Although the peace of Westphalia found the Hansa hopelessly broken, yet it was not until after this event that the various members fully realized their condition. Until then they had anticipated a resuscitation with the advent of political calm. When the Hanseatic deputies had assembled at the Diet of 1628, the last of which an official record exists, they had voted to postpone to a more convenient season all proposals that were brought forward for consideration. This Diet revealed the confusion into which the Hanseatic accounts had fallen. Still even on this occasion various cities pleaded for re-admission into the union. It throws a sad light upon the character of the delegates to read that those of Brunswick, reporting to that city the history of this Diet, should lay great and detailed stress upon the fact that they had not been regaled with the customary wine of honour and the wonted supply of cakes! All that was achieved on this occasion was that the cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, were charged with the protection of the Hanseatic interests, in the name of all the other cities, so far as such interests could at present be said to be at stake. Yet another Diet was summoned in February, 1630, at Lübeck. On this occasion there occurred what of late had not been unusual, namely, that no Hanseatic delegates appeared, with the exception of those of Bremen and Lübeck. It is a picturesque historical invention, but, unfortunately, like most picturesque legends, quite untrue, that on this occasion all the members of the most ancient German Hansa put in an appearance, and in Lübeck's Hansa Saal decreed, in all solemnity, its own dissolution; that, in short, the Hansa was present at its own funeral. As the Hansa never had an actual foundation day, so it had no day of dissolution. As its growth had been gradual, the result of time and circumstance, so was its decay. It had been built up imperceptibly, it passed away almost as imperceptibly. After the Diet of 1630, and again in 1641, the three cities above named--Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg--made still closer their friendly alliance, erecting a species of new Hansa upon the ruins of the old. With great modifications this compact survived down to our own times, and was not dissolved until forcibly rent asunder, as disturbing to Prussian ambition and to Prussian ideas of protective trade. For these cities kept up a species of free trade, while all the rest of Germany was protective, and to this day, though despoiled and shorn of their honour, the cities call themselves proudly the Hanseatic towns. In those days their main endeavour was to save as much as possible from the general wreck, and to try and keep alive the spirit of the League, of which most ambitiously they retained the name. They believed, indeed the other cities believed too, that with the restoration of peace they could establish themselves upon the old foundations. [Illustration: RATH-HAUS, LÜBECK.]