CHAPTER VIII.
A Burgher Family (1488)--Insight into the lower circles of German life--Increasing popular strength--Social superiority of the Protestant provinces (1542)--Insecurity of life--Family History Of Bartholomäus Sastrow
CHAPTER IX.
The Marriage and Housekeeping of a Young Student (1557)--The female sex among the Germans--Position of women in the middle ages--Marriage considered as an alliance between families--The betrothal--Narrative of Felix Platter
CHAPTER X.
Of a Patrician House (1526 to 1598)--The patricians rich and educated--Hans Schweinichen's account of the riches of the Fuggers--Their women--Clara Pirkheimer and Argula von Grumbach--Letters of a Lady of the Glauburg Family
CHAPTER XI.
German Nobility In The Sixteenth Century (1500)--False position in the nation--Unproductiveness--Gradual change--Character of Götz von Berlichingen--Extract from his Autobiography--Character of Schärtlin--Narrative Of Schärtlin--Hans von Schweinichen and Duke Heinrich von Liegnitz--Narrative Of Schweinichen--Transition to modern life
CHAPTER XII.
German Ideas of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century (1500)--The introduction of German traditions concerning him; change in the middle ages--Luther spiritualizes the ideas regarding the devil--Activity of the devil in the new Church--Compacts with the devil after Luther's time--Favourable position of the possessed--The money devil at Frankfort--Satan exorcised from one possessed--Witches--Dreadful persecutions--Gloomy state of men's minds at the end of the sixteenth century