thing for Lily and me to remember for the rest of our lives. The parting was painful to me, for Heaven knows when I shall ever see him again.... I never can adequately express to you how kind and affectionate they have all been to us. She is kindness and cordiality itself, and we have felt all the time as if we were part of the family. As for Bismarck himself, my impressions of his bigness have increased rather than diminished by this renewed intimacy."

In another passage of Motley's correspondence+ he lays particular stress upon the total absence of calculation for effect, or of a sense of his own huge proportions -which was so striking a feature of Bismarck in private life, however much he may have impressed the weight of his personality upon those he contended with in the struggle of politics. Indeed, his manner towards the humblest ink-slinger who was ever favored with an invitation to take a seat at his hospitable board was as simple and as charming as ever it could be towards the most exalted in the land. More than this, no worldly position, however exalted, was a safe passport to his appreciation, or even that of his noble consort.

One morning-it was in the spring of 1892 he did not feel at all well; he had had a bad night. The day before, a number of Hamburg admirers had had a picnic in the forest, and had prevailed on Prince Bismarck to drive out to join them, and even to partake of a draught of some infernal champagne or Moselle cup in their honor. It was shrewdly suspected in the family that this gustation was the cause of the matutinal malaise about which Princess Bismarck had worried herself overnight - as was her wont, devoted soul. He sat down on a garden seat, and in answer to the query of a friend, replied that he did not feel at all well-he feared it was that picnic.

"Yes, Durchlaucht," said his companion, half jestingly. "The Princess says that in these matters you will not let anybody advise you that, in fact, you are incorrigible."

"Yes, that is all very well," he re*Princess Bismarck.

"The truth is, he is so entirely simple, so full of laissez-aller, that one is obliged to be saying to one's self all the time: This is the great Bismarck, the greatest living man, and one of the greatest historical characters that have ever lived," etc. Vol. ii., p. 340.

plied, good-humoredly, almost pathetically. "What would you have me do in such a case? I cannot be discourteous." No, indeed. Strange as it may seem in the Man of Blood and Iron, he could not be discourteous to people — though others were not always as considerate to him. Professor Lenbach, than whom perhaps nobody except Professor Schweninger knew Bismarck so intimately, once told me: "In all the years I have known Prince Bismarck I only remember him speaking hastily on one solitary occasion. A man-servant had shut the door with a bang. Bismarck rang the bell, and when he appeared, told the man sharply that he was to leave at the end of his month. About a quarter of an hour afterwards he rang the bell again, and said, in a mollified voice, 'You may stay.' That was all."

Some of Prince Bismarck's fervent admirers would have us believe that he was a man essentially cast in a certain mould which admitted of no after-variation in form, texture, or composition. As a matter of fact, no man could have been more than he was the product of long continuous felicitous development. Nothing about that man of the perky Roman patrician, strutting the Forum ere manhood scarce attained, spouting the stale wisdom of middle age-glibly caught up and assimilated long before the experience of life had lent sincerity and backbone to his thoughts. The following letter, written in Bismarck's university days to a friend, is interesting both as an example of young Bismarck's English and as bringing before us at a glance the contrast between the boisterous rollicking student and the great Chancellor of middle age:

MY DEAR ASTLEY,-You have been so kind as to allow me to ask you for some English books-a kindness which I shall be glad to take profit of. I am sure that old Shakespeare's works make part of your library, and I would be greatly obliged to you if you would send me the volumes containing Richard III. and Hamlet. We are here just in the same state as you have left us; our friend Norcott is just as tipsy after dinner as he ever has been; Savigny is as copions in words as ever he was; and Montebello is as good-looking as you have seen him and nothing else. As for me, I am a little half-seas-over too; but I am as much your friend as I learned to be it so in the few days I had the pleasure of see

The love of Shakespeare, which filled him through life, is already evident here; but in his mastery of the English language, as in everything else, he made steady progress in the course of his life. When I was privileged to know him Prince Bismarck spoke English nearly faultlessly, and scarcely with any foreign accent at all. He disposed of an astonishing vocabulary of English words, and fairly surprised me one day during a drive in the country by calling a number of agricultural implements and other things connected with country life by their English names.

During the last months of his life Bismarck saw very few visitors, and spent a deal of his time in reading. He always had a great partiality for everything appertaining to the history of the first Napoleon, and read with avidity any books dealing however indirectly with the great Corsican's marvellous career. One of the last books he read was General Marbot's Mémoires, which interested him greatly. Also Émile Zola's works attracted his attention of late; he read the Débâcle, Rome, Lourdes, and Paris, one after the other. He was somewhat disappointed with the last three, and expressed himself with regard to Rome that it reminded him of a traveller's guide-book in its labored compilation. The Débâcle was more to his liking. But what particularly struck him was the fearless manner in which Zola therein told hard truths of his countrymen. Bismarck even expressed himself openly to the effect that, after reading the Débâcle, he was not at all surprised that the French were making such a dead set at Zola. For he had committed the unpardonable crime of telling them the truth.

