CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE ORDEAL.

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government of the world and the conscience of man bear witness of him aloud. But this was but an isolated vestige of the truth, lost in a tissue of errors and fables. It may be maintained that in this respect the Germans were superior to other nations, who, instead of the worship of God and a religion, had but a worship of nature and a mythology. This appears deducible from the following circumstances in particular. By the Germanic law, capital punishment was awarded in but one case; in that of treachery to people and state to the commonwealth. But it was not the duke or the prince, it was not the assembly of nobles and people who fixed and proclaimed the punishment. They deliberated, perhaps, and decided on the guilt of the party, but the judgment itself was pronounced and awarded in the name of the divinity by a priest of the nation, elected by the assembled nobles and people. Not prince or king, but Woden himself, the father of all, had, so to say, exclusive capital jurisdiction, -the power of life and death. Thus they conceived this their supreme national god as the avenger of disloyalty and perjury. An idea certainly worthier, and more moral than the best that can be deduced from the popular belief of the Greeks and Romans as to their Jupiter, even when they are not speaking of him in mere fables, but with an approximation to the higher notion of a father of all things. old Germanic conception of a father of all, as the highest supreme judge and avenger of wrong, had great influence upon the so-called ordeals or judgments of God. In cases which baffled human sagacity, the matter was referred to single combat, or to the trial by fire and water, in the fixed idea and belief that God himself would decide on the result for right and truth. This was an error and custom, that despite the opposition of Christianity, was maintained for many centuries, and of which, at least upon the stage, we are even at the present day some times reminded, although not always very happily.

This

If we find the faith in nature and the worship of the primitive Germans very different from that of the Greeks and Romans, we must also yet more carefully guard against confounding their views and customs with the wholly different institutions of the Celts and Gauls.

We must always remember, that the lofty and noble feel

As

ings, with which the worship of Nature and her great objects and mysteries filled the breast of primitive nations, were also mingled with strange, and, to a certain extent, with frightful errors. Even in the sensual fascinating worship of the Greeks, the moral influence of many of their conceptions and usages upon real life was very different from the beautiful poetic impression they make upon us, for on us the effect they produce is a mere play of the imagination. among the Greeks in the earliest times-and we are still reminded of this practice by the beautiful poem of the Iphigenia and as among the Romans for a much longer period; so also among the Germans, instances of human sacrifices are - to be found, although seldom and only in rare cases. On certain festivals of the goddess Hertha, some youths and maidens of surpassing beauty (for it was precisely the most beautiful who were to be offered up as victims, and moreover voluntary victims to the goddess) were borne in solemn procession on the car of the goddess into the sacred grove, to the awful lake, and were then seen no more. Shocking festivals like these, however, were rare, as they were also among the more ancient Greeks. Very different was the case with the Gauls, among whom such victims fell by thousands, and whose whole worship seemed a perpetual shedding of blood. Whether from the influence of the Phoenician colonies (for that people like the Carthaginians were particularly addicted to human sacrifices), or whether from the sway of the powerful and ambitious sacerdotal order of the Druids; or whether even from the effect of the fiery and passionate character of the nation, or from whatever cause it may have arisen, the superstition of the primitive Gauls was so bloody, that in the whole course of history scarcely one single example of equal cruelty can be found, except in Mexico prior to its conquest by the Spaniards. The Romans, who were in general so tolerant to all religions, found it difficult even by repeated and stringent edicts to suppress the abuse and to extinguish the dangerous order of the Druids.

An order of Druids never existed among the Germans, nor was there an hereditary caste of priests. The assumption that Druids existed among the Germans is one of the numerous misunderstandings and errors, which the confounding of Celtic with German manners and institutions has given rise to.

THE DRUIDS AND BARDS.

