incessantly, generally a long Turkish pipe.  He sleeps irregularly, disturbed by thoughts which fill his troubled brain.  Honored is the man who is invited to his table, even if he be the ambassador of a king; for at table the host is frank and courteous, and not overbearing like a literary dictator.  He is well read in history, but not in art or science or poetry.  His stories are admirable when he is in convivial mood; all sit around him in silent admiration, for no one dares more than suggest the topic,—­he does all the talking himself.  Bayard Taylor, when United States minister at Berlin, was amazed and confounded by his freedom of speech and apparent candor.  He is frank in matters he does not care to conceal, and simple as a child when not disputed or withstood; but when opposed fierce as a lion,—­a spoiled man of success, yet not intoxicated with power.  Haughty and irritable, perhaps, but never vain like a French statesman in office,—­a Webster rather than a Thiers.

Such was the man who ruled the German empire with an iron hand for twenty years or more,—­the most remarkable man of power known to history for seventy-five years; immortal like Cavour, and for his services even more than his abilities.  He had raised Prussia to the front rank among nations, and created German unity.  He had quietly effected more than Richelieu ever aspired to perform; for Richelieu sought only to build up a great throne, while Bismarck had united a great nation in patriotic devotion to Fatherland, which, so far as we can see, is as invincible as it is enlightened,—­enlightened in everything except in democratic ideas.

I will not dwell on the career and character of Prince Bismarck since the Franco-Prussian war.  After that he was not identified with any great national movements which command universal interest.  His labors were principally confined to German affairs,—­quarrels with the Reichstag, settlement of difficulties with the various States of the Germanic Confederation, the consolidation of the internal affairs of the empire while he carried on diplomatic relations with other great Powers, efforts to gain the good-will of Russia and secure the general peace of Europe.  These, and a multitude of other questions too recent to be called historical, he dealt with, in all of which his autocratic sympathies called out the censures of the advocates of greater liberty, and diminished his popularity.  For twenty years his will was the law of the German Confederation; though bitterly opposed at times by the Liberals, he was always sustained by his imperial master, who threw the burdens of State on his herculean shoulders, sometimes too great to bear with placidity.  His foreign policy was then less severely criticised than his domestic, which was alternate success and failure.