William Howitt

“ It is a duty through noble manners to honour ourselves; he only who maintains a nobility of conduct himself, can respect the manners of another. It is honourable to belong to a brave union; more mightily works the spirit of every one in union. It is honourable to love your native place, be it on the Isar, the Danube, the Rhine, or the Main, since what German territory has not a host of glorious recollections? It is an honourable, proud feeling to be able to wield the sword skilfully, as if it were a member of our body. ”

“ Up then! there is a vast, a boundless field of laurels for you, for us all, to contend for. Shame to ignorance! shame to immorality! shame to the rude might of arms, without knowledge, without morals, without obedience! shame to obedience towards unions in things which God and the king forbid! In knowledge, in morals, in obedience, in glowing love to King and Fatherland--in them let every individual endeavour to outstrip another, every union the other, our university all others. ”

“ But before we take our leave of those who, as we have said, have chosen the right, and now leave the university to enter upon a new life, let us cast one sorrowful retrospective glance at him, whom death so early has snatched away from his brethren. And here it rejoices us to behold how the student seeks to honour and preserve the memory of the for-ever departed.
When youth, in its strength, in its beauty and freshness, is snatched away, and is borne to the grave, who does not feel sorrow at heart, even if he were a stranger to the departed? ”

“ Since I have discovered what a lofty prize our people have in the present time to wrestle for--and that he is the cowardly false villain that would prevent their destiny--it is become for me, as for every German who regards the well-being of the whole, a rigorous Must! May I direct the eyes of all active and public-spirited men, to where danger and falsehood threaten, and turn, in time, the fear of all, and the vigorous youth to the right point, that they may save the common Fatherland, Germany, the perpetually rent, the unworthy states-union, from an imminent danger. ”

“ No, in the student-life, which is entered into as a brief season of youthful hilarity, which in this world can come but once; a season in which knowledge is not only to be gathered, but life to be enjoyed--friendships for life to be knit up--love, perhaps for life, to be kindled--and the spirit of patriotism to be cherished to a degree which no after-chills and oppressions of ordinary life shall ever be able utterly to extinguish; in this life there is a feeling and a sentiment to which our student-life is a stranger. ”

“ I must proclaim myself against this laxity; and I know nothing nobler to achieve than to strike down the arch-slave, and great advocate of this mercenary time, the corrupter and betrayer of my people--August von Kotzebue!
"Thou, my German People, exalt thyself, to a higher moral worth of manhood; of the free spirit of man, and his creative strength! My German People! thou hast no realler nor nobler possession; it is thy highest good. Honour, guard this faith--this thy love to God. ”

“ A network of boundaries lies before us; every fresh glance falls on a fresh territory--upon a different race of the German people. There, towards the south, the ancient Swabia shadows itself forth; here, northward, Hesse divides itself from the Pfalz; there, beyond the river, contends the active French spirit against the strict old Bavarian discipline, and nourishes itself with its beloved traditions and daring hopes. Still farther off can we look into this very France itself, which for centuries has been so fatally disastrous to us. ”

“ Many a romance weaves itself here in the intercourse of the social circles--in the crowd of the ball-room; and strong chains of love often become fabricated, which conduct the maiden far from the walls of Heidelberg, and teach her to forget, on a distant hearth, her beautiful native home. If on a lovely summer's night we linger late on the castle height, we often, as we return, become the partakers of the enjoyment of a serenade, the offering which a son of Minerva brings to show to his chosen one his watchfulness. ”

“ Not a book will be looked at; not a pen will be touched; he recompenses himself immediately for the school torment that he has passed through, by a delightful do-nothing; and gives himself up in anticipation to the blessed consciousness of student life. The foretaste of awakening liberty leads him to commit a thousand follies; he imagines himself lord of the world, and knows no conventional restraints. The parents have the worst of it, as they are seldom in a situation to put a salutary damper upon the forth-bursting storm of the mind of the youth. ”

“ Schiller.
Who, then, would wish to live in such a world? No; we value the wine which calls forth the poetry of the inner man of him who is not totally abandoned of the Muses. But you, perhaps, reprobate the enjoyment of wine as too ignoble and material. But is it then the material portion of the wine which confers on us its witchcraft? No; it is the fine spirit, and that ethereal life which the German calls the flower of the wine. They ascend to the exhausted brain, and brace the relaxed chords. ”

“ That feeling of solitude seizes him, and he follows the course of a small stream which will, however, conduct him again to the banks of the Neckar. The water, whose course he has followed, has wonderfully wrought the leaves and the grass into fantastical ice-forms; while, above him, hang from the rocks enormous icicles, glittering in the wintry light like crystal daggers. Again he finds himself by the mirror-like surface of the wintry flood, and behold! the uniformity of nature has only enabled man to multiply his pleasures. A glad multitude here is full of life and activity. ”

“ The life of the university is an admirable school, which brings the young man quickly to a sense of self-dependence, which in a few years brings him to manly knowledge, and builds him up to a fitness for intercourse with other men. The freedom which the student enjoys in a high degree, is truly a strong touchstone,--a dangerous rock, on which many a one splits,--but it is the only ground on which genuine knowledge can attain its noblest bloom. Suddenly liberated from the fetters of school, from the strict oversight of parents, steps the young man into this life. ”

