We have sometimes been disposed to regard with extreme impatience the fragmentary manner in which history is now written amongst us. Lives of the Queens—Lives of the Kings—Lives of our Statesmen—Lives of our Chancellors—thus breaking up into detached and isolated figures the great and animated group which every age presents. If our writers cannot grapple—and it is indeed a herculean task—with the annals of a nation, why not give us at least some single period, a reign or epoch, in its unbroken entirety? If they cut up the old man of history into this multitude of pieces, into what kettle or cauldron will they throw him that will boil him into youth and unity again? The scattered members are all that will remain to us. But our impatience on this matter would be very fruitlessly expressed. Such is the mode, such the fashion in the gentle craft of authorship. It were better, perhaps, to submit at once with a good grace—take whatever is worth the having, come in what shape it will, and keep our own good-humour into the bargain.

Amongst these fragmentary sketches, few have pleased us more than the two small volumes that designate themselves as Byways of History. Indeed, without pretending to do so, and notwithstanding their desultory nature, they give a very fair picture of the great period of the middle ages of which they treat, in its darker as well as its brighter points of view. There is also more novelty in the anecdotes than could have been expected, considering how well gleaned a field the authoress has had to traverse; and there is a playfulness in the style which, to youthful readers especially, will be found very attractive, though it may not always be sufficiently pungent to stir the stiffer muscles that grow about the upper lip of a sexagenarian critic.

"Byways" in history there are, strictly speaking, none at all; least of all can the peasant war in Germany, the principal subject of these volumes, be thought to lie amongst the secondary and less important transactions of the past. Whatever facts throw light upon the temper and modes of thinking of a bygone age, are of the very essence of history, though they may not immediately relate to crowned heads or official dignitaries. Yet, adopting the latitude of common speech, the title is significant enough. It is not the actions of kings and emperors, or the fate of nations and dynasties, that the fair historian undertakes to record; and as such a narrative is generally looked upon as the highway of history, she who diverges from it may be said to be traversing its byways. Only the byways, be it understood, may be the very roads which a good traveller would first and most industriously explore.

Ladies are said to hold it as one of their prerogatives to be a little unreasonable in their exactions, and a little self-contradictory in their sentiments. Our authoress appears, in one point, disposed to assert this prerogative of her sex. In ordinary cases, we know of nothing more impertinent than to appeal to the common process of litigious argumentation against these fair despots of society; but we doubt whether we should be acting even in the true spirit of gallantry, if we recognised any such prerogative in the domain of literature. It is open to any writer who thinks fit so to do, to disparage the present age by comparing it with olden times. It is also open to him, if he should be so minded, to show that these olden times, so much vaunted, were in fact far more culpable than ourselves, even in those points where we are guilty. But to none is it open—in the same book—to do both the one and the other; to disparage the present by comparison with the past, and then prove the past to have been ten times worse than the present. This is more than can reasonably fall to the share of any one author, or authoress. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot have the pleasure of putting the present age to shame by a contrast with the past, and the pleasure, almost as great, of exposing in their true colours the vices of a past that has been too indulgently surveyed.

But something of this license Mrs Sinnett seems disposed to take. At p. 37 we have to submit, with the rest of our contemporaries, to the following rebuke:—"When we hear it publicly proclaimed that it is a great thing for a young nobleman to postpone 'his pleasures' for a week or two for the sake of performing a service to his country, we cannot but begin to doubt whether, in the education of our privileged classes, we have really improved much on the system of the 'dark ages.' Then, at least, it was not thought that any class had a right to make 'its pleasures' its chief consideration."

Indeed! Yet we are told in other parts that the landlords of those times not only made their pleasures their chief consideration, but wrung by violence the last groschen from the peasant's hand in order to procure them. At p. 55, vol. ii., after an account of the pleasures of the kings and nobles, we have the following description of the peasant:—"And what, then, was the condition of the people all this while? 'Look here upon this picture and on this!' All taxes and imposts fell, as a matter of course, on the lower orders; the humble citizen, the laborious peasant, had to toil and earn by the sweat of his brow, not his own daily bread, but the means of luxurious indulgence to his insolent masters; yet if the wild boar came tearing up his fields and vineyards, and the knight and his followers dashed after him with a troop of horsemen dogs, he had no redress, and dared not even kill the beast, lest he should interfere with the pleasures of his lord.... New methods and pretences for extorting money from the people were devised every day."

