He is very great with the busy Kaiser, Friedrich II., Barbarossa's grandson; who has the usual quarrels with the Pope, and is glad of such a negotiator, statesman as well as armed monk. The usual quarrels this great Kaiser had, all along, and some unusual. Normans ousted from Sicily, who used to be so Papal: a Kaiser NOT gone on the Crusade, as he had vowed; Kaiser at last suspected of freethinking even:--in which matters Hermann much serves the Kaiser. Sometimes he is appointed arbiter between the Pope and Kaiser;--does not give it in the Kaiser's favor, but against him, where he thinks the Kaiser is wrong. He is reckoned the first great Hochmeister, this Hermann von der Salza, a Thuringer by birth, who is fourth in the series of Masters: perhaps the greatest to be found there at all, though many were considerable. It is evident that no man of his time was busier in important public affairs, or with better acceptance, than Hermann. His Order, both Pope and Emperor so favoring the Master of it, was in a vigorous state of growth all this while; Hermann well proving that he could help it better at Venice than at Acre. But if the Crusades are ended,--as indeed it turned out, only one other worth speaking of, St. Louis's, having in earnest come to effect, or rather to miserable non-effect, and that not yet for fifty years;--if the Crusades are ended, and the Teutsch Order increases always in possessions, and finds less and less work, what probably will become of the Teutsch Order? Grow fat, become luxurious, incredulous, dissolute, insolent; and need to be burnt out of the way? That was the course of the Templars, and their sad end. They began poorest of the poor, "two Knights to one Horse," as their Seal bore; and they at last took FIRE on very opposite accounts. "To carouse like a Templar:" that had become a proverb among men; that was the way to produce combustion, "spontaneous" or other! Whereas their fellow Hospitallers of St. John, chancing upon new work (Anti-Turk garrison-duty, so we may call it, successively in Cyprus, Rhodes, Malta, for a series of ages), and doing it well, managed to escape the like. As did the Teutsch Order in a still more conspicuous manner. TEUTSCH ORDER ITSELF GOES TO PREUSSEN.