What Gundling thought to himself, amid these pranks and hoaxings, we do not know. The poor soul was not born a fool; though he had become one, by college-learning, vanity, strong-drink, and the world's perversity and his own. Under good guidance, especially if bred to strict silence, he might have been in some measure a luminous object,--not as now a phosphorescent one, shining by its mere rottenness! A sad "Calamity of Authors" indeed, when it overtakes a man!--Poor Gundling probably had lucid intervals now and then; tragic fits of discernment, in the inner-man of him. He had a Brother, also a learned man, who retained his senses; and was even a rather famed Professor at Halle; whose Portrait, looking very academic, solemn and well-to-do, turns up in old printshops; whose Books, concerning "Henry the Fowler (_De Henrico Aucupe_)," "Kaiser Conrad I.," and other dim Historical objects, are still consultable,--though with little profit, to my experience. The name of this one was NICOLAUS HIERONYMUS; ours is JAKOB PAUL, the senior brother,--once the hope of the House, it is likely, and a fond Father's pride,--in that poor old Nurnberg Parsonage long ago! Jakob Paul likewise continued to write Books, on Brandenburg Heraldries, Topography, Genealogies: even a "LIFE" or two of some old Brandenburg Electors are still extant from his hand; but not looked at now by any mortal. He had been, perhaps was again, Historiographer Royal; and felt bound to write such Books: several of them he printed; and we hear of others still manuscript, "in five folio volumes written fair." He held innumerable half-mock Titles and Offices; among others, was actual President of the Berlin Royal Society, or ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES, Leibnitz's pet daughter,--there Gundling actually sat in Office; and drew the salary, for one certainty. "As good he as another," thought Friedrich Wilhelm: "What is the use of these solemn fellows, in their big perukes, with their crabbed X+Y's, and scientiflc Pedler's-French; doing nothing that I can see, except annually the _Berlin Almanac,_ which they live upon? Let them live upon it, and be thankful; with Gundling for their head man."