His success, if we look where he started and where he ended, was beyond that of any other man in his day.

He found Brandenburg annihilated, and he left Brandenburg sound and flourishing; a great country, or already on the way towards greatness.

Undoubtedly a most rapid, clear-eyed, active man.

There was a stroke in him swift as lightning, well-aimed mostly, and of a respectable weight, withal; which shattered asunder a whole world of impediments for him, by assiduous repetition of it for fifty years.

[1620; 1640; 1688.] There hardly ever came to sovereign power a young man of twenty under more distressing, hopeless-looking circumstances.