r of his antagonists--such as Count Beust, or Napoleon, or
Earl Russell--that he knows exactly how far he can step with safety;
then such a "gamester," however terrible the risks to which he may have
exposed his country, is a great man. Complete unity of aims throughout,
power given to carry them out, a wonderful absence of very serious
mistakes, and finally a life sufficiently prolonged to admit of
retrospection; in each of these respects the career of Bismarck
resembles that of Mr. Disraeli.

The oft-told story of his diplomatic adventures at Frankfort, at Vienna,
at Petersburg, and at Paris, and still more of his rulership in Prussia
since 1862, and in Germany since 1866, has been uniform under two
aspects. First, as already mentioned, in the stern continuity of his
purposes. And secondly, in the mistaken view entertained regarding him
at each successive period of his public life. Passing under review the
whole career of this political phenomenon, you naturally pause before
its strangest and its most humorous feature, viz., that, although living
under the closest inspection, he was misunderstood year after year. Who
would, consequently, deny the possibility at least, of Bismarck's being
so misunderstood, by friend and foe, at this present moment?

While those despatches were written by him from Frankfort which
Poschinger's researches have now exhumed, their writer was thought, by
his partisans just as much as by his enemies, to be occupied solely with
strengthening the "solidarity of conservative interests" and the
supremacy of Austria, or with spinning the rope of steel which was to
strangle all parliaments in Germany. And yet we know positively at
present that, with increasing vigor day by day, did he warn his
government against the scarcely concealed intention of Austria to
"_avilir la Prusse d'abord et puis l'aneantir_" (Prince Schwartzenberg's
famous saying in 1851); we observe with surprise how quickly legitimist
leanings disappear behind his own country's interests; we stand aghast
at the iron sway obtained by so young a man over the self-conceit of a
vacillating, yet dogmatic and wilful, king (Frederick William IV.). It
was he whose advice, given in direct opposition to Bunsen's, led to the
refusal by Prussia of the Western alliance during the Crimean war. But
he did not give this advice, as German liberals then believed, out of
subservience to the autocrat of the North, whose assistance his party
humbly sol