enger could
not stay away forever. No; he returned duly; with accounts run up, on
compound interest, to the actual hour, in 1792;--and then, at last,
there had to be a "Protestantism;" and we know of what kind that was!--

Nations did not so understand it, nor did Brandenburg more than the
others; but the question of questions for them at that time, decisive of
their history for half a thousand years to come, was, Will you obey the
heavenly voice, or will you not?

Chapter IX. -- KURFURST JOACHIM I.

Brandenburg, in the matter of the Reformation, was at first--with Albert
of Mainz, Tetzel's friend, on the one side, and Pious George of Anspach,
"NIT KOP AB," on the other--certainly a divided house. But, after the
first act, it conspicuously ceased to be divided; nay Kur-Brandenburg
and Kur-Mainz themselves had known tendencies to the Reformation, and
were well aware that the Church could not stand as it was. Nor did the
cause want partisans in Berlin, in Brandenburg,--hardly to be repressed
from breaking into flame, while Kurfurst Joachim was so prudent and
conservative. Of this loud Kurfurst Joachim I., here and there mentioned
already, let us now say a more express word. [1484, 1499, 1535: birth,
accession, death of Joachim.]

Joachim I., Big John's son, hesitated hither and thither for some time,
trying if it would not do to follow the Kaiser Karl V.'s lead; and at
length, crossed in his temper perhaps by the speed his friends were
going at, declared formally against any farther Reformation; and in
his own family and country was strict upon the point. He is a man, as I
judge, by no means without a temper of his own; very loud occasionally
in the Diets and elsewhere;--reminds me a little of a certain King
Friedrich Wilhelm, whom my readers shall know by and by. A big, surly,
rather bottle-nosed man, with thick lips, abstruse wearied eyes, and no
eyebrows to speak of: not a beautiful man, when you cross him overmuch.

OF JOACHIM'S WIFE AND BROTHER-IN-LAW.

His wife was a Danish Princess, Sister of poor Christian II., King of
that Country: dissolute Christian, who took up with a huckster-woman's
daughter,--"mother sold gingerbread," it would appear, "at Bergen in
Norway," where Christian was Viceroy; Christian made acceptable love to
the daughter, "DIVIKE (Dovekin, COLUMBINA)," as he called her. Nay he
made the gingerbread mother a kind of prime-minister, said the angry
public, justly scandalized at this