Scheme of the Book.

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Such a biographical scheme cannot, on abstract grounds, be commended. The ordinary biographer who should adopt it would be simply unreadable, nor can it be alleged that the success even of Mr. Carlyle, though wonderful, has been complete. All but the most patient and sympathetic readers are sometimes alarmed, and cannot help grumbling, when they are required to peruse lists of "intercalary kaisers," to trace "Baireuth-Anspach " branches, to understand the coils and complications of Court and diplomatic intrigue respecting this marriage project and that, to distinguish between and remember, "the seven European crises," and the seventy times seven personages, male and female, that figured in them. Any other writer would have failed disastrously, but Mr. Carlyle succeeds to at least this extent that, though readers grumble, yet few, I imagine, except the frivolous and unintelligent, would prefer that these preliminary volumes had been left unwritten. Dry as the subject often looks, you find, if you resolutely enter on it, that, under Carlyle's touch, it becomes interesting. His sense of what is essential in history is so true that, in those chapters, we have an unequalled synopsis of what really was going on, what was vital, and growing, and destined to endure, in Europe in the time treated of; and his eye for what is pictorially vivid is so keen, his power of reproducing the past, by felicitous selection of graphic detail, so great, that a few lines or words from his pen often enable us to realise the state of affairs in extensive territories and for long periods, with a distinctness and practical accuracy which we might have failed to obtain after groping for months in libraries, or reading for weeks in the books of stilted or statistical historians.

However far he may seem to range in European history, Mr. Carlyle does not forget for a moment that his express concern is with the Royal House of Prussia, and there is an almost romantic interest in his account of its rise from

"Some

small beginnings to a place among sovereignties. where about the year 1170," Conrad of Hohenzollern set out from the old castle to seek his fortunes under the great Kaiser Barbarossa. Hohenzollern lies "on the sunward slope of the Rauhe-Alp country," a piece of country in that somewhat indefinite region which holds partly of Germany, partly of Switzerland, "no great way north from Constance and its lake." Near it springs the Danube, at its back is the Black Forest; and its name "fanciful Dryasdust will tell you," is equivalent to Tollery, or Place-ofTolls; which "gives one the notion of antique pedlars climbing painfully out of Italy and the Swiss valleys, thus far; unstrapping their packages here, and chaffering in unknown dialect about toll." In point of fact the dwellers in Conrad's ancestral castle appear to have been tax-gatherers on their own account, and to have known how to combine prudence with their exactions so as not to kill the trades on which they lived.

Conrad was a younger son, and decided that in the wide world, so visible from those high solitudes, he might do better than help his elder brother to gather in the coppers. "Probably with no great stock of luggage about him," he descended the Rauhe-Alp and offered his services to the Kaiser. Barbarossa, knowing a man when he saw him, took Conrad by the hand. "We may conclude he had found capabilities in Conrad; found that the young fellow did effective service as the occasion rose, and knew how to work in a swift, resolute, judicious, and exact manner. motion was not likely on other terms; still less high promotion." Conrad was presumably a handsome youth; anyhow, he found favour with an heiress "of immense possessions and opulent in territories." The kin of this heiress had long been hereditary Burg-grafs of Nürnberg, and to this dignity Conrad was appointed. Such was the lineal ancestor, twentieth in direct ascent, of Frederick the Great.

Pro

Brandenburg Bought and Sold.

