h (better half of the Culmbach Territory) for
apanage; and there peacefully distilled and sublimated at discretion;
the government there being an easier task, and fitter for a soft
speculative Herr. A third Brother, Albert by name, got Anspach, on
the Father's decease; very capable to do any fighting there might be
occasion for, in Culmbach.

As to the Burggrafship, it was now done, all but the Title. The First
Friedrich, once he was got to be Elector, wisely parted with it. The
First Friedrich found his Electorship had dreadfully real duties for
him, and that this of the Burggrafship had fallen mostly obsolete; so he
sold it to the Nurnbergers for a round sum: only the Principalities and
Territories are retained in that quarter. About which too, and their
feudal duties, boundaries and tolls, with a jealous litigious Nurnberg
for neighbor, there at length came quarrelling enough. But Albert the
third Brother, over at Anspach, took charge of all that; and nothing of
it fell in Johann's way.

The good Alchemist died,--performed his last sublimation, poor man,--six
or seven years before his Brother Friedrich; age then sixty-three. [14th
November, 1464.] Friedrich, with his Iron Teeth and faculties, only held
out till fifty-eight,--10th February, 1471. The manner of his end was
peculiar. In that War with Pommern, he sat besieging a Pomeranian town,
Uckermunde the name of it: when at dinner one day, a cannon-ball plunged
down upon the table, [Michaelis, i. 303.] with such a crash as we can
fancy;--which greatly confused the nerves of Friedrich; much injured his
hearing, and even his memory thenceforth. In a few months afterwards he
resigned, in favor of his Successor; retired to Plassenburg, and there
died in about a year more.

Chapter IV. -- KURFURST ALBERT ACHILLES, AND HIS SUCCESSOR.

Neither Friedrich nor Johann left other than daughters: so that the
united Heritage, Brandenburg and Culmbach both, came now to the third
Brother, Albert; who has been in Culmbath these many years already. A
tall, fiery, tough old gentleman, of formidable talent for fighting,
who was called the "ACHILLES OF GERMANY" in his day; being then a
very blazing far-seen character, dim as he has now grown. [Born 1414;
Kurfurst, 1471-1486.] This Albert Achilles was the Third Elector;
Ancestor he of all the Brandenburg and Culmbach Hohenzollern Princes
that have since figured in the world. After him there is no break
or shift in the successi