“ Student Life! Burschen Life! What a magic sound have these words for him who has learnt for himself their real meaning! What a swarm of recollections come over him who has once visited that land, however long it may be since he returned homeward to a safer haven! Youth flies on wings of impatience towards this happy time; age, though indeed it may smile over the recollection of many a folly, recalls its memory with delight. ”

“ Will not the greatest disaster befall us? Will not the history of our day be blackened with everlasting shame? He must perish! I say continually if any saving influence is to arise, we must not shrink from strife and toil; the true freedom of the German people then only awakes in us, when challenged and dared by the brave,--when the son of the Fatherland in the contest for the right and for the highest good, casts all other love? behind him, and loves death alone.
"That this may be, who shall rush upon this pitiful fellow, upon this hireling traitor, Kotzebue? ”

“ Thy father does thee justice. Emily, thou shouldst have been honest with me. I am not the man that will abuse the tender heart of a maiden. I challenge thee to speak the truth. Have I not been open-hearted with thee? Have I stolen thy affections? My whole soul hangs yet on thee, and never will it be able to loose itself from thee. If thou wert unworthy of me, would I weep and lament over thee? Tell me then candidly thy desires, and trust me that I have generosity enough to satisfy them all, even if it cost me my life. Thou canst charge nothing upon my honour. ”

“ An uncertain and ruddy light now plays upon the houses and the waving folk's-mass, and the night brings to us the long-drawn tones of the trumpets, which, wailing with sorrow, make every chord of our inner life vibrate. Now they call back to us the dear ones that we have already borne to the grave, and the uncertain light of the torches causes their forms to sweep before our excited imaginations in a spirit-train. ”

“ Must not your unspeakable love for me directly spur me on to set death at defiance for the common good and the object of all our endeavours? What numbers of the modern Greeks have already fallen, to liberate their people from the scourge of the Turks, and are yet dead without having effected any visible consequence, without any prospect of it; and hundreds of them also amongst us, preparing themselves by education, suffer not their courage to sink, but are immediately ready again to offer their lives for the good of their country, and would I not die for mine? ”

“ The student maintains strictly and perseveringly his own views, though consequently, often erroneous ones; but this serves in after-life, to lay the ground-work of greater steadfastness of character. This firmness continues with him to his grave, though his views and principles modify and purify themselves, as his growing intelligence directs him more and more into the track of truth. And as the student stands upon his honour, for which full of the highest enthusiasm he glows, and joyfully offers up property and life, so stands he in the bonds of truth and friendship. ”

“ It is the transition into a state of greater self-dependence which demands this sacrifice; and he only who has no conception of the strengthening and fortifying influence of university life,--he who does not perceive with what higher advantage this material loss is counterbalanced, can alone break out into lamentations on this head. He who is accustomed to chase youth out of one pen into another, and to begrudge every free breath, every lighter moment, every refreshment of over-passing Muse--who trembles and shakes lest by such trivial circumstances they should have lost both body and soul ”

“ What country can show an institution so well organized and ordered as our High Schools? Truly does it excite admiration and delight to see so small a state, even as Baden, whose peculiar aim is the diffusion of knowledge. On the one hand, teachers paid by the state, that they may, freed from all the pressure of affairs, be able to dedicate their lives entirely to the office of teaching; and on the other, scholars flocking from every country, to avail themselves of their instructions.
How many great men have already gone forth out of this school! ”

“ God be praised! the number of those is few who look upon knowledge as a milch-cow, from which they may draw their daily living, and on the university as a stall, in which that useful beast is reared and cherished. Men have learned to perceive that the possession of knowledge is desirable to every one, even if he draw no direct worldly advantage therefrom. A noble rivalry to push discovery farther and higher, through the power of the human mind, and to dig after the truth, has diffused itself far and wide. ”

“ Advance still farther for your country, and conduct your little ones--to whom so gladly would I have become the guiding friend--without delay, up into the mighty mountains, and let them there, upon that sublime altar in the midst of the Fatherland, dedicate themselves and swear, never to rest nor to lay down the sword till the Brethren are united in freedom, till all Germany as one people, and with one constitution for the whole empire, great before God and mighty against their neighbours, is knit into one complete whole! ”

“ Honour is truly a thing which does not admit of much modification, or suffer much tampering with; and what will not a strong phantasy see in any thing with its microscopic vision? The delicate and exaggerating nature of these qualities, reminds one in fact of the sportsman who happening to put on a pair of spectacles of much greater magnifying power than usual, suddenly fired off at a fly which passed before his eyes, taking it for a partridge. Many a one vexes himself likewise when others are pleased. He is not in good humour, and their satisfaction or equanimity is an offence to him. ”

“ A vast crowd of people, consisting of school-youths who had to thank the students to-day for a holiday, and of all kinds of people who, in a university city, draw support from the students, added themselves to the train, and increased the uproar and alarm, with curses and insults, that the students should be suffered to go away. The inhabitants of the city looked down in wonder and curiosity from their windows roused from their sleep by the noise, and gazed on the motley throng who, with shouts and singing of Burschen-songs, swept by. ”