ce the
Hohenzollerns came to that Country had Brandenburg such a time.
Difficult to have mended it; impossible to have quite avoided it;--and
Kurfurst George Wilhelm was not a man so superior to all his neighbors,
that he could clearly see his way in such an element. The perfect or
ideal course was clear: To have frankly drawn sword for his Religion and
his Rights, so soon as the battle fairly opened; and to have fought for
these same, till he got either them or died. Alas, that is easily said
and written; but it is, for a George Wilhelm especially, difficult to
do! His capability in all kinds was limited; his connections, with this
side and that, were very intricate. Gustavus and the Winter-King were
his Brothers-in-law; Gustavus wedded to his Sister, he to Winter-King's.
His relations to Poland, feudal superior of Preussen, were delicate; and
Gustavus was in deadly quarrel with Poland. And then Gustavus's sudden
laying-hold of Pommern, which had just escaped from Wallenstein and
the Kaiser? It must be granted, poor George Wilhelm's case demanded
circumspectness.

One can forgive him for declining the Bohemian-King speculation, though
his Uncle of Jagerndorf and his Cousins of Liegnitz were so hearty
and forward in it. Pardonable in him to decline the Bohemian
speculation;--though surely it is very sad that he found himself so
short of "butter and firewood" when the poor Ex-King, and his young
Wife, then in a specially interesting state, came to take shelter with
him! [Solltl _(Geschichte des Dreissigjahrigen Krieges,_--a trivial
modern Book) gives a notable memorial from the Brandenburg RATHS,
concerning these their difficulties of housekeeping. Their real object,
we perceive, was to get rid of a Guest so dangerous as the Ex-King,
under Ban of the Empire, had now become.] But when Gustavus landed, and
flung out upon the winds such a banner as that of his,--truly it was
required of a Protestant Governor of men to be able to read said
banner in a certain degree. A Governor, not too IMperfect, would have
recognized this Gustavus, what his purposes and likelihoods were; the
feeling would have been, checked by due circumspectness: "Up, my men,
let us follow this man; let us live and die in the Cause this man goes
for! Live otherwise with honor, or die otherwise with honor, we
cannot, in the pass things have come to!"--And thus, at the very worst,
Brandenburg would have had only one class of enemies to ravage it; and
might