Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/134

 83. The Germans who remained in the motherland had retained all the virtues of which their country had formerly been the home—loyalty, uprightness, honour, and simplicity; but of training to a higher and intellectual life they had received no more than could be brought by the Christianity of that period and its teachers to men whose dwellings were scattered. This was but little: hence, they were not so advanced as their racial kinsmen who had emigrated. They were in fact good and honest, it is true, but none the less semi-barbarians. There arose among them, however, cities erected by members of the people. In these cities every branch of culture quickly developed into the fairest bloom. In them arose civic constitutions and organizations which, though but on a small scale, were none the less of high excellence; and, proceeding from them, a picture of order and a love of it spread throughout the rest of the country. Their extensive commerce helped to discover the world. Their league was feared by kings. The monuments of their architecture are standing at the present day and have defied the ravages of centuries; before them posterity stands in admiration and confesses its own impotence.

84. It is not my intention to compare these burghers of the German imperial cities in the Middle Ages with the other estates of the same period, nor to ask what was being done at that time by the nobles and the princes. But, in comparison with the other Teutonic nations—leaving out of account some districts of Italy, and in the fine arts the Germans did not lag behind even these, whereas in the useful arts they surpassed them and became their teachers—leaving these out of account, I say that the German burghers were the civilized people, and the others the barbarians. The history of Germany, of German might, German enterprise and inventions, of