Prosperous though toilsome days for Rudolf; who proved an excellent bit of stuff for a Kaiser; and found no rest, proving what stuff he was. In which prosperities, as indeed he continued to do in the perils and toils, Burggraf Friedrich III. of Nurnberg naturally partook: hence, and not gratis at all, the Hereditary Burggrafdom, and many other favors and accessions he got. For he continued Rudolf's steady helper, friend and first-man in all things, to the very end. Evidently one of the most important men in Germany, and candor will lead us to guess one of the worthiest, during those bad years of Interregnum, and the better ones of Kaisership. After Conrad his great-grandfather he is the second notable architect of the Family House;--founded by Conrad; conspicuously built up by this Friedrich III., and the first STORY of it finished, so to speak. Then come two Friedrichs as Burggrafs, his son and his grandson's grandson, "Friedrich IV." and "Friedrich VI.," by whom it was raised to the second story and the third,--thenceforth one of the high houses of the world. That is the glimpse we can give of Friedrich first Hereditary Burggraf, and of his Cousin Rudolf first Hapsburg Kaiser. The latest Austrian Kaisers, the latest Kings of Prussia, they are sons of these two men. Chapter VIII. -- ASCANIER MARKGRAVES IN BRANDENBURG. We have said nothing of the Ascanier Markgraves, Electors of Brandenburg, all this while; nor, in these limits, can we now or henceforth say almost anything. A proud enough, valiant and diligent line of Markgraves; who had much fighting and other struggle in the world,--steadily enlarging their border upon the Wends to the north; and adjusting it, with mixed success, against the WETTIN gentlemen, who are Markgraves farther east (in the LAUSITZ now), who bound us to the south too (MEISSEN, Misnia), and who in fact came in for the whole of modern Saxony in the end. Much fighting, too, there was with the Archbishops of Magdeburg, now that the Wends are down: standing quarrel there, on the small scale, like that of Kaiser and Pope on the great; such quarrel as is to be seen in all places, and on all manner of scales, in that era of the Christian World.