During the same period, the result of the tendency to intellectual developement then manifested throughout Europe,--were first founded in Germanic Universities. The oldest is that of Prague, established by Charles IV in 1345. In imitation of it, that of Heidelberg was founded in 1386; and in the following century they multiplied all over Germany. Their effects were for a time injurious. By introducing Latin, they brought {375} contempt upon the native language, and as a consequence, contempt also upon native poetry. This influence lasted until within less than a century of the present time. It is only indeed fifty years since the practice, for a long while universal, of lecturing in Latin, was entirely disused in the universities of Germany. As the universities rose, literature sank. Latin usurped the place of German: scholastic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine with its kindred studies,--for, as yet there was no science, engrossed these seats of mental labor. But even in the early stage of their existence, while delving blindly at veins, many of them not destined ever to yield a precious metal, they have a claim to be regarded with honor and thankfulness, not only as the sources of so much after-fertility, but that within their walls was disciplined and instructed, and stored with the manifold learning which made more fearful its gigantic powers, that mind whose startling flashes fixed, in the opening of the 16th century, the gaze of the world it was about to overspread with a purifying conflagration. In 1503 was first heard in public, lecturing in the university of Erfurt, on the physics and ethics of Aristotle, the voice of Martin Luther.