excellent. A large part of the interest attaching to these early papers
lies in their acute characterization of the diplomatists with whom he
had to deal. His analysis of their motives reveals from the outset that
thorough insight into human nature which was to count for so much in his
subsequent diplomatic triumphs. Of his later notes and dispatches, such
as have seen the light may be found in Hahn's documentary biography
('Fürst Bismarck,' 5 vols.). His reports and memorials on economic and
fiscal questions have been collected by Poschinger in 'Bismarck als
Volkswirth.'

Of Bismarck's parliamentary speeches there exists a full collection
(reproduced without revision from the stenographic reports) in fifteen
volumes. Bismarck was not an orator in the ordinary acceptation of the
word. His mode of address was conversational; his delivery was
monotonous and halting. He often hesitated, searching for a word; but
when it came, it usually seemed the only word that could have expressed
his meaning, and the hesitation that preceded it gave it a singular
emphasis. It seemed to be his aim to convince his hearers, not to win
them; his appeal was regularly to their intelligence, not to their
emotions. When the energy and warmth of his own feelings had carried him
into something like a flight of oratory, there was apt to follow, at the
next moment, some plain matter-of-fact statement that brought the
discussion back at once to its ordinary level. Such an anti-climax was
often very effective: the obvious effort of the speaker to keep his
emotions under restraint vouched for the sincerity of the preceding
outburst. It should be added that he appreciated as few Germans do the
rhetorical value of understatement.

He was undoubtedly at his literary best in conversation and in his
letters. We have several volumes of Bismarck anecdotes, Bismarck