They shew a vivid imagination and an almost unequalled power of illustration.  The thought is always concrete, and he is never satisfied with the vague ideas and abstract conceptions which so easily moved his contemporaries.  No speeches, either in English or in German, preserve so much of their freshness.  He is almost the only Parliamentary orator whose speeches have become to some extent a popular book; no other orator has enriched the language as he has done with new phrases and images.  The great characteristic of his speeches, as of his letters, is the complete absence of affectation and the very remarkable intellectual honesty.  They are often deficient in order and arrangement; he did not excel in the logical exposition of a connected argument, but he never was satisfied till he had presented the idea which influenced him in words so forcible and original that it was impressed on the minds of his audience, and he was often able to find expressions which will not be forgotten so long as the German language is spoken.

We can easily imagine that under other circumstances, or in another country, he would have risen to power and held office as a Parliamentary Minister.  He often appeals to the practice and traditions of the English Parliament, and there are few Continental statesmen who would have been so completely at home in the English House of Commons; he belonged to the class of men from whom so many of the great English statesmen had come and whom he himself describes: 

“What with us is lacking is the whole class which in England carries on politics, the class of gentlemen who are well-to-do and therefore Conservative, who are independent of material interests and whose whole education is directed towards making them English statesmen, and the object of whose life is to take part in the Commonwealth of England.”

They were the class to whom he belonged, and he would gladly have taken part in a Parliamentary government of this kind.

The weakness of his position arose from the fact that he was really acquainted with and represented the inhabitants of only one-half of the monarchy.  So long as he is dealing with questions of landed property, or of the condition of the peasants, he has a minute and thorough knowledge.  He did not always, however, avoid the danger of speaking as though Prussia consisted entirely of agriculturists.  The great difficulty then as now of governing the State, was that it consisted of two parts:  the older provinces, almost entirely agricultural, where the land was held chiefly by the great nobles, and the new provinces, the Rhine and Westphalia, where there was a large and growing industrial population.  To the inhabitants of these provinces Bismarck’s constant appeal to the old Prussian traditions and to the achievements of the Prussian nobility could have little meaning.  What did the citizens of Cologne and Aachen care about the Seven Years’ War?  If their ancestors took part