11)12] on the Effects of the Thirty Years' War. 387 



sword, llelmstiidt was uuder the rule of a territorial prince, 

 Duke Fredrick Ulric (brother of the redoubtable bishop Christian 

 of Helinstiidt), who was dux pacificus in his way — that is in the 

 way of seeking in turn to be the friend of all sides ; in consequence 

 his land became one of the cockpits of the war, where indigenous and 

 foreign ambition — Danes, Leaguers, Swedes, Imperialists— successively 

 took up their quarters. The university, of course, began gradually 

 to feel the pressure of the War ; but so tirra a root did it seem to 

 have taken in the soil, that it was not till 1625, when the conflict 

 between Christian IV. of Denmark and Tilly was approaching its 

 crisis that the university was (as we know from one of Calixtus's 

 letters) literally starved out of the town which had long and often 

 very unwillingly harboured it. In 1626, the last of the students had 

 quitted Helmstildt, and Calixtus and a worthy professor of physics, 

 named Gran, alone remained to represent all the arts and sciences. 

 In a while, the regime of League and Emperor seeming to have firmly 

 established themselves, some of the teachers found their way back 

 from Brunswick, and uuder the tegis of Wallenstein this Northern 

 Protestant University began a new period of existence. Fixity of 

 condition seems to have been its chief condition of existence ; for 

 when the Swedes came in 16;^0, and after the death of Frederick 

 Ulric approved a condominium of his heirs, the number of students 

 increasetl and went steadily up till the end of the War, when it 

 reached the respectable total of 462. With the later history of the 

 university (ultimately united with Erlangen) we cannot occupy 

 ourselves. 



Now, here we hate a university which even during the course of 

 the war, contrived after a period of calamity to accommodate itself to 

 that course, and under more favourable circumstances, kept its head 

 (as one may say) well above water. We are accordingly able in this 

 instance to note the main characteristic of university life as affected 

 by the war, and find them — exceptional influences like that of Calixtus 

 apart, and of these we hear very little — those of intellectual stagnation 

 varied by unbridled academical licence. Ill-paid professors — I spare 

 you the harrowing details as to more pacific ways in which they 

 supplemented their insufficient income — carried on the work of the 

 faculties as best they could ; and some members of the teaching-staff 

 were fain from time to time to exchange the gown for the sword. 

 Thus one Eberhard Bering, after lecturing on Oriental languages, at 

 different points of his career enlisted as a trooper under the notorious 

 General Hoik and under another Swedish commander (he died peace- 

 fully after being in turn professor and schoolmaster). The students 

 at Helmstadt took very largely after this type of professor, and of the 

 students many of them treated the War, in the contending forces of 

 which they took occasional service, as an agreeable vacation change, 

 with the variety of pay, in the midst of occupations nominally more 

 peaceable. 



Vol. XX. (No. 106) 2 D 



