present generation. That other dynasty is the family, Slav by descent, of the Obotrite Grand Dukes of Mecklenburg--the same race whom our Alfred the Great speaks of as "Apdrede." The present grand dukes are the direct descendants of that terrible Prince Niklot, of the twelfth century, whom among German princes only the Guelph, Henry the Lion, was found strong enough to subdue. But before Bodrician Niklot had mounted his barbarian throne, Henry the Generous had already been installed as chief over Lüneburg--the principality over which his family continued to rule down to 1866, when the cruel Fortune of War decided against its last Guelph chief. In the adjoining Duchy of Brunswick, over which, as forming part of ancient Saxony, the Guelphs were set as heads in 1127, the family continued to hold sway till 1884, when Death removed the last scion of their older line, in the person of the late Duke of Brunswick. The Guelph pedigree, however, goes very much farther back than the time of Henry. Long even before Guelph Odoacer, at the head of his Teuton hordes, dethroned that caricature of an Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, there were Guelph "Agilolfings" leading to battle, as trusted chiefs, their own Scyrian tribes. What the later history of the family might have been, if to its constitutional valour and generosity had been joined the less showy, but far more useful, qualities of prudence and judgment, we may now, by the light of past events, readily conjecture. The Guelphs were in Henry's day by far the strongest dynasty in Germany--at a period when for the Imperial throne above all things a strong dynasty was needed. Had Germany elected Henry the Generous as Emperor, as everybody expected that she would, the Guelphs might still be wearing the crown of Charlemagne, and Germany might have a different tale to tell, both of her past experiences and of her present position. For it deserves to be noticed that all the troubles which came upon the Empire, by minute subdivision of its territory, and by the setting up of "opposition emperors," sprang directly and demonstrably from contests provoked with the Guelphs. It was Henry IV.'s resistance to Welf IV. that led to the multiplication of vassal crowns, which subsequently became a curse to Germany. It was the Powers pledged to the support of the Guelphs--most notably the Popes and our Coeur-de-Lion--who put forward those troublesome "opposition emperors," the forerunners and direct cause of the ruinous Interregnum--"die kaiserlose, die schreckliche Zeit"--and by such means of the political prostration of the country enduring through centuries. But our interest, in England, lies more with the Guelphs than with Germany. One cannot help sympathizing with a race which, being evidently designed for greatness, advanced towards it with giant strides, only to find the prize at which it ambitiously grasped snatched from its hand in the very moment of seeming attainment.