nt,--brought
distinctly to Bismarck's mental vision the splendor of Cavour's
impossibly unequal contest for Italian freedom! The situations were
essentially much alike, but so much grander for the Italian statesman,
Italy's odds being so immeasurably longer! But still the likeness came
out, and the future chancellor could in no way aspire to be an
initiator. The end was still a gigantic one, and one to which no true,
brave patriot dared be false as an ideal,--but how as to the
execution? As to the practical means of carrying out conceptions that
might daily be doomed to alteration?

[7] The celebrated victory of the Great Elector, that made
Prussia into a kingdom.

There it was again that the figure of Cavour arose supreme; his long,
inexhaustible patience, his undying hopes, his sacrifices day by day
of the very springs of life for a self-imposed duty,--these were his
titles to immortal fame, these constituted his sovereign right to
success. But was not the worst probation over when Waterloo was won,
and was it not an accepted theory that the Vienna Congress had settled
all the vexed questions of ancient Europe? Any further movement,
therefore, might seem merely a disturbance. This, for conservative
statesmen above all, was a dilemma.

Germany had liberated not Germany only, but the world in 1813, and had
already had her Cavours!

There was no denying it: the Cavour of Germany was Stein. But was the
work done? Had the Congress of Vienna settled anything, for was that
still left to do without which the independence and well-being of
forty millions of Germans was unguaranteed, and the peace of all
Europe uninsured? If so, what remained to be achieved? to complete
what the German Cavour, the Precursor Stein, had begun, to embody and
make real the glorious dreams of which Queen Louise had been the
symbol, the Joan of Arc?[8]

[8] I would recommend every student of history to read
attentively the extraordinary article of M. Paleologue
in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ entitled "_La Reine
Louise de Prusse Comment se Fait une Legende_." It is a
poetic but true suite to Professor Levy Bruehl's
magnificent study.

That, indeed, brought the Hohenzollerns on the scene, and lent to
prosaic history its legend, giving to Frederick's "big battalions" the
white-robed heroine who should lead them on.

Whether, through the long years of indecision, during whi