All the communities throughout Southern Germany were in a state of silent fermentation, and already, at the end of the fifteenth century, local risings had begun, the forerunners of the Peasant war. But more wonderful still was the influence of the new art, through which the poorest might acquire knowledge and learning. The method of multiplying written words by thousands was discovered on the banks of the Rhine in the middle of the fifteenth century. The printing of patterns by means of wooden blocks had been practised for many centuries, and frequently single pages of writing had in this way been struck off; at last it occurred to a citizen that whole books might be printed with cast metal type. Its first effect was to give intelligence to the industry of the artisan, and a way was thus opened to the people of turning their mental acquirements to profit. The learning of the middle ages still occupied the professors' chairs at the German universities, but it was without soul, and consisted in dry forms and scholastic subtleties. There was little acquaintance with the ancient languages, Hebrew and Greek were almost unknown; the solid learning of the olden times was taught in bad monkish Latin; the Bible and Fathers of the Church, the Roman historians, institutes and pandects, the Greek text of Aristotle, and the writers upon natural philosophy and medicine, were found only in dusty manuscripts; nothing but the commentators and systematizers of the middle ages were ever expounded or learnt by heart. Such was the state of things in Germany. But in Italy, for more than a century, mental cultivation had begun, from the study of Roman and Greek poets, historians, and philosophers. The men of high intellect on the other side of the Alps rejoiced in the beauty of the Latin language and poetry, admired the acute logic of Cicero, and regarded with astonishment the powerful life of the Roman people. Their whole literature entwined itself, like the tendrils of a creeper, round the antique stem. It was soon after the invention of printing, and during the war carried on by the Germans in the Peninsula, that this new Humanitarian learning was gradually introduced into Germany. The Latin language, which appeared to the Germans like a new discovery, was industriously studied in the classical schools, and disseminated through the means of manuals. The close attention and long labour necessary in Germany to acquire the foreign grammar, acted as discipline to the mind. Acuteness and memory were strongly exercised; the logical construction of the language was more attended to than the phonetic; the grandeur and wisdom of the subject, more than the beauty and elegance of the style: the German mind required more exercise, therefore the result was more lasting, because the mastery had to be gained over two languages of different roots. A number of earnest teachers first spread the new learning; among these were Jacob