Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/79

 my respects. I had seen him only once, four years before, when he first visited England as the spokesman of his unfortunate country, which, after a most gallant struggle, had been overpowered by superior brute force. He was then the hero of the day. I have already described his entrance into London and the enthusiastic homage he received from what seemed to be almost the whole English people; how it was considered a privilege to be admitted to his presence, and how at a public reception he spoke a word to me that made me very proud and happy. He had then, at the invitation of the government,—I might say of the people of the United States,—proceeded to America, where he was received almost like a superior being, all classes of society surging around him with measureless outbursts of enthusiastic admiration. But he could not move the government of this Republic to active interference in favor of the independence of Hungary, nor did he obtain from his American admirers that “substantial aid” for his cause which he had looked and worked for, and thus he returned from America a profoundly disappointed man.

His second appearance in England convinced him that the boiling enthusiasm of the English people had evaporated. His further appeals in behalf of his cause met only with that compassionate sympathy which had no longer any stirring impulse in it, and it must have become clear to him that, for the time being at least, his cause was lost. At first he had appeared in England, as well as in America, in the character of the legitimate, although the deposed, ruler of Hungary, and his countrymen in exile had surrounded their “governor” with a sort of court ceremonial which was to express their respect for him, which flattered his pride, and which was accepted by many others as appropriate to his dignity. This “style” had, in Hungarian circles in London, been kept up for a while even after the