It would be easy to multiply similar quotations. The landlords of ancient times, with whom it was plainly intimated we could bear no flattering comparison, are held up, we see, to complete reprobation.

The difference between the bad landlord of ancient and of modern times, (for we presume the good and the bad, the wheat and the tares, were sown together then as now,) we believe to be this. The modern bad landlord takes his rent—a rent obtained often by a ruinous competition for the soil—and thinks no more of the matter; thinks nothing of the tenant, whether he has offered a higher rent than he can well pay, or of the labourer, whether the wages he receives are sufficient to support him in health. The ancient bad landlord was a positive extortioner; he did look after his tenants or his serfs—to see if there was any thing more he could take from them; he looked into the roost for the last hen, and behind the barn-door for the last egg. When we censure the modern landlord for being an absentee, reckless of his tenantry, we in fact tacitly demand from him a higher strain of virtue than we exact from other wealthy classes, who are allowed to receive without inquiry, and expend without control, the utmost income which fortune and the laws have given them. He is at worst the "sluggard king," indifferent to a world of which he knows nothing, and absorbed only in the pursuit of his own pleasures. But the bad landlord of feudal times had the active vices of the robber and the tyrant.

Let no one study the middle ages in the hope—which some seem to entertain—of extracting from them the lesson peculiarly applicable to ourselves. The feudal times are utterly past. Some of their forms, or some shadow of their forms, may still linger amongst us; but their spirit is as utterly past as that which animated an Athenian democracy, or the court of the Great King. We must study our duty as citizens, as Christians, in the circumstances around us, in the eternal Writing before us: we shall gain nothing by the fantastic gloss, with its grotesque illuminations, which the middle ages supply. This turning and struggling towards the past is but the backward looking of those whom the current is still carrying down the stream: it were wiser to look before, and on either side of them; they will better see whither they are going.—

It will perhaps be thought that throughout these volumes the sympathies of the authoress are a little too chameleon-like,—somewhat too mobile, and take their changeful hue from the immediate subject, or the last light thrown upon it. Now the knight, with his faith in God and his own right arm, his self-reliance, his daring and devotion, claims from the lady, as is most just, his meed of applause. But by-and-by she catches him upon his marauding expedition, the ruthless spoliator of the burgher, the contemptuous oppressor of the artisan; and she does not spare her censure. One moment she appears to join in the regret that the age of chivalry is gone! The next moment the same phrase rings differently, and when contemplating the oppressed condition of the peasantry, she rejoices that the age of chivalry is gone! In one part she makes honourable mention of the training the youthful nobleman received in the halls of the great, where he acted as page; but cannot, in another part, refrain from a little satire on this very system of training. "Noble young gentlemen," she says p. 32, "who would not to save their lives have employed themselves in any useful art or manufacture, had no objection to lay cloths, carry up dishes, wait at table, hold horses, and lead them to the stables; and noble young ladies did not disdain to perform many of the offices of a chambermaid at a hotel, for a knightly guest."

We note this versatility of feeling, but hardly for the purpose of blaming it; for indeed it is the peculiar characteristic of the middle ages thus to play with our sympathies. They present so many and such different phases, their institutions are capable of being viewed under such opposite lights, that it requires more care and watchfulness than is perhaps consistent with simple honesty of thought and feeling, to preserve one's self from these fluctuations of sentiment. One who yields unaffectedly to the genuine impressions which the history of this period produces, will find his Ohs and his Hahs breaking out in a very contradictory manner. That knight, with lance at rest which challenges the whole fighting world—whatever can be tilted at,—who would not be that knight? But the man cannot read; and thinks an old woman can bewitch him by her spells, and that his priest, by some spell also, can absolve him. That monk, with folded arms over a heart so well folded too—who would not be that monk? But the man has mingled asceticism with his piety till he knows not which is which; and let a woman in her youth and beauty traverse his path, he crosses himself, as if not the angel of this world, but the demon of another had appeared before him. In looking at these phantasmagoria of the past, we must be content to see and to feel for the moment; there is no stereotyped expression of face with which we can regard the whole.

