dingly bear fruit
to our day, and to all days!"--

So far my rough Note-books; which require again to be shut for the
present, not to abuse the reader's patience, or lead him from his road.

This of Markgrafs (GRAFS of the Marches, MARKED Places, or Boundaries)
was a natural invention in that state of circumstances. It did not
quite originate with Henry; but was much perfected by him, he first
recognizing how essential it was. On all frontiers he had his GRAF
(Count, REEVE, G'REEVE, whom some think to be only GRAU, Gray, or
SENIOR, the hardiest, wisest steel-GRAY man he could discover) stationed
on the MARCK, strenuously doing watch and ward there: the post of
difficulty, of peril, and naturally of honor too, nothing of a sinecure
by any means. Which post, like every other, always had a tendency to
become hereditary, if the kindred did not fail in fit men. And hence
have come the innumerable Markgraves, Marquises, and such like, of
modern times: titles now become chimerical, and more or less mendacious,
as most of our titles are,--like so many BURGS changed into "Boroughs,"
and even into "Rotten Boroughs," with Defensive BURGhers of the known
sort: very mournful to discover. Once Norroy was not all pasteboard! At
the heart of that huge whirlwind of his, with its dusty heraldries, and
phantasmal nomenclatures now become mendacious, there lay, at first,
always an earnest human fact. Henry the Fowler was so happy as to have
the fact without any mixture of mendacity: we are in the sad reverse
case; reverse case not yet altogether COMPLETE, but daily becoming
so,--one of the saddest and strangest ever heard of, if we thought of
it!--But to go on with business.

Markgraviates there continued to be ever after,--Six in Henry's
time:--but as to the number, place, arrangement of them, all this varied
according to circumstances outward and inward, chiefly according to the
regress or the reintrusion of the circumambient hostile populations; and
underwent many changes. The sea-wall you build, and what main floodgates
you establish in it, will depend on the state of the outer sea. Markgraf
of SLESWIG grows into Markgraf of DITMARSCH and STADE; retiring over the
Elbe, if Norse Piracy get very triumphant. ANTWERP falls obsolete; so
does MEISSEN by and by. LAUSITZ and SALZWEDEL, in the third century
hence, shrink both into BRANDENBURG; which was long only a subaltern
station, managed by deputy from one or other of these. A Markgraf th