reinstatement in his principality if he would become a Roman Catholic, he rejected this proposal with contempt. If he engaged himself as a soldier, it was by preference against the Hapsburgers. Such a personage, with his freedom from all principle, his complete recklessness, his impracticable and at the same time elastic character, and his mind filled with the highest projects, appears to us as a representative of the dark side which is developed in the Sclavonic nature. Other princes of his race, above all his brother Friedrich, are epitomes of the faults of the German character. Mean, egotistic, narrow-minded, and suspicious, without decision or energy, Duke Friedrich was his perfect opposite. Another contrast is to be found in his biographer and companion, the Junker Hans von Schweinichen. This comical madcap was a thorough German Silesian. When a boy, as page of the imprisoned Duke Friedrich, and as whipping-boy of the son, he had early made a thorough acquaintance with the wild proceedings of the Liegnitzer court, and been initiated into all its intrigues. His father, a landed proprietor, had fallen into debt in consequence of having once become security for Duke Heinrich. Schweinichen was co-heir to a deeply involved property, and up to an advanced age was engaged in endless quarrels with the creditors, and also with his relations, who had been surety for him, and for whom he had been surety. This was indeed, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the usual lot of landed proprietors. But besides this, he for many years joined in all the mad pranks of his princely master, which were for the most part rather of a lax nature, so he came in for no unimportant share of these frivolous proceedings. The moral cultivation of those times was undoubtedly on the whole much lower than that of ours, and he must only be judged by the standard of his own time. He was no man of the sword, and his valour was tempered by a strong degree of caution. Always in good humour, and at the same time crafty, furnished with great powers of persuasion, he contrived to glide like an eel through the most difficult situations with the open bearing of an honest man, and the most good humoured countenance in the world. Even when most dissolute he still clung to the hope of redeeming the future, and whilst living as a wild courtier, he considered himself as an honourable country nobleman, who had to preserve the good opinion of his fellows. He had always a small degree of conscientiousness in domestic matters; his was not however a burdensome or strict conscience, and demanded only occasional obedience. He valued himself not a little, and gradually began to take less pleasure in his master's vagaries. The endless changes, the quarrels with Jews and Christians, and the anxieties about the daily wine, made this life at last too irregular for him; he had always kept a diary of his own life, and seldom forgot to note down that on the previous evening he had been