Page:Visit of the Hon. Carl Schurz to Boston, March 1881.pdf/67

54 before him not less than those in retrospect. While yet a student, he became the partisan of popular rights in 1848,—a year which witnessed the revival of the spirit of liberty both in Europe and the United States. He is remembered in Germany for his chivalrous rescue from the fortress of Spandau of the patriot Johann Gottfried Kinkel,—now a Professor of the History of Art at Zurich, whom it was my privilege to meet two years ago in that city, at the house of my friend Mr. Guyer, where we had much discourse on the noble career of our guest. After a year's residence in London he came to this country, in 1852; and in six years or less from that time he was able to address audiences in English, using our language with a facility, a vigor of expression, and a keen sense of idioms which belong to but few with whom it is the vernacular. No foreigner, unless it be Kossuth, has been his rival in this regard. In his speeches, he showed from the beginning not only breadth of vision and capacity for applying the methods of philosophy to political questions, which might have been expected from one of his gifts and nationality, but as well a vivid perception of the details of our history, early and later, and a delicate appreciation of the local and national spirit which has informed its successive epochs. Among our public men, to-day, where will you find another so accomplished, so well equipped on all sides for public service,—speaking and thinking in three languages, and in each easily and well; a stu-