less than thirty years,
Hermann von der Salza, a new sagacious TEUTSCHMEISTER or HOCHMEISTER (so
they call the head of the Order), fourth in the series, a far-seeing,
negotiating man, finds that Venice will be a fitter place of lodging
for him than Acre: and accordingly during his long Mastership (A.D.
1210-1239), he is mostly to be found there, and not at Acre or
Jerusalem.

He is very great with the busy Kaiser, Friedrich II., Barbarossa's
grandson; who has the usual quarrels with the Pope, and is glad of such
a negotiator, statesman as well as armed monk. The usual quarrels this
great Kaiser had, all along, and some unusual. Normans ousted from
Sicily, who used to be so Papal: a Kaiser NOT gone on the Crusade, as
he had vowed; Kaiser at last suspected of freethinking even:--in which
matters Hermann much serves the Kaiser. Sometimes he is appointed
arbiter between the Pope and Kaiser;--does not give it in the Kaiser's
favor, but against him, where he thinks the Kaiser is wrong. He is
reckoned the first great Hochmeister, this Hermann von der Salza, a
Thuringer by birth, who is fourth in the series of Masters: perhaps the
greatest to be found there at all, though many were considerable. It is
evident that no man of his time was busier in important public affairs,
or with better acceptance, than Hermann. His Order, both Pope and
Emperor so favoring the Master of it, was in a vigorous state of growth
all this while; Hermann well proving that he could help it better at
Venice than at Acre.

But if the Crusades are ended,--as indeed it turned out, only one other
worth speaking of, St. Louis's, having in earnest come to effect, or
rather to miserable non-effect, and that not yet for fifty years;--if
the Crusades are ended, and the Teutsch Order increases always in
possessions, and finds less and less work, what probably will become of
the Teutsch Order? Grow fat, become luxurious, incredulous, dissolute,
insolent; and need to be burnt out of the way? That was the course of
the Templars, and their sad end. They began poorest of the poor, "two
Knights to one Horse," as their Seal bore; and they at last took FIRE on
very opposite accounts. "To carouse like a Templar:" that had become a
proverb among men; that was the way to produce combustion, "spontaneous"
or other! Whereas their fellow Hospitallers of St. John, chancing upon
new work (Anti-Turk garrison-duty, so we may call it, successively in
Cyprus, Rhodes, Malta, for a