would force our princes to break for ever with their old traditions, which were so detrimental to the cause of the German commonwealth.  With this object I felt inspired to write a popular appeal in verse, calling upon the German princes and peoples to inaugurate a great crusade against Russia, as the country which had been the prime instigator of that policy in Germany which had so fatally separated the monarchs from their subjects.  One of the verses ran as follows:—­

The old fight against the East Returns again to-day.  The people’s sword must not rust Who freedom wish for aye.

As I had no connection with political journals, and had learned by chance that Berthold Auerbach was on the staff of a paper in Mannheim, where the waves of revolution ran high, I sent him my poem with the request to do whatever he thought best with it, and from that day to this I have never heard or seen anything of it.

Whilst the Frankfort Parliament continued to sit on from day to day, and it seemed idle to conjecture whither this big talk by small men would lead, I was much impressed by the news which reached us from Vienna.  In the May of this year an attempt at a reaction, such as had succeeded in Naples and remained indecisive in Paris, had been triumphantly nipped in the bud by the enthusiasm and energy of the Viennese people under the leadership of the students’ band, who had acted with such unexpected firmness.  I had arrived at the conclusion that, in matters directly concerning the people, no reliance could be placed on reason or wisdom, but only on sheer force supported by fanaticism or absolute necessity; but the course of events in Vienna, where I saw the youth of the educated classes working side by side with the labouring man, filled me with peculiar enthusiasm, to which I gave expression in another popular appeal in verse.  This I sent to the Oesterreichischen Zeitung, where it was printed in their columns with my full signature.

In Dresden two political unions had been formed, as a result of the great changes that had taken place.  The first was called the Deutscher Verein (German Union), whose programme aimed at ’a constitutional monarchy on the broadest democratic foundation.’  The names of its principal leaders, among which, in spite of its broad democratic foundation, my friends Eduard Devrient and Professor Rietschel had the courage openly to appear, guaranteed the safety of its objects.  This union, which tried to include every element that regarded a real revolution with abhorrence, conjured into existence an opposition club which called itself the Vaterlands-Verein (Patriotic Union).  In this the ’democratic foundation’ seemed to be the chief basis, and the ’constitutional monarchy’ only provided the necessary cloak.