Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/21

Detdiar sidj as efterluket wurden.
xxi

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

knowledge, but he had paid little attention to mathematics
or intellectual philosophy; a neglect for which, as to the
former at least, he atoned by laborions study at a later
period of life. From Kiel he went to Jena, and arrived
at that city on the 17th of October, 1818, the evening be-
fore the celebration of the Feast of the Wartburg. He
thus describes the ceremonies of the occasion :
  "On the 18th of the month of victory, we celebrated
the festival. At nine in the morning, the Burschenschaft
assembled. The chiefs, standard-bearers, aids, and mar-
shals were dressed in black, with old German coats, trunk
hose, and hats with black plumes. Over the shoulder
and across the breast was thrown a red scarf, to which
hung a sword. The procession first marched to the mar-
ket, where a spirited address was delivered, then, with ban-
ners flying, and in close order, to the church. After the
sermon, which dwelt exclusively on the triumphs of liberty,
the association dined on Oak-square, and then proceeded
to the Turn-square. In the evening, fires were lighted on
all the mountains which surround the valley of Jena. We
marched with six hundred torches to the summit of one
of the highest, and a mighty pile of wood, prepared for
the occasion, was soon kindled. Then a student stepped
forth, and spoke in words more glowing and heart-stirring
than the flames which blazed to heaven beside us. Hymns
to God, liberty, and the fatherland, mingled with the rus-
tling of the oaks that clothe the slopes of the mountain.
You should have witnessed it. The lofty peak, the whis-
pering oaks, the crackling fire, the wild songs, and the
strange garb of the officers of the Burschenschaft, who
seemed as if they had come Ibrth from their ancestral
graves — all these conspired to fill me with the most singu-
lar emotions."
  Sand, the murderer of Kotzebue, was then a member of