randenburg); and held it
continuously, it and much else that lay adjacent, for centuries, in a
highly conspicuous manner.

In Brandenburg they lasted for about two hundred years; in their Saxon
dignities, the younger branch of them did not die out (and give place
to the Wettins that now are) for five hundred. Nay they have still their
representatives on the Earth: Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, celebrated "Old
Dessauer," come of the junior branches, is lineal head of the kin in
Friedrich Wilhelm's time (while our little Fritzchen lies asleep in his
cradle at Berlin); and a certain Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, Colonel in
the Prussian Army, authentic PRINCE, but with purse much shorter than
pedigree, will have a Daughter by and by, who will go to Russia, and
become almost too conspicuous, as Catharine II., there!--

"Brandenburg now as afterwards," says one of my old Papers, "was
officially reckoned SAXON; part of the big Duchy of Saxony; where
certain famed BILLUNGS, lineage of an old 'Count Billung' (connected
or not with BILLINGS-gate in our country, I do not know) had long borne
sway. Of which big old Billungs I will say nothing at all;--this
only, that they died out; and a certain Albert, 'Count of Ascanien and
Ballenstadt' (say, of ANHALT, in modern terms), whose mother was one of
their daughters, came in for the northern part of their inheritance. He
made a clutch at the Southern too, but did not long retain that. Being
a man very swift and very sharp, at once nimble and strong, in the huge
scramble that there then was,--Uncle Billung dead without heirs, a SALIC
line of emperors going or gone out, and a HOHENSTAUFFEN not yet come
in,--he made a rich game of it for himself; the rather as Lothar, the
intermediate Kaiser, was his cousin, and there were other good cards
which he played well.

"This is he they call 'Albert the Bear '_Albrecht der Bar_;' first of
the ASCANIEN Markgraves of Brandenburg;--first wholly definite MARKGRAF
OF BRANDENBURG that there is; once a very shining figure in the world,
though now fallen dim enough again. It is evident he had a quick eye,
as well as a strong hand; and could pick what way was straightest among
crooked things. He got the Northern part of what is still called Saxony,
and kept it in his family; got the Brandenburg Countries withal, got the
Lausitz; was the shining figure and great man of the North in his day.
The Markgrafdom of SALZWEDEL (which soon became of BRANDENBURG) he very