While in the Netherlands, under the influence of the national elevation, art grew into a school of peculiar nationality, much less favorable circumstances existed in Germany. It may be said, indeed, that none less favorable could be found in any country. It was not merely that the land had been wasted by the Thirty Years’ War, for art and knowledge have been known to bud and bloom amid a severe national struggle. This contest, however, was one hostile to every generous impulse and lofty aspiration, and tended to crush the noble energies that are called forth in other conflicts. It was an internecine and sordid strife; Germans were arrayed against Germans, and hordes of foreign robbers were encouraged to plunder the country desolated by her own children. In the reign of mean and base passions, there was no soil where such flowers might bloom as then made beautiful the Netherlands. There was wanting, also, such a central point as was afforded in France and Spain by the courts of Versailles and Madrid. All things revolved in a narrow and sordid sphere of individual interest. That Germany, in spite of this disastrous and gloomy condition, should have produced artists, and that even women, with self-sacrificing zeal should have manifested their predilection for the calling, is a proof of the deep love for art implanted in the heart of the nation, showing itself in brilliant flashes during the sixteenth century, and in the midst of troubles not entirely extinguished. The Reformation, while it had inspired Germany with the spirit of a new epoch, at first assumed a position hostile to the arts that had contributed to embellish the old faith. For three hundred years, by open force, blind fury, and cold contempt, this misapprehension of the true scope of art threatened to destroy what preceding ages had left of excellence; nor did the struggle terminate till the nineteenth century. Signs of life in art had been first perceived in Germany toward the beginning of the thirteenth century; and there had been progressive stages of improvement. The stiffness and seriousness prescribed by tradition were replaced by softer execution and an easier flow of outline. Flowing drapery and grace marked the earliest attempts to express the artist’s own feelings in his works, and a subjective principle was allowed in paintings. In the revival of art toward the end of the fifteenth century the sacred subjects of earlier ages had been much chosen. Afterward, the artist’s own mind and emotions came forth in self-productive energy; and, at a later period, rose into favor the accurate delineations of nature’s forms.