Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/81

 had borne the reputation of being haughty and distant, and her presumptuous attitude is said to have been occasionally dangerous to her husband's popularity. In the case of such characters the fall from greatness is usually not regarded as a claim to especial sympathy. But as I saw her then, she seemed to be full of tender care for her husband's health.

I left Kossuth's presence with a heart full of sadness. In him, in that idol of the popular imagination, now reduced to impotence, poverty, and solitude, I had seen the very personification of the defeat suffered by the revolutionary movement of 1848.

It was on the occasion of this sojourn in London that I made the acquaintance of Alexander Herzen, a natural son of a Russian nobleman of high rank, himself a Russian patriot in the liberal sense, who had been obliged to leave his native country as a “dangerous man,” and who now, by his writings, which were smuggled across the frontier, worked to enlighten and stimulate and inspire the Russian mind. Malwida von Meysenbug, who lived in his family superintending the education of his daughters, which she did with all her peculiar enthusiasm, brought us together, and we soon became friends. Herzen, at least ten years older than I, was an aristocrat by birth and instinct, but a democrat by philosophy, a fine, noble nature, a man of culture, of a warm heart and large sympathies. In his writings as well as in his conversation he poured forth his thoughts and feelings with an impulsive, sometimes poetic eloquence, which, at times, was exceedingly fascinating. I would listen to him by the hour when in his rhapsodic way he talked of Russia and the Russian people, that uncouth and only half conscious giant, that would gradually exchange its surface civilization borrowed from the West for one of national character; the awakening of whose popular intelligence