a people whose whole life and labour were devoted to mining. The town
itself lay on the banks of a stream, inclosed by hills, on the edge
of the Harz country. Above it towered the stately castle of the
Counts, to whom the place belonged. The character of the scenery is
more severe, and the air harsher than in the neighbourhood of Mohra.
Luther himself called his Mansfeld countrymen sons of the Harz. In
the main, these Harz people are much rougher than the Thuringians.

[Illustration: MARGARET LUTHER.]

Here also, at first, Luther's parents found it a hard struggle to
get on. 'My father,' said the Reformer, 'was a poor miner; my mother
carried in all the wood upon her back; they worked the flesh off
their bones to bring us up: no one nowadays would ever have such
endurance.' It must not, however, be forgotten that carrying wood in
those days was less a sign of poverty than now. Gradually their
affairs improved. The whole working of the mines belonged to the
Counts, and they leased out single portions, called smelting
furnaces, sometimes for lives, sometimes for a term of years. Harts
Luther succeeded in obtaining two furnaces, though only on a lease
of years. He must have risen in the esteem of his town-fellows even
more rapidly than in outward prosperity.

The magistracy of the town consisted of a bailiff, the chief
landowners, and four of the community. Among these four Hans Luther
appears in a public document as early as 1491. His children were
numerous enough to cause him constant anxiety for their maintenance
and education: there were at least seven of them, for we know of
three brothers and three sisters of the Reformer. The Luther family
never rose to be one of the rich families of Mansfeld, who possessed