We have soon exhausted our critical cavils, and shall look at leisure through these volumes for some of those points which interested us during their perusal. Amongst the first things we had noted for quotation is an account of our old friend Gotz von Berlichingen—him of the Iron Hand—which we somehow liked the better for there being no allusion to the drama of Goethe. Nobody whom the information could in the least interest, needed to be told that it was the hero of the drama whose real life and adventures he was getting acquainted with. We find, however, on re-perusal, that this account is too long to be extracted: we leave it untouched for those who peruse the work; and shall make our first quotation from the description of the Hanse Towns. Here is a curious passage, which shows that the mere collecting together in towns, and making some advance in the great art of money-getting, is no guarantee against superstitions as gross and ridiculous as any that haunt the boor in his cottage.

Those who indulge in, or applaud practical jests, should read on farther in the same chapter (p. 102.) We heartily wish that the professors of this species of wit were every one of them conducted in his turn into the "Paradise" here described; of which it may be sufficient to intimate that "it was provided with a bench and a good store of rods."

On monastic institutions, Mrs Sinnett has some very just and equitable remarks.

Restoration! Restore the Heptarchy! as Canning on one occasion exclaimed. And yet we understand that of late there has been a gentle sigh, and some half-formed projects for the revival of monastic institutions. We hear from the preface to Maitland's "Essays on the Dark Ages," that a circular was issued by persons of no contemptible influence in the church, headed "Revival of Monastic and Conventual Institutions on a plan adapted to the exigencies of the reformed Catholic religion." As Mr Maitland says of the plan—it would be after all but "a playing at monkery." Where, we would ask, is the irrevocable vow? Where is the unchangeable fate, the civil death, that awaited the inmate of the monastic house? Where is the superstitious admiration of the crowd without? Where all those religious ideas that made renouncement of life so sacred and meritorious? And where, moreover, is that insecure and unprotected condition of a half-civilised age, which made the retreat of the monastery so precious to the wearied and wounded spirit? You are charmed with an oasis in the desert;—you must spread the desert first, if you would realise the charm. What are monastic walls, to you,—who can take a lodging in Cheapside, and be as solitary, as undisturbed, as utterly forgotten as if the grave had closed upon you?

Viewed strictly as a portion of the past, and in relation to all the circumstances that gave origin and value to them, we confess we have a partiality for the old monasteries. Some of the popular censures which are still dealt upon them are founded upon erroneous ideas of the nature and purposes of such institutions. They are blamed repeatedly for their ignorance and their neglect of learning. They were not instituted for the preservation or advancement of learning. Originally they were not even ecclesiastical, but consisted of pious laymen, who wished to devote their souls to God, by drawing them out of the mire of their daily lives. Profane learning was more frequently regarded as a thing forbidden, than numbered amongst the objects which might engage their attention. "Solitude, labour, silence, and prayer—these were the elements of monastic life; and the question was not, how the monk might most effectually gather and diffuse learning, but—when, indeed, any question came to be raised—whether he might lawfully cultivate learning at all?"—(Maitland, p. 160.)

The charge of indolence, also—(the two epithets of "lazy and ignorant," generally go together, in the popular phraseology, when monks are spoken of)—is made without any discrimination, and bestowed as well upon bodies of men remarkable for their industrious and persevering cultivation of the soil, as upon the pampered and corrupted monastery. Amongst the rules of the Benedictines, labour figures conspicuously. In many cases it was the hard work of emigrants who first subdue the soil, that was performed by these sacred and secluded men. But, when an admiring world thought fit, in its sagacity, to reward a voluntary poverty by endowing and enriching it,—when the monastery became a wealthy landlord, with treasures of gold and silver in its coffers—then, as might be expected, labour declined,—the monk grew lazy, and the description which Mrs Percy Sinnett quotes from an old author, was, no doubt, very generally applicable to him. "Every other minute he comes out of his cell—then goes in again—then comes out again to look if the sun is not near setting." The world behaved towards the monk as an old gentleman we remember to have read of in some play, who, charmed with the temperance which his young friend had exhibited, rewarded it by putting his cellar of choice wines at his disposal. He was afterwards indignant at finding that the virtue of his protÉgÉ had not increased under his kind encouragement.

