f good likelihood. After such a spell of anarchy, parties
still ran higher than usual in the Holy Roman Empire; and wide-yawning
splits would not yet coalesce to the old pitch. It appears too the
posterity of Rudolf, stiff, inarticulate, proud men, and of a turn for
engrossing and amassing, were not always lovely to the public. Albert,
Rudolf's eldest son, for instance, Kaiser Albert I.,--who did succeed,
though not at once, or till after killing Rudolf's immediate successor,
[Adolf of Nassau; slain by Albert's own hand; "Battle" of Hasenbuhel
"near Worms, 2d July, 1298" (Kohler, p. 265).]--Albert was by no means
a prepossessing man, though a tough and hungry one. It must be owned, he
had a harsh ugly character; and face to match: big-nosed, loose-lipped,
blind of an eye: not Kaiser-like at all to an Electoral Body. _"Est
homo monoculus, et vultu rustico; non potest esse Imperator_ (A one-eyed
fellow, and looks like a clown; he cannot be Emperor)!" said Pope
Boniface VIII., when consulted about him. [Kohler, pp. 267-273; and
_Muntzbelustigungen, xix. 156-160._]

Enough, from the death of Rudolf, A.D. 1291, there intervened a hundred
and fifty years, and eight successive Kaisers singly or in line,
only one of whom (this same Albert of the unlovely countenance) was a
Hapsburger,--before the Family, often trying it all along, could get
a third time into the Imperial saddle. Where, after that, it did sit
steady. Once in for the third time, the Hapsburgers got themselves
"elected" (as they still called it) time after time; always
elected,--with but one poor exception, which will much concern my
readers by and by,--to the very end of the matter. And saw the Holy
Roman Empire itself expire, and as it were both saddle and horse vanish
out of Nature, before they would dismount. Nay they still ride there
on the shadow of a saddle, so to speak; and are "Kaisers of AUSTRIA" at
this hour. Steady enough of seat at last, after many vain trials!

For during those hundred and fifty years,--among those six intercalary
Kaisers, too, who followed Albert,--they were always trying; always
thinking they had a kind of quasi right to it; whereby the Empire often
fell into trouble at Election-time. For they were proud stout men, our
Hapsburgers, though of taciturn unconciliatory ways; and Rudolf had
so fitted them out with fruitful Austrian Dukedoms, which they much
increased by marriages and otherwise,--Styria, Carinthia, the Tyrol, by
degrees