[How admirahle Albert is, not to say "almost divine," to the
Kaiser's then Secretary, oily-mouthed AEneas Sylvius, afterwards
Pope, Rentsch can testify (pp. 401, 586); quoting AEneas's
eulogies and gossipries ( Historia Rerum Frederici
Imperatoris, I conclude, though no book is named).
Oily diligent AEneas, in his own young years and in Albert's
prime, had of course seen much of this "miracle" of Arms and Art,
--"miracle" and "almost divine," so to speak.] and managed many
things for him. Managed to get the thrice-lovely Heiress of the
Netherlands and Burgundy, Daughter of that Charles the Rash, with
her Seventeen Provinces, for Max, [1477]--who was thought
thereupon by everybody to be the luckiest man alive; though the
issue contradicted it before long.

Kurfurst Albert died in 1486, March 11, aged seventy-two. It was
some months after Bosworth Fight, where our Crooked Richard got
his quietus here in England and brought the Wars of the Roses to
their finale:--a little chubby Boy, the son of poor parents at
Eisleben in Saxony, Martin Luther the name of him, was looking
into this abtruse Universe, with those strange eyes of his, in
what rough woollen or linsey-woolsey short-clothes we do not know.
[Born 10th November, 1483]

Albert's funeral was very grand; the Kaiser himself, and all the
Magnates of the Diet and Reich attending him from Frankfurt to his
last resting-place, many miles of road. For he died at the Diet,
in Frankfurt-on-Mayn; having fallen ill there while busy,--perhaps
too busy for that age, in the harsh spring weather,--electing
Prince Maximilian ("lucky Max," who will be Kaiser too before
long, and is already deep in ILL-luck, tragical and other to be