The Prussian monarchy, the youngest of the great European states, but in
population and revenue the fifth among them, and in art, science, and
civilization entitled to the third, if not to the second place, sprang
from a humble origin. About the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
marquisate of Brandenburg was bestowed by the Emperor Sigismund on the
noble family of Hohenzollern. In the sixteenth century that family
embraced the Lutheran doctrines. It obtained from the King of Poland,
early in the seventeenth century, the investiture of the Duchy of
Prussia. Even after this accession of territory, the chiefs of the House
of Hohenzollern hardly ranked with the Electors of Saxony and Bavaria.
The soil of Brandenburg was for the most part sterile. Even round
Berlin, the capital of the province, and round Potsdam, the favorite
residence of the Margraves, the country was a desert. In some places,
the deep sand could with difficulty be forced by assiduous tillage to
yield thin crops of rye and oats. In other places, the ancient forests,
from which the conquerors of the Roman empire had descended on the
Danube, remained untouched by the hand of man. Where the soil was rich
it was generally marshy, and its insalubrity repelled the cultivators
whom its fertility attracted. Frederic William, called the Great
Elector, was the prince to whose policy his successors have agreed to
ascribe their greatness. He acquired by the peace of Westphalia several
valuable possessions, and among them the rich city and district of
Magdeburg; and he left to his son Frederic a principality as
considerable as any which was not called a kingdom.

Frederic aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and profuse,
negligent of his true interests and of his high duties, insatiably eager
for frivolous distinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of the
state which he governed: perhaps he transmitted his inheritance to his
children impaired rather than augmented in value; but he succeeded in
gaining the great object of his life, the title of King. In the year
1700 he assumed this new dignity. He had on that occasion to undergo all
the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. Compared
with the other crowned heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling that
which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had bought a title, would make in the
company of Peers whose ancestors had been attainted for treason against
the Plantagenets. The envy of