The remarks of Mrs P. Sinnett, which we have just quoted, on monastic life, usher in a very entertaining account of the origin and growth of the "Abbey of Altenberg." Here is a fragment of it:—

If the ass was a great favourite with the monk, it was still more so with the populace. With no other animal was so much of the rough humour of the middle ages associated. It might be worth consideration how far the introduction of the ass in certain religious or semi-religious festivals—as in the feast of the ass—has aided in investing him with that peculiar grave humour which modern wits associate with him. Apropos of this feast of the ass, we may as well correct a general error which Robertson has led his readers into, when he describes it as "a festival in commemoration of the Virgin Mary's flight into Egypt." The Virgin Mary appears to have had nothing to do with it, and the ass from which the festival took its name was not that on which she fled into Egypt, but the ass of Balaam. We rely on the authority of Maitland, whose "Essays on the Dark Ages" we have before alluded to—a not very amiable writer, by the way, and far more acrimonious than the importance of his contributions to our knowledge entitles him to be, but evidently a very formidable antagonist to those who deal in loose and careless statements. "The dramatis personÆ of this celebrated interlude," he tells us, "were miscellaneous enough. There were Jews and Gentiles, as the representatives of their several bodies—Moses and Aaron and the prophets—Virgilius Maro—Nebuchadnezzar—The Sibyl, &. &c. Among them, however, was Balaam on his ass; and this (not, one would think, the most important or striking part of the show) seems to have suited the popular taste, and given the name to the whole performance and festival. I should have supposed, that Nebuchadnezzar's delivering over the three children to his armed men, and then burning them in a furnace made on purpose, in the middle of the church, would have been a more imposing part of the spectacle; but I pretend not to decide in matters of taste, and certainly Balaam's ass appears to have been the favourite. The plan of the piece seems to have been, that each of the persons was called out in his turn to sing or say something suitable to his character, and among others, 'Balaam ornatus, sedens super asinam,' having spurs on his heels, and holding the reins in his hands, struck and spurred his ass, and a youth holding a sword in his hand, barred his progress. Whereupon another youth, under the belly of the ass, and speaking for the abused animal, cries out, 'Why, &c., &c.'"—in the well-known terms of the colloquy.

"Indeed the ass," says the same writer in a note, "seems to be always a favourite with the public, and to give the tone and title wherever he appears. In the twelfth century, an order of monks was formed whose humility (or at least their rule) did not permit them to ride on horseback. The public (I hope to the satisfaction of these humble men) entirely overlooked them, eclipsed as they were by the animals on which they rode, and called it ordo Asinorum."

There is an account here of "Prussia in the Old Times," which will be read with interest; the more so as we suspect it is a portion of history not very familiar to English readers. We mean the period from the conquest of Prussia, and its conversion to Christianity by the knights of the Teutonic Order, to the year 1526, when Albert, Grand-master of that order, made a treaty with Sigismund, king of Poland, with whom he had been at war, by which it was stipulated that Albert should hold the duchy as lay prince, doing homage—how times have changed!—to the king of Poland!

We shall devote our remaining space, however, to some extracts from Mrs P. Sinnett's account of the peasant war, the subject which occupies the whole of the second volume.

In every historical or biographical work which treats of the Reformation in Germany, there will be found a short, and only a short, notice of the peasant war, which broke out on the preaching of Luther, and of the fury of the anabaptists and others; and in every such notice the reader will find it uniformly stated that these disturbances and insurrections, though assuming a religious character, were in their origin substantially of a political or social nature, springing, in short, from the misery and destitution of the lower orders. But we do not know where the English reader will find this general statement so well verified, or so fully developed, as in the little work before us. In every part of Germany we see partial insurrections repeatedly taking place, all having the same unhappy origin; and our wonder is, not that the preaching of the Reformation should have communicated a new vitality to these insurrectionary movements, but that, after being allied with religious feeling, and religious sanction and enthusiasm, they were not still more tremendous in their results.

