We have now reached the very eve of that brilliant period when the Guelphs appeared to have risen, rapidly, high above other dynasties--only to sink even more suddenly to a humble level of prosaic obscurity, on which they were destined to continue for centuries. The records of that brief spell of meteoric greatness read like a romance. The Guelphs were giants, visibly overtopping all their contemporaries. Henry "the Great," Henry "the Generous," Henry "the Lion"--their very names tell of vigour and influence, of strength of character and striking individuality. Their domains came to stretch from sea to sea, from the Northern Ocean, which we call the German, to the Mediterranean--and breadthways across the whole Continent of Germany, eastward into those still only half-explored Slav regions in which dwelt the uncultured Bodricians and Luticzians, backed by the Russians and the Poles. Even Denmark was in a state of dependence upon them. And the Guelph Duchies represented a power almost superior to that of the Empire. Had not Frederick Barbarossa been so very great a ruler, it is said, Henry the Lion's realm would infallibly have either swallowed up the rest of Germany or else have constituted itself a separate Empire. Under Henry the Generous the Imperial Crown seemed to lie actually at the feet of the Guelph dynasty. They need but have stooped a little to pick it up. But stooping was the one thing which they could not bring themselves to do. As a result they were jockeyed out of this prize just as their late successor was the other day jockeyed out of his kingdom of Hanover. Germany, it is to be feared, lost more by that shabby trick than did the Guelphs. Under a race of heroes like those Henrys, with plenty of power of their own at their back to support them against rivals and malcontents, it did not seem too much to expect that something like the halcyon days of the Saxon emperors might have been brought back. All ended in smoke. There was that family quarrel between Guelphs and Ghibellines, which ruined both houses--unfortunately, the Guelphs first. It seems a strange coincidence that the two rival cousins, Frederick Barbarossa and Henry the Lion, should both have been born at Ravensburg. It seems odd, also, that after being long the warmest of friends, the two houses should have become such implacable foes. The Hohenstaufens had no one but Welf IV. to thank for the Swabian crown. It was he who had extorted it from Henry IV. And it seems more than strange, it seems hard, cruel, and unjust, that not only should the Guelphs a second time have been punished in their private capacity for what they had done in the service of the Empire, but that, moreover, the Emperor's persecution, which led to their fall, should have been, as I shall show, the direct consequence of loyal service rendered to the Imperial Crown.