considerable promotion! A subsequent Burgrave of
Nuremberg lends money to a needy Austrian Emperor, and becomes in 1417
Elector of Brandenburg--a much more considerable promotion! Again,
another ancestor inherits at the other extremity of Germany the petty
dukedom of Cleves, and that dukedom became the nucleus of Prussian
power in the Far West of Germany. Still another ancestor of a
collateral branch becomes Grand Master of the religious Order of the
Teutonic Knights, and this fact induces Master Martin Luther, who was
much more of a realist and a time-server and a trimmer than
theologians give him credit for, to advise the Hohenzollern Grand
Master to secularize his knights, to confiscate the whole Church
property of the Order, and to make himself the overlord of Eastern
Prussia.

Thus everything has worked for the aggrandizement of the future Kings
of Prussia, everything has brought grist to the mill of Sans-Souci.

IV.--A DYNASTY OF UPSTARTS.

No dynasts in modern times, not even the Bourbons nor the Habsburgs,
have been more obsessed with the pride of race. A double avenue of
gaudy statues in Berlin has been erected in the Siegesallee, or Alley
of Victory, to illustrate the glories of the House. And Carlyle, in
his "History of Frederick the Great," devotes a whole volume--and a
very tedious volume--to the medieval ancestors of the dynasty. The
present Kaiser believes himself to be the lineal successor, not only
of the Hohenstaufen, but of the Caesars of Ancient Rome. It was in that
spirit that he was graciously pleased recently to dedicate a monument
to his predecessor, Emperor Trajan! _Trajano Romanorum Imperatori,
Wilhelmus Imperator Germanorum!_ (To Trajan, Emperor of the Romans,
William, Emperor of the Germans!)

But all that Hohenstaufen-Hohenzollern genealogy is mythical history.
The real history of the Hohenzollern is of recent date, and begins in
1640 with the advent of the Great Elector (1640-1688). Compared with
the ancient House of Habsburg or of Bourbon, the Hohenzollern may well
be called the "parvenus" of royalty. Until the seventeenth century the
Electors of Brandenburg were twice vassals--lieges of the Holy Roman
Empire and vassals of the Kings of Poland; and when in 1701 the first
Hohenzollern King promoted himself to royal rank and ascended the
throne, he made ceaseless and humiliating attempts to secure
recognition. The old Houses refused to accept his title, and would
not acknowledge the