The war had rendered the existence of the settled population joyless, their manners coarse, and their morals lax. And the craving for excitement was general. Thus at first these modes of representation allured, by bestowing what was wanting to this ungenial life. They endeavoured with much detail to represent either an ideal life of distinguished and refined persons, under entirely foreign conditions, such as antique shepherds, and foreign princes without nationalities; this was done by the highly educated; or they tried at least to ennoble common life, by introducing into it abstractions not less coarse and soulless, virtues and vices, mythological and allegorical figures; or they caught endless materials from the lowest circles of life, to whom they felt themselves superior, but in whose strange mode of life there was something alluring: they depicted strollers or represented clowns and fools; and this last development of art was the soundest. Thus these rough families of jugglers, buffoons, and rogues were of the utmost significance to the beginning of the drama, theatrical art, and novels. But besides the numerous companies, who wandered about either modestly on foot or in carts, vagrants of higher pretensions rode through the country, some of them still more objectionable. To be able to prognosticate the future, to gain dominion over the spirits of the elements, to make gold, and to renew the vigour of youth in old age, had for many centuries been the longing desire of the covetous and inquisitive. Those who promised these things to the Germans were generally Italians or other foreigners; or natives of the country, who had, according to the old saying, been thrice to Rome. When the new zeal for the restoration of the Church brought good and bad alike before the tribunal of the inquisition in Italy, the emigration of those whose lives were insecure must have been very numerous. It is probably from the life of one of these charlatans that the adventures of Faust have been gathered and formed into the old popular tale. After Luther's death, it is evident that they penetrated into the courts of the German princes. It was an adventurer of this kind, "Jerome Scotus," who, in 1593, at Coburg, estranged the unhappy Duchess Anna of Saxe Coburg from her husband, and brought her into his own power by villainous means. Vain were the endeavours of the Duke to obtain the extradition of Scotus from Hamburg, where he lived long in princely luxury. Five-and-thirty years before, the father of the Duke Johann Friedrich, the Middle-sized, was long deluded by an impudent impostor, who gave herself out to be Anne of Cleves (the wife who had been selected for Henry VIII. of England), and promised him a great treasure of gold and jewels if he chose to protect her. Another piece of credulity bore bitter fruits to the same prince, for the influence which Wilhelm of Grumbach, the haggard old wolf from the herd of the wild Albrecht of Brandenburg,