py period of the doctrinaire, of the pedant, and of the student of
1688 and the pupils of Sieyes. Heine's bitter address to Germany,
"Dream on, thou son of Folly, dream on!" sprang from a chagrin which
every sincere German, Prussian, Bavarian, Wuertemberger, or Rheinlander
felt not less deeply. The Revolution of 1848, the blood spilt at the
barricades in the streets of Vienna and Berlin, did not end this; but
it roused the better spirits amongst the opposition to deeper
perception of the aspiration of all Germany. Which of the multifarious
kingdoms and duchies could form the centre of a new union, federal or
imperial? Austria, with her long line of Hapsburg monarchs, her
tyranny, her obscurantism, her tenacious hold upon the past, had been
the enemy or the oppressor of every State in turn. The Danubian
principalities, Bohemia, Hungary, pointed out to Vienna a task in the
future calculated to try her declining energy to the utmost. Prussia
alone possessed the heroic past, the memory of Frederick, of Bluecher,
of Stein, Scharnhorst, and Yorck; and, if politically despotic, she was
essentially Protestant in religion, and Protestantism offered the hope
of religious tolerance. After Austria's defeat in Italy, the issue
north of the Alps was inevitable. The question was how and in what
shape the end would realize itself. Montesquieu insists that, even
without Caius Julius, the fall of the oligarchy and the establishment
of the Roman Empire was fixed as by a law of fate. Yet, with data
before us, it is hard to imagine the creation of the new German Empire
without Bismarck. His downright Prussianism rises like a rock through
the mists, amid the vaporous Liberalism of the pre-Revolutionary
period. His unbroken resolution gave strength to the wavering purpose
of Frederick William IV. His diplomacy led to Koeniggraetz, and the
manipulated telegram from Ems turned, as Moltke said, a retreat into a
call to battle. And in front of Metz his wisdom kept the Bavarian
legions in the field. From his first definite entry into a State
career in 1848 to the dismissal of 1887, his deep religion, wisdom, and
simplicity of nature are as distinctly Prussian as the glancing ardour
of Skobeleff is distinctly Russian. From the Hohenzollern he looked
for no gratitude. His loyalty was loyalty to the kingship, not to the
individual. He had early studied the career of Strafford, and knew the
value of the word of a King. False or true t