But music continued to prosper in Germany; it abounded in songs. Some were amatory, (_münnelier_); some were satirical, (_cantica in malitiam_); some heroic, (_cantica in honorem,_); some diabolical, (_cantica diabolica_.) These consisted of incantations, and of narratives of the feats of evil spirits. [Sidenote: 800-911.] Vernacular poetry, and vernacular composition, of every kind, were almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence, wrote in the Latin language. Some discerning spirits became sensible that the German language was susceptible of great improvement, and excited their countrymen to its cultivation. Among these was Otfroid; he translated the Gospel into German verse. He describes, in strong terms, the difficulties which he had to encounter: "The barbarousness of the German language is," he says, "so great, and its sounds are so incoherent and strange, that it is very difficult to subject them to the rules of grammar, to represent them by syllables, or to find in the alphabet letters which correspond to them." It is however remarkable, that, although he complains of the dissonance of the German language, he never accuses it of poverty. While France and Germany continued subject to the same monarch, German was the language of the court, and generally used in every class of society. When the treaty of Verdun divided the territories of Charlemagne, the _Romande_, or _Romançe_ language, a corruption of the Latin, superseded the German in every part of France: it was insensibly refined into the modern French, but the German continued to be the only language spoken in Germany. Great progress was made in architecture: the churches and palaces constructed by the direction of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, the Basilisc at Germani, the church of St. Recquier at Ponthieu, and many other monuments of great architectural skill and expense, belong to the age of Charlemagne, and bear ample testimony to the well-directed exertions of the monarch, and of some of his descendants, and to their wise and splendid magnificence. I. 3. _Decline of Literature under the Descendants of Charlemagne._ [Sidenote: 800-911] [Sidenote: I. 3. Decline of Literature under the Descendants of Charlemagne.]