Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/18

34 this people, composed of many distinct peoples, united in love for freedom and for that common father-land—that little Switzerland. And over all the states, however dissimilar in manners, language, or religious opinion, a word prevails, with magical, cementing, binding power—a name alike availing to them all—it is Sworn-Confederate. If opposing elements separate them for a time, they are again united in this. Disseverance is dissolved in eternal unity.

I found myself in this little country in the beginning of the summer of 1856. The beautiful oak woods round Stockholm lay as if dreaming of spring when I left them at the end of May. A gray-green vail covered the northern landscape. Two days later, in Germany, I found summer, and the hay-harvest in progress. But much rain and the long railway journey had fatigued me so much that I could not but ask myself, whether I were not too old to undertake a long journey; whether, after a certain amount of years, it were not better for people to stop quietly at home.

At his house on the banks of the Neckar, I again saw Chevalier Bunsen. It was like a ray of sunshine. I had seen him a few years before as Prussian Minister in London, and then, depressed by the political embarrassments which were at hand, and forseeing the great and bloody war in the East, he was also suffering so much even in health, that I could not but think of him as one who had not long to live.

I now met with him again amongst the vineyards of Heidelberg, healthy, cheerful and overflowing with life and the enjoyment of labor. He seemed to me to have become younger by twenty years. He had