for Prussia: ploughshare instead of sword; busy sea-havens, German
towns, getting built; churches everywhere rising; grass growing,
and peaceable cows, where formerly had been quagmire and snakes.
And for the Order a happy time? A rich, not a happy. The Order was
victorious; Livonian "Sword-Brothers," "Knights of Dobryn," minor
Orders and Authorities all round, were long since subordinated to
it or incorporated with it; Livonia, Courland, Lithuania, are all
got tamed under its influence, or tied down and evidently tamable.
But it was in these times that the Order got into its wider
troubles outward and inward; quarrels, jealousies, with Christian
neighbors, Poland, Pommern, who did not love it and for cause;
--wider troubles, and by no means so evidently useful to
mankind. The Order's wages, in this world, flowed higher than
ever, only perhaps its work was beginning to run low! But we will
not anticipate.

On the whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first century and
more, was a grand phenomenon; and flamed like a bright blessed
beacon through the night of things, in those Northern Countries.
For above a century, we perceive, it was the rallying place of all
brave men who had a career to seek on terms other than vulgar.
The noble soul, aiming beyond money, and sensible to more than
hunger in this world, had a beacon burning (as we say), if the
night chanced to overtake it, and the earth to grow too intricate,
as is not uncommon. Better than the career of stump-oratory,
I should fancy, and ITS Hesperides Apples, golden and of gilt
horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's poor spiritual gift of
God (LOAN, not gift), such as it may be, in building the lofty
rhyme, the lofty Review-Article, for a discerning public that
has sixpence to spare! Times alter greatly.--Will the reader take