Brandenburg had again sunk very low under the Tenth Elector, in the unutterable troubles of the times. But it was gloriously raised up again by his Son Friedrich Wilhelm, who succeeded in 1640. This is he whom they call the "Great Elector (GROSSE KURFURST);" of whom there is much writing and celebrating in Prussian Books. As for the epithet, it is not uncommon among petty German populations, and many times does not mean too much: thus Max of Bavaria, with his Jesuit Lambkins and Hyacinths, is, by Bavarians, called "Maximilian the Great." Friedrich Wilhelm, both by his intrinsic qualities and the success he met with, deserves it better than most. His success, if we look where he started and where he ended, was beyond that of any other man in his day. He found Brandenburg annihilated, and he left Brandenburg sound and flourishing; a great country, or already on the way towards greatness. Undoubtedly a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man. There was a stroke in him swift as lightning, well-aimed mostly, and of a respectable weight, withal; which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him, by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years. [1620; 1640; 1688.] There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances. Political significance Brandenburg had none; a mere Protestant appendage dragged about by a Papist Kaiser. His Father's Prime-Minister, as we have seen, was in the interest of his enemies; not Brandenburg's servant, but Austria's. The very Commandants of his Fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm, on his accession; "were bound to obey the Kaiser in the first place." He had to proceed softly as well as swiftly; with the most delicate hand to get him of Spandau by the collar, and put him under lock-and-key, him as a warning to others. For twenty years past, Brandenburg had been scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new in human history. In a year or two hence, Brandenburg became again the theatre of business; Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644), with intent "to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes in Jutland," where they had been chastising old Christian IV., now meddlesome again, for the last time, and never a good neighbor to Sweden. Gallas could by no means do what he intended: on the contrary, he had to run from Torstenson, what feet could do; was hunted, he and his MERODE-BRUDER (beautiful inventors of the "Marauding" Art), "till they pretty much all died (CREPERTIN)," says Kohler. [_Reichs-Historie,_ p. 556; Pauli, v. 24.] No great loss to society, the death of these Artists: but we can fancy what their life, and especially what the process of their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg again!--