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As the worship of the Germans was so little overladen with ceremonies, such a priesthood was not required. Their mythological conceptions and fables of the gods, as well as the memory of their heroes, were perpetuated in their songs. But the poetic art was freely exercised among them; they had not bards any more than Druids; bards, that is, a distinct and exclusive corporation of poets entirely dependent on the priesthood. Among the Greeks the minstrels were independent of the priests; these bards wandered about, reciting their old sagas wherever they were wished for or invited. Hence the free and beautiful development which poetry took among the Greeks. The case was different among the Romans. The little they had of poetry, before they learned to imitate the Greeks, was solely devoted to purposes of Divine worship. This is proved even by the original Latin words for poet and poem ;-vates means both poet and prophet; carmen, a poem as well as any formula, whether for adjuration or any other sacred purpose. Among the Celtic nations this sacerdotal influence existed to a still greater cxtent, as the bards cannot be considered otherwise than as totally dependent on 'the Druids. Against this view the poems of Ossian may perhaps be referred to, in which no such sacerdotal sway, and indeed hardly any mythology at all, is perceptible. To this we may answer that, undecided as is the dispute, how much or how little of these poems be genuine, yet whatever portion of them is genuine, dates from times when the whole political and sacerdotal constitution of the Celts had perished, when Christianity was almost universally received, and only here and there upon some highlands a mournful echo of the past was still audible. Not thus limited and dependent on Divine worship and sacred uses alone, after the manner of the Celts and primitive Romans, was the poetic art exercised among the Germans; nor yet after the Grecian manner. Of all the heroes of Grecian fable, it is Achilles alone who touches the lyre, and, sitting by the sea-shore, controls his inward wrath by his own strains. What Grecian poesy celebrates in this chosen favourite was the universal practice of the Germans; the heroes were themselves the poets. Thus even in Chris-tian times King Alfred also exercised the art, and, in the disguise of a minstrel, went to the Danish camp to reconnoitre. Thus the Danish hero, Regner Lodbrog, dying

in captivity, celebrated his own death in verses; thus Odin was at once king and poet; thus, to omit many examples from northern and German history and tradition, German emperors and princes, even in the middle age, did not disdain composing poems and ranking themselves among minstrels. So was it also in the earliest times, as is from many reasons certain. Perhaps on that very account was German poetry less developed as an art than the Grecian, which was an art from the very beginning; but the influence on life of the strong natural feelings expressed in German poetry became thereby intenser and more direct.

German mythology has died away, scarcely a shadow of its memory still remains, except perhaps in the English and German names for the days of the week; for these the names of some of the German gods, particularly of Woden, of Thor, and Thyn, and of the German goddess of love, Freya, have been preserved. It would be a mistake, however, to think that all action and influence of the old German religion had ceased upon the introduction of Christianity. After that mythology had ceased to exist as an actual faith and worship, it lived on still for centuries in the poetry of the middle age; yes, even in our times, all that we term romantic in fictions, conceptions, and feelings, all that is wholly peculiar to us moderns and has not been copied from the ancients, flowed originally and essentially from this source.

Hence the absurdity of the wish not obscurely intimated by some writers, and springing from a false and mistaken patriotism, that the pure knowledge and worship of Godthat Christianity-had after all been never introduced into Germany; and at their lamenting as a kind of misfortune, that the national religion, as they fancy, was thereby suppressed. This is wholly unfounded. All that was good and beautiful, all that was in any sense true, all that was noble and attractive in the German religious system, has been preserved in our romantic poetry, and as such still lives. Beautiful to us considered as mere poetry, is indeed the religious system not only of the Germans but of all the nations of antiquity; but yet it betrays little knowledge, I will not say of philosophy and history, but of the human heart itself, not to perceive how much that system contains, when received as an earnest faith and exerting actual influence, that is utterly

FREEMEN AND NOBILITY.

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erroneous, pernicious, and immoral, and moreover how much of inward torture and anxiety it inflicts upon the soul.

Judge as we may of the social condition of the Germans according to our different notions of the savage and the civilized state, their constitution deserves our fullest attention, for it is the foundation of all modern history and European civilization. Simple, artless, altogether natural as this constitution was, we shall nevertheless find it bear the stamp not only of high moral strength, but even of strong understanding. On this point we may well trust the judgment of the Romans, who had so much experience in legislation and constitutions, who had reflected so much on those subjects. They were acquainted with savage, semi-savage, and civilized nations enough in all the three ancient regions of the world to institute the comparison. They have hardly bestowed such attention on the constitution of any people as on that of the Germans. The surprise and astonishment with which they speak of it, go often to the length of admiration. The essence of this constitution consisted in the combination of the highest individual freedom with the closest corporate union. Each freeman was altogether free and independent, was in a certain sense his own master, took an active part in the direction of the community—in the government of the state. He had the right of appearing armed at the general assembly, in which subjects of state were deliberated and decided on, and wherein out of the noble families the count or judge of the province was elected; for at that time this was not yet an hereditary distinction, but a personal dignity. They were chosen for times of peace, but in those of war a military leader of the state, of the armed people, or according to the old appellation, a duke, was the chief. He was elected, as Tacitus reminds us, not for his birth, but for his merit. Thus, besides the freemen, there was also a nobility. The nobles had precedence and pre-audience at the provincial and general assemblies, although the freemen also took part in them. Hence we already find here the first germ of the two divisions and chambers for the assembled powers of the state, and discover this lauded institution to be one originally Germanic. Whether in the military service any distinction was allotted to the nobility we are not distinctly informed. The following circumstance, however, renders it probable. The Romans notice as an essential pecu