spirit of this law was grievously violated. A vindictive criminal jurisprudence, which was then dictated by the mutual rage of contending parties, and which was made still more revolting to Christian feelings by the religious colouring it assumed, remains a stigma on that age; for it was the work not of one, but of both religious parties, or to speak more properly, of members of both parties. The commencement, indeed, of this great disorder--of this great departure from the law of love--is to be found in the middle age, during the strife of exasperated factions; but how small are those beginnings when compared with the excesses of subsequent times. When we hear the middle age called barbarous, we should remember that that epithet applies with far greater force to the truly barbarous era of the Reformation, and of the religious wars which that event produced, and which continued down to the period when a sort of moral and political pacification was re-established, apparently at least, in society and in the human mind. [7] The Prince. [8] Schlegel here alludes to the Ordinances promulgated a few years ago by the King of Prussia, for the reform of the Protestant Liturgy. [9] The author here refers to that mania for Biblical criticism, long prevalent in Protestant Germany, and which however it may inform our reason, and gratify a laudable curiosity, is in itself no guide to the knowledge of religious truth.--_Trans._ [10] Schlegel here alludes to Prince Albert of Brandenburgh. END OF LECTURE XV. LECTURE XVI. Further developement and extension of Protestantism, in the period of the religious wars, and subsequently thereto.--On the different results of those wars in the principal European countries.