Here is one of the earliest of these insurrections: it is a type of the class. The chapter is headed

In reading this paragraph, one is at first struck with the superfluous incongruity of preaching against "costly attire and silk and silver cords" to the ragged and shoeless populace that formed the chief part of the drummer's audience. But a little reflection suggests that, in the first place, it gives a preacher a great hold over a mob, to inveigh against the sins of their superiors, and that, in the next place, there is a very easy transition from inveighing against the sins of the rich, to disputing their privileges, and comtemning their power and authority.

Yes, the drummer of Niklashausen was their god for the moment. Yearning for help, and unable to help themselves, such simple crowds are ready to believe in any voice that promises a coming salvation. But now the Bishops of Mainz and Wurzburg, and the Senate of Nuremberg, began to bestir themselves. Hans Boheim, after concluding one of his exhortations, had invited his followers on the next holiday to come without their wives and children, and "to come armed." What would have ensued at the next assembly we are left only to guess, for the prophet, while sleeping quietly in his house, was, in the middle of the night, fairly kidnapped by the Bishop of Wurzburg, and thrown into prison.

Some sixteen thousand of his disciples marched off to Wurzburg to set him free. But the Bishop spoke them softly, and after some demonstrations of violence, they began to retreat. "Group after group slowly retired, scattering in different directions; but the Bishop watched his opportunity, and when they had all peaceably turned their backs, he sent out his men-at-arms who fell upon them, and cut many down, and took many prisoners. Great numbers took refuge in a church; but, threatened with fire and starvation, they at length surrendered. The prophet was burned to death on a field near the castle of Wurzburg." Exeunt omnes.

We pass on at one bound to the chief hero of these peasant wars, whom Mrs Percy Sinnett undertakes, in the French phrase, to rehabilitate—in other words, to wash a little white. That Thomas Munzer has had hard justice dealt to him, we are quite disposed to believe. Both the great parties who divided the world of letters between them—the Roman Catholics and the Protestants—were decidedly hostile to him. The Roman Catholics would dwell upon his enormities in order to charge them upon the Protestants; the Protestants, anxious to escape so ill-omened a connexion, and show the world they had no alliance with such enthusiasts, would spare no term of abuse, and would not venture a single word in his defence. Robertson, writing with a quite Lutheran feeling, expresses nothing but unmitigated condemnation. He describes the projects of himself and his followers as being little more than the simple madness "of levelling every distinction amongst mankind." Nor will he allow him even the ordinary virtues of the fanatic. "He had all the extravagance, but not the courage which enthusiasts usually possess." According to Robertson, he was nothing better than a madman, and a coward.

We think that Mrs Percy Sinnett has satisfactorily proved that Munzer was not a coward, and that he is entitled to all that respect which is due to those sincere and furious fanatics, who are perhaps the greatest pests which ever appear in society; men who may die, for aught we know, with all the zeal and merit of martyrs, but whom the world must nevertheless get rid of, in what way it can, and as soon as possible.

Yet we like to see justice done to every historical character, and therefore shall follow Mrs Sinnett through some portion of her biography of Munzer.

So it seems. In this place sprang up the Anabaptists, whose conduct became so wild and fanatical, that the civil power thought itself compelled to interfere. The most violent of them were seized and thrown into prison; but the greater part left the city, some going to Wittenberg and others to Bohemia.

To Bohemia also went Munzer. But he again appears in the year following, (1522,) preaching in Altstedt in Thuringia. His violence against the old religion seems to have been increased. After one of his sermons, his audience rushed out to a chapel in the neighbourhood, famous as a shrine for pilgrims, and not only destroyed all the images of the saints, but burnt the chapel itself. We have an account of a sermon which he preached here before the two Saxon princes, Frederick and John; and it certainly exhibits a very striking union of the two master passions which animate the class of men to which Munzer is described as belonging—the odium theologicum, and the zeal for the reformation of mankind. "He exhorted them to root out idolatry from the land, and establish the gospel by force. Priests, monks, and ungodly rulers who should oppose this, were to be slain; for the ungodly had no right to live longer than the elect would permit them. He told, also, some home-truths to his noble auditors. The princes and lords themselves, he said, were at the bottom of much mischief: they seized on all things as their property; the birds in the air, the fish in the waters, the plants upon the earth, all must be theirs; and when they had secured these good things for themselves, they were willing enough to publish God's command to the poor, and say, 'Thou shalt not steal;' but for themselves, they will have none of it. They rob the poor peasant and labourer of all that he has, and then, if he touches the least thing, he must hang."

