and argue.

To us, now that the logic-chaff is all laid long since, the
question is substantial, not formal. If the Teutsch Ritterdom
was actually at this time DEAD, actually stumbling about as a mere
galvanized Lie beginning to be putrid,--then, sure enough, it
behooved that somebody should bury it, to avoid pestilential
effects in the neighborhood. Somebody or other;--first flaying the
skin off, as was natural, and taking that for his trouble.
All turns, in substance, on this latter question! If, again, the
Ritterdom was not dead--?

And truly it struggled as hard as Partridge the Almanac-
maker to rebut that fatal accusation; complained (Teutschmeister
and German-Papist part of it) loudly at the Diets; got Albert and
his consorts put to the Ban (GEACHTET), fiercely menaced by the
Kaiser Karl V. But nothing came of all that; nothing but noise.
Albert maintained his point; Kaiser Karl always found his hands
full otherwise, and had nothing but stamped parchments and menaces
to fire off at Albert. Teutsch Ritterdom, the Popish part of it,
did enjoy its valuable bailliwicks, and very considerable rents in
various quarters of Germany and Europe, having lost only Preussen;
and walked about, for three centuries more, with money in its
pocket, and a solemn white gown with black cross on its back,--the
most opulent Social Club in existence, and an excellent place for
bestowing younger sons of sixteen quarters. But it was, and
continued through so many centuries, in every essential respect,
a solemn Hypocrisy; a functionless merely eating Phantasm, of the
nature of goblin, hungry ghost or ghoul (of which kind there are
many);--till Napoleon finally ordered it to vanish; its time, even