sual agitation of religious ideas. Rouge had attempted the complete
emancipation of Germany from Papal influences, and university professors
threw their influence on the side of rationalism and popular liberty. On
the whole, there was a general tendency towards democratic ideas, which
was opposed with great bitterness by the conservative parties, made up
of nobles and government officials.

Bismarck arose, slowly but steadily, with the whole force of his genius,
among the defenders of the conservative interests of his order and of
the throne. He was then simply Herr von Bismarck, belonging to an
ancient and noble but not wealthy family, whose seat was Schoenhausen,
where the future prince was born, April 1, 1815. The youth was sent to a
gymnasium in Berlin in 1830, and in 1832 to the university of Goettingen
in Hanover, where he was more distinguished for duels, drinking-parties,
and general lawlessness than for scholarship. Here he formed a memorable
friendship with a brother student, a young American,--John Lothrop
Motley, later the historian of the Dutch Republic. Much has been written
of Bismarck's reckless and dissipated life at the university, which
differed not essentially from that of other nobles. He had a grand
figure, superb health, extraordinary animal spirits, and could ride like
a centaur. He spent but three semestres at Goettingen, and then repaired
to Berlin in order to study jurisprudence under the celebrated Savigny;
but he was rarely seen in the lecture-room. He gave no promise of the
great abilities which afterward distinguished him. Yet he honorably
passed his State examination; and as he had chosen the law for his
profession, he first served on leaving the university as a sort of clerk
in the city police, and in 1834 was transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle, in
the administrative department of the district. In 1837 he served in the
crown office at Potsdam. He then entered for a year as a sharpshooter of
the Guards, to absolve his obligation to military service.

The next eight years, from the age of twenty-four, he devoted to
farming, hunting, carousing, and reading, on one of his father's estates
in Pomerania. He was a sort of country squire, attending fairs, selling
wool, inspecting timber, handling grain, gathering rents, and sitting as
a deputy in the local Diet,--the talk and scandal of the neighborhood
for his demon-like rides and drinking-bouts, yet now studying all the
while, especially history a