The suggestion will doubtless present itself immediately to the minds of many of our readers that the poetic myth of the _Freischütz_ is likely to be fulfilled in sober, actual reality when the German imperial drama is played out, and that Bismarck will prove to have been the Robin of William I. But this is an anticipation, and we return to our sheep and our young wolf. An equally marked and well-known trait of Bismarck’s style in speech and writing is a cold, biting, ironical humor, which often assumes the outward guise of frankness, sometimes ferocious, sometimes farcical, but always dangerous and often deadly when the master of the weapon is wielding it in a real fight. The general tone of his disposition is contemptuous and misanthropical, as of one who alternately sneers and laughs at mankind in general, on the whole despising the game of life, yet going in for deep play with all his soul when the chance presents itself, for mere occupation and amusement; just as he plunged into the Burschen-life in his youth and hunted bears at a later period in Russia. There is no trace of philanthropy in his character; as an enemy he is relentless, and no gentle or noble sentiments hamper his progress in the way of his policy of “blood and iron.” Yet there is a most tender and devoted affection manifested in his letters to his sister, Malvina von Arnim—“Maldewinchen”; so far as we know he has been a kind husband and father; there seems really to be something genuine in his long friendship for Prince Gortchakoff; and all the world knows that he risked his life to rescue a servant from drowning. The impression we have received from all we have ever read or heard about him is, that his natural disposition, like that of Napoleon, is generous and noble, but, like his, has been perverted by ambition. His early life did not promise any great achievements. He went by the name of “Mad Bismarck,” and was always restless, unsettled, without steady application to any definite aim. What his real inward convictions are or have been, in religion, philosophy, and the higher sphere of political ethics, is very difficult to determine, at least for us who are at a distance; or even to decide how far he has ever formed and cherished any deep and settled convictions at all. Practically, he has been a Pyrrhonist and Epicurean, a heathen and a materialist, using all things and all ideas as so many counters of no value except for his own game. The opinions which he professed at the outset of his political career were those of “the party of the cross,” that old-Prussian, religious, monarchical, conservative party represented by the illustrious Baron von Gerlach, which has been in opposition to the administration of the chancellor, and is now in a quasi-alliance with the Catholic party.