e King of Poland, in whose power it mostly
lay.

George Friedrich was by no means welcome to the Prussian Council, nor
to the Wife, nor to the Landed Aristocracy;--other than welcome,
for reasons we can guess. But he proved, in the judgment of all fair
witnesses, an excellent Governor; and, for six-and-twenty years,
administered the country with great and lasting advantage to it. His
Portraits represent to us a large ponderous figure of a man, very fat
in his latter years; with an air of honest sense, dignity, composed
solidity;--very fit for the task now on hand.

He resolutely, though in mild form, smoothed down the flaming fires
of his Clergy; commanding now this controversy and then that other
controversy _("de concreto et de inconcreto,"_ or whatever they were) to
fall strictly silent; to carry themselves on by thought and meditation
merely, and without words. He tamed the mutinous Aristocracy, the
mutinous Burgermeisters, Town-Council of Konigsberg, whatever mutiny
there was. He drained bogs, says old Rentsch; he felled woods, made
roads, established inns. Prussia was well governed till George's death;
which happened in the year 1603. [Rentsch, pp. 666-688.] Anspach, in the
mean while, Anspach, Baireuth and Jagerndorf, which were latterly
all his, he had governed by deputy; no need of visiting those quiet
countries, except for purposes of kindly recreation, or for a swift
general supervision, now and then. By all accounts, an excellent,
steadfast, wise and just man, this fat George Friedrich; worthy of the
Father that produced him _("Nit Kop ab, lover Forst, nit Kop ab!"),---_
and that is saying much.

By his death without children much territory fell home to the Elder
House; to be disposed of as was settled in the GERA BOND five years
before. Anspach and Baireuth went to two Brothers of the now Elector,
Kurfurst Joachim Friedrich, sons of Johann George of blessed memory:
founders, they, of the "New Line," of whom we know. Jagerndorf the
Elector himself got; and he, not long after, settled it on one of
his own sons, a new Johann George, who at that time was fallen rather
landless and out of a career: "Johann George of Jagerndorf," so called
thenceforth: whose history will concern us by and by. Preussen was to be
incorporated with the Electorate,--were possession of it once had. But
that is a ticklish point; still ticklish in spite of rights, and liable
to perverse accidents that may arise.

Joachim Friedrich,