out either men or measures, except Frederick the Great, that
call for other than dreary comment:

Frederick I of Nuremberg, 1417
Frederick II, 1440
Albert III, 1470
Johann III, 1476
Joachim I, 1499
Joachim II, 1535
Johann George, 1571
Joachim Frederick, 1598
Johann Sigismund of Poland (first Duke of Prussia), 1608
George William, 1619
Frederick William (the Great Elector), 1640
Frederick III, Frederick I of Prussia (crowned first King of Prussia
in 1701), 1657-1713
Frederick William I (son of Frederick I of Prussia), 1688-1740
Frederick II (the Great) (son of Frederick William I), 1712-1786
Frederick William II (son of Augustus William, brother of
Frederick the Great), 1744-1787
Frederick William III (son of Frederick William II), 1770-1840
Frederick William IV (son of Frederick William III, 1795-1861), reigned,
1840-1861
William I (son of Frederick William III, brother of Frederick William IV,
1797-1888), reigned, 1861-1888
Frederick III (son of William I, 1831-1888), reigned from March 9
to June 15, 1888.
William II (son of Frederick III and Princess Victoria of England),
born Jan. 27, 1859, succeeded Frederick III in 1888.

These incidents, names, and dates are mere whisps of history. It is
only necessary to indicate that to articulate this skeleton of
history, clothe it with flesh, and give it its appropriate arms and
costumes would entail the putting of all mediaeval European history
upon a screen, to deliver oneself without apology from any such task.
It may be for this reason that there is no history of Germany in the
English tongue, that ranks above the elementary and the mediocre.
There is a masterly and scholarly history of the Holy Roman Empire by
an Englishman, which no student of Germany may neglect, but he who
would trace the beginnings of Germany from 113 B. C. down to the time
of the Great Elector, 1640, must be his own guide through the
trackless deserts, of the formation into separate nations, of modern
Europe. It is even with misgivings that the student picks his way from
the time of the Great Elector to Bismarck, and to modern Germany.

The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, marks the end of the Thirty Years' War,
and finds Germany with a population reduced from sixteen millions to
four millions. Famine which drove men and women to cannibalism, bands
of them being caught cooking human bodies in a caldron for food;
slaughter that drove men to make laws authorizing every man to have
two wive