heroic.

Seven hundred years ago Frederick's ancestor Conrad, the younger son
of a family of some rank, but quite undistinguished, riding down from
the little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with nothing but a
good head and arm, won favour with the Emperor Barbarossa and became
at last Burggraf of Nuremberg. I saw the old castle in which this
Conrad lived and his line after him for several generations. It rises
among fortifications the plan for which Albert Dürer drew, with narrow
windows in the thick masonry of the towers, the battlements worn by
the pacing to and fro of sentinels in armour, and an ancient linden in
the court-yard, planted by an empress a thousand years ago it is said,
with as green a canopy to throw over the tourist to-day as it threw
over those old Hohenzollerns. Conrad transmitted to his descendants
his good head and strong arm, until at length becoming masters of
Baireuth and Anspach, they were Margraves and ranked among important
princes. Their seat now was at Culmbach, in the great castle of the
Plessenburg. I saw one May morning the grey walls of the old nest high
on its cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, threatening
still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. The power of the house grew
slowly. In one age it got Brandenburg, in another the great districts
of Ost and West Preussen; now it was possessions in Silesia, now again
territory on the Rhine. Power came sometimes through imperial gift,
sometimes through marriage, sometimes through purchase or diplomacy
or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to
princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes
they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic
and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand.
The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps creeping forward in its history,
surpassing many a swift hare that once despised it in the race. I