The Thirty Years' War - James Aitken Wylie

assembly, wearing green wreaths, and carrying in
their hands green branches, marched to the church
singing hymns. The villagers had been joined by
the gentry and nobility of the neighborhood, and
the procession was a long and imposing one. In the
church hymns were again sung by voices which
trembled with varied emotions; prayers breathed
out with touching pathos and solemnity ascended
upward; and the pastor, mounting the pulpit,
preached a sermon suited to the joyful occasion.
Thereafter the whole assemblage gathered in the
market-place, and the stripling and the patriarch,
the village maiden and the high-bona dame,
mingling their voices in one mighty chorus, sang a
closing hymn and then dispersed.[2]
The condition of the Fatherland after the war
was of the most serious and painful character.
Peace had been proclaimed, but many years were
needed to staunch the wounds and efface the deep
scars which the war had made. When one has been
brought to the grave's brink and again recovers,
slowly the pallor departs from the face, and slowly
does the dimmed eye brighten and the sickly frame
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