth, and a more intellectual enjoyment than could be found in dissolute revelry, and also that behind the grey and colourless sky which overspread the land, there was another world, full of brilliant colours, and of nobler and more refined feelings. But whilst the songs of the Silesian "Swans and Nightingales" were held in honour by the other German races, and the fame of the Silesian poets rose high, the worldly position of the Silesians themselves was lamentable. The Thirty years' war was followed by a century of persecution and oppression, which so diminished their energies, that at last it appeared as if they would fall into the same condition as that in which they had found the Sclaves,--a death-like apathy, and a future without hope. The Silesians never became utterly downcast, for they took every opportunity of enjoying themselves, but it was only in feasting and revelry. When, however, the misery of the country was at the highest, the Prussian drum sounded on the frontier from Muencheberg, and the trumpets of the Ziethen hussars pealed along the same roads on which five hundred years before the first song of the German colonists had resounded with the good words, "We come in God's name." The Germanizing of the country was not thoroughly accomplished till it was conquered by Prussia; it is only since that time that the Silesians have become conscious of being an integral part of the German nation. What was begun by the Sclave Piastens of the thirteenth, was concluded by the German Hohenzollern of the eighteenth, century. CHAPTER II. A GERMAN LADY OF THE ROYAL COURT. (about 1440.) Many incidents may be found in the descriptions of the struggles between the Silesians and Hussites, which are characteristic of the minds and manners of the people in their epic period. We are made sensible of the great dissimilarity between the past and present by the style of Martin's narration. In his scanty yet graphic description he gives us the facts, but makes no reflections on them. The writer undoubtedly feels how noble and manly was the death of the Pastor Megerlein; but he does not consider it necessary, and, indeed, seems to want the facility and confidence requisite, to give expression to his judgment.