seldom really felt save in the hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for
the time being. Thus, while the cities advanced in the power of
self-government, and the education it conveyed, the nobles,
especially those whose abodes were not easily accessible, were often
practically under no government at all, and felt themselves
accountable to no man. The old wild freedom of the Suevi, and other
Teutonic tribes, still technically, and in many cases practically,
existed. The Heretogen, Heerzogen, or, as we call them, Dukes, had
indeed accepted employment from the Kaiser as his generals, and had
received rewards from him; the Gerefen, or Graffen, of all kinds were
his judges, the titles of both being proofs of their holding
commissions from, and being thus dependent on, the court. But the
Freiherren, a word very inadequately represented by our French term
of baron, were absolutely free, "never in bondage to any man,"
holding their own, and owing no duty, no office; poorer, because
unendowed by the royal authority, but holding themselves infinitely
higher, than the pensioners of the court. Left behind, however, by
their neighbours, who did their part by society, and advanced with
it, the Freiherren had been for the most part obliged to give up
their independence and fall into the system, but so far in the rear,
that they ranked, like the barons of France and England, as the last
order of nobility.

Still, however, in the wilder and more mountainous parts of the
country, some of the old families of unreduced, truly free Freiherren
lingered, their hand against every man, every man's hand against
them, and ever becoming more savage, both positively and still more
proportionately, as their isolation and the general progress around
them became greater. The House of Austria, by gradually absorbing
hereditary states into its own possessions, was, however, in the