andenburg under the Hohenzollerns." Is this then all that
Heavy Peg and our nine Kurfuersts have done for us?

Carlyle does not mean that; but even he, greatest of historians since
Tacitus, is not enough careful to mark for us the growth of national
character, as distinct from the prosperity of dynasties.

A republican historian would think of this development only, and suppose
it to be possible without any dynasties.

Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work now chiefly needed in
moral philosophy, as well as history, is an analysis of the constant and
prevalent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without any external
help from kings, and in a silent and entirely necessary manner, form, in
Sweden, in Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and on the
French sea-coast, races of noble peasants; pacific, poetic, heroic,
Christian-hearted in the deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword
or famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or ignoble thirty years'
peace, and yet leave such strength to their children that the country,
apparently ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any prudent king,
as the cultivated fields do under the spring rain. How the rock to which
no seed can cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued into the
good ground which can bring forth its hundredfold, we forget to watch,
while we follow the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catastrophes of
storm. All this while, the Prussian earth--the Prussian soul--has been
thus dealt upon by successive fate; and now, though laid, as it seems,
utterly desolate, it can be revived by a few years of wisdom and of
peace.

Vol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii.--The Great Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm.
Eleventh of the dynasty:--

There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of
twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking
circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none;
a mere Protestant appendage, dragged about by a Papist
Kaiser. His father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in
the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but
Austria's. The very commandants of his fortresses,
Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey
Friedrich Wilhelm on his accession; "were bound to obey the
Kaiser in the first place."

For twenty years past Brandenburg had been scoured by
hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of
which, committed ou