eading off or setting
the example."

And so the Teutsch Ritters are sunk beyond retrieval; and West Preussen,
called subsequently "Royal Preussen," NOT having homage to pay as the
"Ducal" or East Preussen had, is German no longer, but Polish, Sclavic;
not prospering by the change. [What Thorn had sunk to, out of its palmy
state, see in Nanke's _Wanderungen durch Preussen_ (Hamburg & Altona,
1800), ii. 177-200:--a pleasant little Rook, treating mainly of Natural
History; but drawing you, by its innocent simplicity and geniality, to
read with thanks whatever is in it.] And all that fine German country,
reduced to rebel against its unwise parent, was cut away by the Polish
sword, and remained with Poland, which did not prove very wise either;
till--till, in the Year 1773, it was cut back by the German sword! All
readers have heard of the Partition of Poland: but of the Partition of
Preussen, 307 years before, all have not heard.

It was in the second year of that final tribulation, marked above as
Period Third, that the Teutsch Ritters, famishing for money, completed
the Neumark transaction with Kurfurst Friedrich; Neumark, already pawned
to him ten years before, they in 1455, for a small farther sum, agreed
to sell; and he, long carefully steering towards such an issue, and
dexterously keeping out of the main broil, failed not to buy. Friedrich
could thenceforth, on his own score, protect the Neumark; keep up an
invisible but impenetrable wall between it and the neighboring anarchic
conflagrations of thirteen years; and the Neumark has ever since
remained with Brandenburg, its original owner.

As to Friedrich's Pomeranian quarrel, this is the figure of it. Here
is a scene from Rentsch, which falls out in Friedrich's time; and which
brought much battling and broiling to him and his. Symbolical withal
of much that befell in Brandenburg, from first to last. Under
the Hohenzollerns as before, Brandenburg grew by aggregation, by
assimilation; and we see here how difficult the process often was.

Pommern (POMERANIA), long Wendish, but peaceably so since the time
of Albert the Bear, and growing ever more German, had, in good part,
according to Friedrich's notion, if there were force in human Treaties
and Imperial Laws, fallen fairly to Brandenburg,--that is to say, the
half of it, Stettin-Pommern had fairly fallen,--in the year 1464, when
Duke Otto of Stettin, the last Wendish Duke, died without heirs. In that
case by many b