acknowledged intellectual talent in others, he took a pride in having
remained a learner all his life, but he hated arrogant amateurishness.
He was not a church-goer; he declined to be drawn into the circle of
religious schemers and reactionary fanatics; he would occasionally
speak in contemptuous terms of "the creed of court chaplains"; but,
writing to his wife of that historic meeting with Napoleon in the
lonely cottage near the battlefield of Sedan, he said: "A powerful
contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in '67. Our
conversation was a difficult thing, if I wanted to avoid touching on
topics which could not but affect painfully the man whom God's mighty
hand had cast down." And more than once has he given vent to
reflections like these: "For him who does not believe--as I do from
the bottom of my heart--that death is a transition from one existence
to another, and that we are justified in holding out to the worst of
criminals in his dying hour the comforting assurance, _mors janua
vitae_--I say that for him who does not share that conviction the joys
of this life must possess so high a value that I could almost envy him
the sensations they must procure him." Or these: "Twenty years hence,
or at most thirty, we shall be past the troubles of this life, whilst
our children will have reached our present standpoint, and will
discover with astonishment that their existence, but now so brightly
begun, has turned the corner and is going down hill. Were that to be
the end of it all, life would not be worth the trouble of dressing and
undressing every day."

IV

We have considered a few traits of Bismarck's mental and moral make-up
which seem to be closely allied with German national character and
traditions. But, after all, the personality of a man like Bismarck is