n all his glory. Sigismund was on a high Platform
in the Market-place, with stairs to it and from it; the illustrious
Kaiser,--red as a flamingo, "with scarlet mantle and crown of gold,"--a
treat to the eyes of simple mankind.

What sum of modern money, in real purchasing power, this "400,000
Hungarian Gold Gulden" is, I have inquired in the likely quarters
without result; and it is probable no man exactly knows. The latest
existing representative of the ancient Gold Gulden is the Ducat, worth
generally about a Half-sovereign in English. Taking the sum at that
latest rate, it amounts to 200,000 pounds; and the reader can use that
as a note of memory for the sale-price of Brandenburg with all its lands
and honors,--multiplying it perhaps by four or six to bring out its
effective amount in current coin. Dog-cheap, it must be owned, for
size and capability; but in the most waste condition, full of mutiny,
injustice, anarchy and highway robbery; a purchase that might have
proved dear enough to another man than Burggraf Friedrich.

But so, at any rate, moribund Brandenburg has got its Hohenzollern
Kurfurst; and started on a new career it little dreamt of;--and we
can now, right willingly, quit Sigismund and the Reichs-History; leave
Kaiser Sigismund to sink or swim at his own will henceforth. His grand
feat, in life, the wonder of his generation, was this same Council of
Constance; which proved entirely a failure; one of the largest WIND-EGGS
ever dropped with noise and travail in this world. Two hundred thousand
human creatures, reckoned and reckoning themselves the elixir of
the Intellect and Dignity of Europe; two hundred thousand, nay some,
counting the lower menials and numerous unfortunate females, say four
hundred thousand,--were got congregated into that little Swiss Town; and
there as an Ecumenic Council, or solemnly distilled elixir of what pious
Intellect and Valor could be scraped together in the world, they labored
with all their select might for four years' space. That was the Council
of Constance. And except this transfer of Brandenburg to Friedrich
of Hohenzollern, resulting from said Council in the quite reverse and
involuntary way, one sees not what good result it had.

They did indeed burn Huss; but that could not be called a beneficial
incident; that seemed to Sigismund and the Council a most small and
insignificant one. And it kindled Bohemia, and kindled rhinoceros Zisca,
into never-imagined flame of