ch disorder
and revolution seemed the danger to be averted, the future
"Chancellor of Iron" matured his plans after the manner of Newton, by
"forever thinking of them" is still a question to be adequately
answered by himself alone. This much is certain that when, in 1863-64,
the subject of the Duchies cast its shadow on the path, it revealed
its importance to Bismarck, as it had done fourteen years previously
to Dahlmann, and stood forth distinctly as the initial syllable of the
one mystical word, _Unity_.

_Schleswig-Holstein_ was, as a matter of fact, and by all its several
complications, the German question; it was its sign and portent, and
if action of some sort were not taken thereupon, the door set ajar was
closed upon the future, for a generation at least. Palmerston's
declaration, than which no unwiser one was ever made, touching the
insanity of the man who should seek to understand the enigma of the
Danish Duchies, was adopted in England solely from the dense and
inconceivable ignorance of the British mind on all German topics, and
the equally inexplicable but inborn dislike of all British politicians
to grapple with any serious study of them.

It was the problem to which no German of the North could show
indifference; and it was the one subject which brought Prussia to the
fore, and put her reigning house in the van, forcing the Hohenzollerns
into predominance. This was a crucial point, and wondrous to record!
the will of Bismarck on that exceedingly curious detail brought the
Hapsburgs together with the Hohenzollerns; Frederick with
Marie-Therese, Wallenstein's camp with Rebels, in an unescapable
atmosphere of rank Germanism!

But here again the first step of the forthcoming ruler was taken in
obedience to an irresistible, though, perhaps, unavowed, national
suggestion. The sense of _all_ that the past had given to German
history, to the power of German thought, formed a part of Bismarck's
very nature, and spite of the timidity of his experienced statecraft,
he could not disobey the promptings of the German conscience.

When the quick-witted French public applied to Professor Levy Bruehl's
work the title of "The idea whence comes the fact," they awarded it
its permanent signification; it is the development of the German
conscience that causes the imperial unity of Germany, and no one is
more thoroughly aware of that than the famous chancellor.

We feel with whomsoever was a witness of the crowning strug