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The Nürnberg Burg-grafs did not lose in their new capacity those faculties of thrift and energy which evidently ran in the blood of the ancient tax-gatherers of Hohenzollern. They seem to have believed, like Byron, that "ready-money is Aladdin's lamp," and kept in hand the cash that might enable them to take advantage of likely investments. The Kaisers, on the other hand, were royally in want of money, and few more so than Kaiser Sigismund, who, though he declared himself to be super grammaticam, and probably contrived to spell and punctuate according to the freedom of his own will, found that gold was indispensable. In his time the Nürnberg Burg-graf was Friedrich, seventh in descent from Conrad, and to him Sigismund applied for successive advances. In 1411 we find the canny Burg-graf holding the Kaiser's deed of acknowledgment for 100,000 gulden, lent at various times, with Brandenburg pledged by way of security. Sigismund borrows 50,000 more, and is very conscious that the more he borrows, the less is he likely to repау. Advance me, in a round sum, 250,000 gulden more," said he to Burg-graf Friedrich, "250,000 more for my manifold occasions in this time;-that will be 400,000 in whole ;-and take the Electorate of Brandenburg to yourself, land, titles, sovereign electorship, and all, and make me rid of it." That was the settlement adopted, in Sigismund's apartment at Constance, on the 30th of April, 1415; signed, sealed, and ratified-and the money paid. The sum paid might amount, in modern English currency, to £200,000, and would probably go as far as a million in our times. For this was Brandenburg bought and sold, nor does it appear from Mr. Carlyle's narrative that Sigismund took the smallest care to certify himself or the people of Brandenburg that the purchaser would respect any rights or privileges which the people might lay claim to. The country was simply passed from seller to buyer as a pawnticket that could not be redeemed. The Nürnberg Burg

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graf became absolute sovereign of Brandenburg, and not the smallest speck of constitutional freedom detracts from the beauty of the transaction in Mr. Carlyle's eyes.

The large territory thus acquired was "dog-cheap, it must be owned, for size and capability; but in the most waste condition, full of mutiny, injustice, anarchy, and highway robbery; a purchase that might have proved dear enough to another man than Burg-graf Friedrich." To him it proved an excellent bargain. He insisted that his bold nobles should give up stealing pigs or anything else that was their neighbour's, and, if they were refractory, he knocked their castles about their ears with a big gun he had borrowed for the purpose, which his men called Faule Grete, Lazy Peg. So marked was his success, and so high did he rise in the esteem of mankind, that he was asked to stand for the Kaisership itself, but this he judiciously declined to do. Among the dozen or so of Electors who succeeded him, some were excellent governors, some bad, some indifferent, and it was not till the dawn of the eighteenth century that the Brandenburg Elector obtained the regal title and became King of Prussia. The winner of the title was an insignificant man, but his son Frederick William, the father of Frederick the Great, was highly remarkable, and of him Mr. Carlyle has a great deal to say. It seems very certain, however, that Frederick William was, in many important respects, a more stunted, crossgrained, mentally and morally ignoble person, than several of those clear-headed Burg-grafs and wise and brave Electors who, before his day, had sprung from Conrad of Hohenzollern.

CHAPTER XV.

FREDERICK WILLIAM: HIS "VERACITY." HIS TYRANNICAL CRUELTY. THE TOBACCO PARLIAMENT.

WE

E looked at Mr. Carlyle's portrait of Frederick; we may as well look at his equally graphic delineation of Frederick's father.

FREDERICK WILLIAM.

He was not tall of stature, this arbitrary King; a florid complexioned, stout-built man; of serious, sincere, authoritative face; his attitudes and equipments very Spartan in type. Man of short, firm stature; stands (in Pesne's best portraits of him) at his ease, and yet like a tower. Most

solid; "plumb and rather more; " eyes steadfastly a awake; cheeks slightly compressed, too, which fling the mouth rather forward; as if asking silently "Anything astir, then? All right here ?" Face, figure, and bearing, all in him is expressive of robust insight and direct determination; of healthy energy, practicality, unquestioned authority-a certain air of royalty reduced to its simplest form. The face, in pictures by Pesne and others, is not beautiful or agreeable; healthy, genuine, authoritative, is the best you can say of it. Yet it may have been, what it is described as being, originally handsome. High enough arched brow, rather copious cheeks and jaws; nose smallish, inclining to be stumpy; large gray eyes, bright with steady fire and life, often enough gloomy and severe, but capable of jolly laughter too. Eyes" naturally with a kind of laugh in them," says Pöllnitz; which laugh can blaze out into fearful thunderous rage, if you give him provocation. Especially if you lie to him; for that he hates above all things. Look him straight in the face; he fancies he can see in your eyes, if there is an internal mendacity in you; wherefore you must look at him when speaking; such is his standing order.. Nothing could exceed his Majesty's simplicity of habitudes. But one loves especially in him his scrupulous attention to cleanliness of person and of environment. He washed like a very Mussulman, five times a day; loved cleanliness in all things to a superstitious extent; which trait is