fighting, where it could be avoided; yet with a good swift stroke
in them, where it could not: princely people after their sort,
with a high, not an ostentatious turn of mind. They, for most
part, go upon solid prudence; if possible, are anxious to reach
the goal without treading on any one; are peaceable, as I often
say, and by no means quarrelsome, in aspect and demeanor;
yet there is generally in the Hohenzollerns a very fierce flash of
anger, capable of blazing out in cases of urgency: this latter
also is one of the most constant features I have noted in the long
series of them. That they grew in Frankenland, year after year,
and century after century, while it was their fortune to last,
alive and active there, is no miracle, on such terms.

Their old big Castle of Plassenburg (now a Penitentiary, with
treadmill and the other furnishings) still stands on its Height,
near Culmbach, looking down over the pleasant meeting of the Red
and White Mayn Rivers and of their fruitful valleys; awakening
many thoughts in the traveller. Anspach Schloss, and still more
Baireuth Schloss (Mansion, one day, of our little Wilhelmina of
Berlin, Fritzkin's sister, now prattling there in so old a way;
where notabilities have been, one and another; which Jean Paul,
too, saw daily in his walks, while alive and looking skyward):
these, and many other castles and things, belonging now wholly to
Bavaria, will continue memorable for Hohenzollern history.

The Family did its due share, sometimes an excessive one, in
religious beneficences and foundations; which was not quite left
off in recent times, though much altering its figure. Erlangen
University, for example, was of Wilhelmina's doing. Erlangen
University;--and also an Opera-House of excessive size in