beat to powder, and either
swept away, or else damped down into Christianity and keeping of the
peace. Swept them away otherwise; "peopling their lands extensively with
Colonists from Holland, whom an inroad of the sea had rendered homeless
there." Which surely was a useful exchange. Nothing better is known to
me of Albert the Bear than this his introducing large numbers of Dutch
Netherlanders into those countries; men thrown out of work, who already
knew how to deal with bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who first
taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow-pasture was. The Wends, in
presence of such things, could not but consent more and more to efface
themselves,--either to become German, and grow milk and cheese in the
Dutch manner, or to disappear from the world.

The Wendish Princes had a taste for German wives; in which just taste
the Albert genealogy was extremely willing to indulge them. Affinities
produce inheritances; by proper marriage-contracts you can settle on
what side the most contingent inheritance shall at length fall. Dim but
pretty certain lies a time coming when the Wendish Princes also shall
have effaced themselves; and all shall be German-Brandenburgish, not
Wendish any more.--The actual Inhabitants of Brandenburg, therefore,
are either come of Dutch Bog-farmers, or are simple Lower SAXONS
("Anglo-Saxon," if you like that better), PLATT-TEUTSCH of the common
type; an unexceptionable breed of people. Streaks of Wendish population,
extruded gradually into the remoter quagmires, and more inaccessible,
less valuable sedgy moors and sea-strands, are scattered about;
Mecklenburg, which still subsists separately after a sort, is reckoned
peculiarly Wendish. In Mecklenburg, Pommern, Pommerellen (Little
Pomerania), are still to be seen physiognomies of a Wendish or Vandalic
type (more of cheek than there ought to be, and less of brow; otherwise
good enough physiognomies of their kind): but the general mass, tempered
with such admixtures, is of the Platt-Deutsch, Saxon or even Anglish
character we are familiar with here at home. A patient stout people;
meaning considerable things, and very incapable of speaking what it
means.

Albert was a fine tall figure himself; DER SCHONE, "Albert the
Handsome," was his name as often as "Albert the Bear." That latter
epithet he got, not from his looks or qualities, but merely from his
heraldic cognizance: a Bear on his shield. As was then the mode of
names; sur