why should they have any?
Enough that in those Baltic regions, there are for the time (Year 600,
and till long after Charlemagne is out) Sclaves in place of Suevi or of
Holstein Saxons and Angli; that it is now shaggy Wends who have the task
of taming the jungles, and keeping down the otters and wolves. Wends
latterly in a waning condition, much beaten upon by Charlemagne and
others; but never yet beaten out. And so it has to last, century after
century; Wends, wolves, wild swine, all alike dumb to us. Dumb, or
sounding only one huge unutterable message (seemingly of tragic import),
like the voice of their old Forests, of their old Baltic Seas:--perhaps
more edifying to us SO. Here at last is a definite date and event:--

"A.D. 928, Henry the Fowler, marching across the frozen bogs, took
BRANNIBOR, a chief fortress of the Wends;" [Kohler, _Reichs-Historie_
(Frankfurth und Leipzig, 1737), p. 63. Michaelis, _Chur-und Furstlichen
Hauser in Deutschland_ (Lemgo, 1759, 1760, 1785), i. 255.]--first
mention in human speech of the place now called Brandenburg: Bor or
"Burg of the Brenns" (if there ever was any TRIBE of Brenns,--BRENNUS,
there as elsewhere, being name for KING or Leader); "Burg of the Woods,"
say others,--who as little know. Probably, at that time, a town of clay
huts, with dit&h and palisaded sod-wall round it; certainly "a chief
fortress of the Wends,"--who must have been a good deal surprised at
sight of Henry on the rimy winter morning near a thousand years ago.

This is the grand old Henry, called, "the Fowler" _(Heinrich
der Vogler),_ because he was in his _Vogelheerde_ (Falconry or
Hawk-establishment, seeing his Hawks fly) in the upland Hartz Country,
when messengers came to tell him that the German Nation, through its
Princes and Authorities assembled at Fritzlar, had made him King; and
that he would have dreadful work henceforth. Which he undertook; and
also did,--this of Brannibor only one small item of it,--warring right
manfully all his days against Chaos in that country, no rest for him
thenceforth till he died. The beginning of German Kings; the first,
or essentially the first sovereign of united Germany,--Charlemagne's
posterity to the last bastard having died out, and only Anarchy, Italian
and other, being now the alternative.

"A very high King," says one whose Note-books I have got, "an
authentically noble human figure, visible still in clear outline in the
gray dawn of Modern History. The Fa