e noble German
desire for knowledge, the qualifying of the German for diligence and
self-sacrifice--splendid and beautiful things, which other nations
envy you; yea, the finest and most magnificent things in the world, if
only that true German spirit overspread them like a dark thundercloud,
pregnant with the blessing of forthcoming rain. But you are afraid of
this spirit, and it has therefore come to pass that a cloud of another
sort has thrown a heavy and oppressive atmosphere around your
universities, in which your noble-minded scholars breathe wearily and
with difficulty.

"A tragic, earnest, and instructive attempt was made in the present
century to destroy the cloud I have last referred to, and also to turn
the people's looks in the direction of the high welkin of the German
spirit. In all the annals of our universities we cannot find any trace
of a second attempt, and he who would impressively demonstrate what is
now necessary for us will never find a better example. I refer to the
old, primitive _Burschenschaft_.[11]

"When the war of liberation was over, the young student brought back
home the unlooked-for and worthiest trophy of battle--the freedom of
his fatherland. Crowned with this laurel he thought of something still
nobler. On returning to the university, and finding that he was
breathing heavily, he became conscious of that oppressive and
contaminated air which overhung the culture of the university. He
suddenly saw, with horror-struck, wide-open eyes, the non-German
barbarism, hiding itself in the guise of all kinds of scholasticism;
he suddenly discovered that his own leaderless comrades were abandoned
to a repulsive kind of youthful intoxication. And he was exasperated.
He rose with the same aspect of proud indignation as Schiller may have
had when reciting the _Robbers_ to his companions: and if he had
prefaced his drama with the picture of a lion, and the motto, 'in
tyrannos,' his follower himself was that very lion preparing to
spring; and every 'tyrant' began to tremble. Yes, if these indignant
youths were looked at superficially and timorously, they would seem to
be little else than Schiller's robbers: their talk sounded so wild to
the anxious listener that Rome and Sparta seemed mere nunneries
compared with these new spirits. The consternation raised by these
young men was indeed far more general than had ever been caused by
those other 'robbers' in court circles, of which a German prince,
ac