l government, and strongly attached to the
English alliance, viewed with horror the bold pugilist who was daily
assailing, not the persons only of the people's representatives, but
some of the very foundations of every parliamentary edifice. Yet fiercer
was the animosity shown him on every occasion by the Princess Royal of
England, whose father had early taught her that a throne, to be safe,
requires absolute solidity of institutions and agreement with the
people, and who seriously trembled for the preservation of her
children's future. Her husband expressed himself forcibly on a public
occasion against some reactionary measures of the government. As the
court, so were the liberal parties, so the people in general. When a
fanatic, of the name of Kohn, attempted Bismarck's life in May, 1866,
there were few persons who did not regret his failure. It may be said
with truth that, for years, two men only understood a portion at least
of his political views, and shared them. One was King William. Isolated
as Herr von Bismarck was, he learned to rely implicitly on his
sovereign's faithfulness, and has had no reason to regret his trust; for
the king, though greatly his inferior in intellect, and far from unblest
with legitimist predilections, was as firmly convinced as his minister
that the confederation of German states, and Prussia herself, might be
swept away unless placed upon a new footing, in one of those tornadoes
which used periodically to blow across the continent of Europe. Thus,
the new departure was as much his own programme as Bismarck's, and
although he started (in 1861) with a hankering after "moral" rather than
material conquests, he gradually understood the necessity for war, and
has of a certainty "taken kindly," as the saying is, to material
conquests of no inconsiderable magnitude.

None, even among Bismarck's modern sycophants, would pretend that their
hero was the inventor of German unity. Passionately, though not
over-wisely, had that ideal been striven after and suffered for by the
best patriots in various parts of Fatherland, their vision becoming hazy
just as often as they attempted to combine two opposite claims, that of
a national texture, and that of a headship of Austria, which is
non-German in a majority of its subjects, and alien in nearly all its
interests. The Frankfort Parliament of 1848 marks the transition to a
clear insight, inasmuch as its final performance, the constitution of
1849, place