Reformation-Period; absent on no great occasion; and they at
length, from amid the meaningless bead-roll of Names, wearisomely
met with in such Books, emerge into Persons for us as above.



Chapter V.

OF THE BAIREUTH-ANSPACH BRANCH.

Albert Achilles the Third Elector had, before his accession, been
Margraf of Anspach, and since his Brother the Alchemist's death,
Margraf of Baireuth too, or of the whole Principality,--"Margraf
of Culmbach" we will call it, for brevity's sake, though the
bewildering old Books have not steadily any name for it.
[A certain subaltern of this express title, "Margraf of Culmbach"
(a Cadet, with some temporary appanage there, who was once in the
service of him they call the Winter-King, and may again be
transiently heard of by us here), is the altogether Mysterious
Personage who prints himself "MARQUIS DE LULENBACH" in Bromley's
Collection of Royal Letters (London, 1787),
pp. 52, &c.:--one of the most curious Books on the Thirty-Years
War; "edited" with a composed stupidity, and cheerful infinitude
of ignorance, which still farther distinguish it. The BROMLEY
Originals well worth a real editing, turn out, on inquiry, to have
been "sold as Autographs, and dispersed beyond recovery, about
fifty years ago."] After his accession, Albert Achilles naturally
held both Electorate and Principality during the rest of his life.
Which was an extremely rare predicament for the two Countries, the
big and the little.