Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/84

 justice, new forms of organized society, new developments of civilization. But what the sweep of those volcanic disturbances will be and what their final outcome, is a mystery baffling the imagination—a mystery that can be approached only with awe and dread.

Such were the contemplations set going in my mind by the contact with this part of the Russian world, that enigma of the future. With what delightful assurance I turned from this cloudy puzzle to the “New World” which I had recently made my home—the great western Republic, not indeed without its hard problems, but a Republic founded upon clear, sound, just, humane, irrefragable principles, the conscious embodiment of the highest aims of the modern age; and with a people most of whom were full of warm sympathy with every effort for human liberty the world over, and animated with an enthusiastic appreciation of their own great destiny as leaders of mankind in the struggle for freedom and justice, universal peace an good-will! How I longed to go “home” and take part in the great fight against slavery, the only blot that sullied the escutcheon of the Republic, and the only malign influence, as then conceived, that threatened the fulfillment of its great mission in the world!

But before my return to America I had a joyful experience which I cannot refrain from describing. It was of an artistic nature. Frau Kinkel took me to a concert—in which Jenny Lind, then retired from the stage, was to sing the great aria of Agathe in the “Freischütz,” and in which also Richard Wagner's overture to “Tannhäuser” was to be produced, Wagner himself acting as conductor of the orchestra. As I have already said in the first part of these