hese two frontier counties, or marches. The first, called the
Northern March, or March of Brandenburg, was the religious centre of
the Slays, and was situated in the midst of forests and marshes just
beyond the Elbe. This March of Brandenburg was won from the Slays in
the first instance by the Saxons and Franks of the Saxon plain. When
the burgrave, Frederick of Hohenzollern, came to take possession of
his new territory he was received with the jesting remark: "Were it to
rain burgraves for a whole year, we should not allow them to grow in
the march." But Frederick's soldiers and money, and his Nuremberg
jewels, as his cannon were called, ended by gaining complete control,
a control in more powerful hands to-day than ever before.

The second, called the Eastern or Austrian March, was situated in the
basin of the Danube. These two great states were formed in lands that
had ceased to be German and had become Slav or Finnish territory. The
fighting appetite of the German tribes, and the spirit of chivalry
later, which had drawn men in other days in France to the East, in
Spain against the Moors, in Normandy against England, were offered an
opportunity and an outlet in Germany, by forays and fighting against
the Finns and Slays.

Out of the conquest and settlement of these territories grew, what we
know to-day, as the German Empire and the Austrian Empire. Out of
their margraves, who were at first sentinel officers guarding the
outer boundaries of the empire, and mere nominees of the Emperor, have
developed the Emperor of Germany and the Emperor of Austria, the one
ruling over the most powerful nation, the other the head of the most
exclusive court, in Europe.

When a man becomes a power in the world, these days, our first impulse
is to ask about his ancestry. Who were his father and his mother; what
and who were his grandfathers and grandmothers, and who were their
forebears. Where did they come from, what was the climate; did they
live by the sea, or in the mountains, or in the plains. We are at once
hot on the trail of his success. Be he an American, we wish to know
whether his people came from Holland, from France, from England, or
from Belgium; where did they settle, in New England, in New York, or
in the South. We no longer accept ability as a miracle, but
investigate it as an evolution. If the man be great enough, cities vie
with each other to claim him as their child; he acquires an Homeric
versatility in cradles