form at the present day. The Catholic and Protestant parties then divided Germany into two nearly equal portions, as in point of numbers they do at the present day; and although political power does not depend on numbers, particularly when, as was at that time the case, so many heterogeneous elements were combined, yet both the contending parties were sufficiently strong not to succumb easily in the contest. It is this fact which ultimately established the necessity of a cordial and permanent religious peace, and caused that necessity to be so universally acknowledged. But this very equality of numbers, and still more the active interference of almost all the great continental powers in the contest, rendered it at first more obstinate and lasting. Never was there a religious war, so widely extended and so complicated in its operations, so protracted in duration, and entailing misery on so many generations. That period of thirty years' havoc, in which the early civilization, and the noblest energies of Germany were destroyed, forms in history the great wall of separation between the ancient Germany, which in the middle age was the most powerful, flourishing, and wealthy country in Europe, and the new Germany of recent and happier times, which is now gradually recovering from her long exhaustion and general desolation, and rising again into light and life from the sepulchral darkness--the night of death, to which her ancient disputes had consigned her. We can be little astonished at the origin of this war--indeed it is almost a matter of surprise that hostilities did not break out sooner; and the very fact that external warfare was so long suppressed, may account for the violence and animosity of the first conflict. The first religious peace was in reality a mere truce--another prolonged interim which still left many debateable points, that with the most honest intentions in both parties it was extremely difficult, and almost impossible to settle by a peaceful and equitable adjustment. Where so much combustible matter existed, the merest accident might enkindle a conflagration. This first occurred in Bohemia, where the old insurrection of the Hussites had been put down by force--(the only way in which on its first outbreak, it could have been suppressed) but where as it now appeared that no vital remedy had been applied to the roots of the disorder, much diseased and inflammable matter yet remained. Still the revolt of Bohemia was not the only cause or subject of a war, which some historians have considered rather as a complicated series of wars, partially varying in their object. The whole country--the age itself seemed involved in warfare; and war appeared as the permanent policy, the ruling spirit, the inveterate habit, and natural necessity of mankind. As a masterly hand[11] has seized and pourtrayed many events and incidents--many scenes and acts of this great tragedy--the religious feelings, and steadfast and