Almost down to his very last hour Bismarck retained that keen sense of humor for which he was famous all through life -though latterly, with declining health, a pathetically sad note mingled with it now and then to remind the hearer

that although his mind was as clear as ever, yet the blade was rapidly using up the sorely tried scabbard. During the last week of his life the Gymnastic Union of Germany, which had assembled at Hamburg, wanted to pay him a visit. He still found a joke for the occasion, for in sending them word that he regretted he could not receive them, Bismarck added, "I regret my inability all the more since I have been a gymnast myself during the last few days, for I have been standing on my head" (a German expression conveying the meaning of, "I have been at sixes and sevens "-in disorder-ill).

To Professor Lenbach, who, parting from him after his eightieth birthday, said he trusted Bismarck might yet have many happy years in store for him, he replied: "My dear Lenbach, the first eighty years of a man's life are always the happiest."

Even more recently-last year-in saying good-by, Lenbach again expressed the hope that his friend should see still some happy days. To this Bismarck replied: "There is only one happy day left for me. It will be the one on which I shall not wake up again." Bismarck lived exactly within a day to see one thousand months.

The day after his death I was sitting with Professor Schweninger on the hill where Bismarck is to find his last restingplace. Schweninger was bemoaning his death-which had left him without any ambition to live for. "For nobody will ever be like him, either in personal distinction, in refinement of feeling, or in the truly regal proportions which were those of this unique man. You knew him too, so you will understand me when I say that in his composition there was something of the tenderness of a woman, very much of the naïveté of a child, and all the qualities of a man." And then Schweninger proceeded to tell me of the peculiarly pathetic fact that all Bismarck's favorite dogs had died before him. "Not a single one was left to whine its sorrow o'er his funeral bier.”

The circumstances attending Bismarck's death- the almost austere privacy enforced by the Bismarck family, which marked so strong a contrast to the pomp which attended Count Moltke's funeral, and the fact that the Emperor did not see

He lay in death exactly in the same position which was habitual to him when asleep. His head was turned towards the left and slightly bent down on the chest. Each arm was stretched out at full length somewhat irregularly over the bedclothes. Thus even his position in death might be termed a mute protest against the meaningless conventionality he hated so cordially when alive. In his left hand he held a white rose, placed there by Professor Schweninger, and three dark red roses from an Austrian lady friend and admirer. His features wore a calm expression of proud imposing dignity-something of the majestic repose typical of some of those Teuton busts to be seen in the Roman Gallery of the British Museum. But the impression of the whole gaunt rugged figure as it lay there, with extended arms, like branches of trees, was more that of some monarch of the woods who, after laying low innumerable enemies, has been felled at last in his turn by the grim scytheman Thanatos.

Professor Lenbach, who was with me at the time at Friedrichsruh, subsequently gave me his impression of Bismarck as he lay dead, as follows:

"Bismarck looks simple and dignified, very much in death as in life, though of course paler. The hands, always beautiful, have become more delicate still; but death has not changed him as it did Döllinger, who in life had a somewhat reddish face, which in death was idealized almost to marble, like a cameo. Bismarck looked himself, noble and dignified in death."

Now that he is gone, it only remains

to be said that in an ideal sense Bismarck is still to-day as much alive as ever Goethe has been since his death. Some of his pregnant sayings have already become part and parcel of the German language. Many passages of his speeches reveal the imagination of a poet, whose utterances latterly claim a place among the classics of his country. His political teachings are there for the guidance of those intrusted with the destinies of the German Empire, and those who may presume to act in opposition to his precepts will find unwelcome monition rise up over his grave to warn them of the consequences. I firmly believe that this living on of his, this true immortality, will gain in strength as the years roll on-more particularly in the democratic and yet more truly hero worshipping south of Germany, where, whilst still living, he was revered almost as a demigod.

He was, in truth-to apply words written by one who admired him and was in return appreciated (Thomas Carlyle) — "A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of an old knight in him. More of a hero than any modern I have seen for a long time; a singular veracity one finds in him, not in his words alone, but in his actions, judgments, aims, in all that he thinks, and does, and says, which indeed I have observed is the root of all greatness or real worth in human creatures, and properly the first, as also the earliest, attribute of what we call genius among men." And then again the following: "The man does leave his mark behind him, ineffaceable, beneficial to all, maleficent to none. Anarchic stupidity is wide as the night; victorious wisdom is but as a lamp in it, shining here and there.”