ild Guerillas,
and in the Tyrol created the Jager-bund, in more cultivated Germany
elicited that race of poets and warriors whose war-songs aroused the
nation from its sleep of slavery, and called them to avenge the injuries
of their nation.

Laugh, then, if you will, at the strange figures whose uncouth costumes
of cap and jack-boot bespeak them a hybrid between a civilian and a
soldier. The exterior is, after all, no bad type of what lies within;
its contradictions are indeed scarcely as great. The spectacles and
moustaches, the note-book beneath the arm and the sabre at the side, the
ink-bottle at the button-hole and the spurs jingling at the heels, are
all the outward signs of that extraordinary mixture of patient industry
and hot-headed enthusiasm, of deep thought and impetuous rashness, of
matter-of-fact shrewdness and poetic fervour, and, lastly, of the most
forgiving temper allied to an unconquerable propensity for duelling.
Laugh if you will at him, but he is a fine fellow for all that; and
despite all the contrarieties of his nature he has the seed of those
virtues which in the peaceful life of his native country grow up into
the ripe fruits of manly truth and honesty.

I wish you then to think well of the Bursche, and forgive the
eccentricities into which a college life and a most absurd doctrine of
its ordinances will now and then lead him. That wild-looking youth, for
all that he has a sabre-wound across his cheek, and wears his neck bare
like a Malay, despite his savage moustache and his lowering look, has a
soft heart, though it beats behind that mass of nonsensical braiding. He
could recite you for hours long the ballads of Schiller and the lyrics
of Uhland; ah! and sing for you, too, with no mean skill, the music of
Spohr and Weber, accompanying himself the while on the piano, with a
touch that would make your heart thrill. And I am not sure that even in
his wildest moments of enthusiastic folly he is not nearly as much an
object of hope to his country as though he were making a book on the
Derby, or studying 'the odds' among the 'legs' at Tattersall's.

Above all things, I would beg of you not to be too hasty in judging
him. Put not much trust in half what English writers lay to his charge;
believe not one syllable of any Frenchman on the subject--no, not
even that estimable Alexandre Dumas, who represents the 'Student'
as demanding alms on the highroad--thus confounding him with the
Lehr-Junker (th