ns far and wide over Germany and
beyond: I know not how many dozens of BALLEYS (rich Bailliwicks, each
again with its dozens of COMTHUREIS, Commanderies, or subordinate groups
of estates), and Baillies and Commanders to match;--and was thought to
deserve favor from above. Valiant servants, these; to whom Heaven had
vouchsafed great labors and unspeakable blessings. In some fifty or
fifty-three years they had got Prussian Heathenism brought to the
ground; and they endeavored to tie it well down there by bargain and
arrangement. But it would not yet lie quiet, nor for a century to come;
being still secretly Heathen; revolting, conspiring ever again, ever
on weaker terms, till the Satanic element had burnt itself out, and
conversion and composure could ensue.

Conversion and complete conquest once come, there was a happy time for
Prussia: ploughshare instead of sword; busy sea-havens, German towns,
getting built; churches everywhere rising; grass growing, and peaceable
cows, where formerly had been quagmire and snakes. And for the Order
a happy time? A rich, not a happy. The Order was victorious; Livonian
"Sword-Brothers," "Knights of Dobryn," minor Orders and Authorities
all round, were long since subordinated to it or incorporated with it;
Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, are all got tamed under its influence,
or tied down and evidently tamable. But it was in these times that
the Order got into its wider troubles outward and inward; quarrels,
jealousies, with Christian neighbors, Poland, Pommern, who did not love
it and for cause;--wider troubles, and by no means so evidently useful
to mankind. The Order's wages, in this world, flowed higher than
ever, only perhaps its work was beginning to run low! But we will not
anticipate.

On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century and more,
was a grand phenomenon; and flamed like a bright blessed beacon through
the night of things, in those Northern Countries. For above a century,
we perceive, it was the rallying place of all brave men who had a career
to seek on terms other than vulgar. The noble soul, aiming beyond money,
and sensible to more than hunger in this world, had a beacon burning (as
we say), if the night chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow too
intricate, as is not uncommon. Better than the career of stump-oratory,
I should fancy, and ITS Hesperides Apples, golden and of gilt
horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's poor spiritual gift of God