consider it!

This is a place to give a man chances, and try what stuff is in
him. The office involves a talent for governing, as well as for
judging; talent for fighting also, in cases of extremity, and what
is still better, a talent for avoiding to fight. None but a man of
competent superior parts can do that function; I suppose, no
imbecile could have existed many months in it, in the old earnest
times. Conrad and his succeeding Hohenzollerns proved very capable
to do it, as would seem; and grew and spread in it, waxing bigger
and bigger, from their first planting there by Kaiser Barbarossa,
a successful judge of men. And ever since that time, from "about
the year 1170," down to the year 1815,--when so much was changed,
owing to another (temporary) "Kaiser" of new type, Napoleon his
name,--the Hohenzollerns have had a footing in Frankedand;
and done sovereignty in and round Nurnberg, with an enlarging
Territory in that region. Territory at last of large compass;
which, under the names MARGRAFDOM OF ANSPACH, and of BAIREUTH, or
in general MARGRAFDOM OF CULMBACH, which includes both, has become
familiar in History.

For the House went on steadily increasing, as it were, from the
first day; the Hohenzollerns being always of a growing, gaining
nature;--as men are that live conformably to the laws of this
Universe, and of their place therein; which, as will appear from
good study of their old records, though idle rumor, grounded on no
study, sometimes says the contrary, these Hohenzollerns eminently
were. A thrifty, steadfast, diligent, clear-sighted, stout-hearted
line of men; of loyal nature withal, and even to be called just
and pious, sometimes to a notable degree. Men not given to