The prophet and the inspired man—for he claimed to be both—was shortly after chased out of Altstedt. He went to Nurnberg, and was driven out of Nurnberg. He had now entirely broken with Luther, who wrote to the Senate of the town, cautioning them not to receive him. He wandered for some time about southern Germany, preaching where he could find an opportunity, but often hunted from place to place, and not knowing whither to turn. At length he reached the town of Muhlhausen, the populace of which was prepared to welcome him. But the Senate, alarmed at the tenor of his discourses, forbade him to preach. Thereupon a great commotion rose amongst the people; throngs pouring in from the neighbouring villages; and the streets filled all night long with a restless and clamorous crowd. Many of the patrician families left the city, the Common Council elected Munzer for their chief pastor; a new Senate was chosen under the threats and violence of the populace, in which Munzer and his friends were included. Munzer for a time was supreme.

Melancthon has stated that Munzer lived at Muhlhausen in all manner of luxury and profligacy, like a great lord, for more than a year. Mrs Sinnett tells us that he passed there only eight weeks; and we are disposed to conclude with her that the rest of the statement is as loosely and carelessly made. Eye-witnesses describe Munzer as one who awed the people by his presence, by the force of his character, and by a personal influence which could have resulted only from "the great moral earnestness which dwelt within him." His habits of life are declared to have been simple and austere; and the tender attachment which he is proved to have manifested towards his wife, Mrs Sinnett argues, was quite inconsistent with the licentious course attributed to him.

The charge of cowardice, which is so conspicuously brought forward by Dr Robertson, seems also to have but slender foundation. The "difficulty with which he was persuaded to take the field," resolves itself into the having been a degree more prudent, or a degree less rash, than his headstrong companion, Pfeiffer; who, having had a dream wherein "he saw himself in a barn, surrounded by a vast multitude of mice, on which he made a tremendous onslaught," concluded that he should obtain as easy a victory over the princes and nobles now arrayed against the fanatics of Muhlhausen, and, therefore, urged Munzer to take the field. When the day of trial came, "he who had never so much as seen a battle," found himself the leader of an undisciplined, discordant multitude, who, even in point of numbers, were not equal to the military force which was being led, by experienced generals, against him. At this moment he behaved with desperate energy; he quelled the treachery of one portion of his followers by the immediate execution of the priest who had ventured to be their spokesman; and he raised the rest from the consternation that had seized them, by one of his violent harangues, and by that fortunate allusion, which all historians have noticed, to a rainbow that suddenly appeared in the sky, and which happened to be the device painted on his banner.

That the ensuing battle should be converted speedily into a rout was inevitable. That Munzer, in the general flight, sought to conceal himself from his pursuers, by hiding in a loft, can be considered no fair proof of cowardice. It is what the bravest men have been reduced to do in the day of disaster. No one who wears the oak leaf on King Charles's day thinks that he is commemorating an act of cowardice in that prince, because he concealed himself in the tree rather than show himself to his enemies. How he comported himself in the last scene of all, does not here appear; but it seems that the victors made a cruel use of their power. "He was given over to the fierce Count Ernst of Mansfield, who 'went horribly to work with him.' (ist graÜlich mit ihm umgegangen.)"

What can be done for the restoration of Thomas Munzer's character, Mrs Sinnett is entitled to praise for having performed. But we must be permitted to observe, that in speaking of the general purposes of this fanatic and his party, she has been led a little too far, either by the feeling of advocacy, which the subject has called forth, or by some of the German authorities she has consulted. In particular, we think her manifestly unjust to the memory of Luther, whom she heavily censures for the part he took in this war between the peasant and the noble. Luther compassionated the peasant, there can be no doubt; but Luther must have seen—what surely every man in possession of his right understanding must have seen—that there was no help to the peasant from insurrection and war; and that prophets who were inspiring them with hopes of some great revolution in society, with visions of equal and universal happiness, were but leading them to destruction.

We shall hope to meet Mrs Sinnett again in some of the by-ways of history, walking with a somewhat surer step, and keeping her sympathies under somewhat better control.