The Student Life of Germany Part 37

G.o.d bless the College! How she there Stands in her stately grandeur fair!

Ye twilight halls, both great and small, Ye win me back no more at all.

And thou too, from thy gabled height, O Carcer! see'st in vain my flight, For wretched lodging, night and day, A Pereat, greet thee thus for aye!

But bloom thou--and, as thus I go, Old Battle-house, still "Live thou, hoch!"

Yet many a victor-garland be, Thou house of honour, won in thee!

Then come I--ah! to Liebchen's door,-- Look out, dear girl, look out once more!

Look out with thy sweet eyes so clear, And with thy dark and cl.u.s.tering hair.

And shouldst thou e'en have me forgot, A like reward I wish thee not.

Go, thou mayst seek a lover new, But be he gay, like me, and true.

But farther, farther, now awaits My course, stand wide ye ancient gates!

Light is my heart, and glad my track; My blessing, city, waft I back!

Ye Brothers! now, around me press, Let my heart feel not its distress.

On gallant steeds with gladsome song, Go ye with me the way along.

In the next Dorf will we alight, In our last wine our friends.h.i.+p plight.

Now, here ye Brothers,--wo's the case!-- Our last gla.s.s take!--our last embrace!

_Gustav. Schwab_.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE STUDENT'S FUNERAL, ETC.

And of our brethren, is there one departed-- By pale Death summoned in his bloom?

We weep, and wish him peace, all saddest hearted; Peace to our brother's silent tomb.

We weep, and wish that peace may dwell In our dear brother's silent cell.

"What becomes then of the student at the last?" the reader will ask--"of him whom we have to this point followed in silent observation through all his ways, and along his whole course?"

If, as has often been the case, we were to consider the Student-life as a disease, we should say with the Pathologist:--"Every disease can, by possibility, have, only one of three terminations: the first, in health; the second, in some other disease; and the last, in death." But we are far from looking upon it in this light. Yet we can, regarding the Student-life in its great outlines as a state of health, a.s.sign it the same issues, with the exception that we hold the Philisterium, to use the student's own language, to be the natural sequence of the natural university life.

It is truly a sorrowful reflection, that of the numbers who seek the university at the same time, it is only the smaller portion of them who reach that goal after which they strive, or should strive. Not that we mean to say that death s.n.a.t.c.hes away so many from the midst of them.

No; the mortality in general, and especially in Heidelberg, amongst the student youth, is very small indeed. But what we now have in our eye will be more clearly shown, if we explain ourselves on the nature of the object to be attained by the student. Has he, indeed, attained that object, when he has piled up in his head laboriously and without order, a store of things worthy to be known in his peculiar profession? No, that is not it; although people who are dest.i.tute of an enlightened grasp of mind, are accustomed to see great perfection in the education of a young man who, returning from a learned inst.i.tution, is found to have gathered up all facts like a schoolboy with amazing diligence, so that when any one says A to him, he can immediately say B and C. We believe, for our part, the fruit of inquiry to be this: that the young man learns to perceive that the individual study to which he especially devotes himself, is only one branch of the great tree of knowledge; that no science, sundered entirely from the rest, can proceed prosperously to its own completion; that a science pursued alone and in an isolated manner, cannot be properly called a science; but that all the sciences stretch forth their sisterly hands to each other, and form themselves into a beautiful circle, out of which they will not suffer themselves to be torn by an unskilful person.

He will perceive, that a well-grounded study of professional science even, can only base itself on a philosophical foundation; and that he who, on the contrary, falls into one-sidedness, must become merely a clever plodder, or a charlatan. He will perceive that the arts and sciences are as intimately connected, as the capacity for the true, the good, and the beautiful is united in the spirit of man with the understanding. But is there one who has acquired no single perception of all this; has he only crammed into his head the dusty chaff of learning; has he, in the acquisition of this false learning, lost the taste for all that is good and beautiful!--it had been better that he had never entered on this field, which for him has had no result but that of drying up his brain with the heat of a confused and unfruitful knowledge.

Truly, there are yet other results of student-life than such as these: namely, those of a spurious erudition; results which for the quondam student, are yet more sorrowful, and which fill the heart of the spectator with pity and abhorrence. We mean the consequences which habits of drinking, and of other wild practices--such as the miserable pa.s.sion for play, draw after them. It is true that we see many wretched creatures glide trembling about, who have laid the first foundations of their aberrations at their university. But we see equally many, or more such miserables, who never visited such an inst.i.tution: and if we find many sorrowful histories in the university city, of the students who had taken their own lives because they had plunged themselves into inextricable debt; if we hear many a one at the end of his academical career lament bitterly over his lost and misspent time; we may be seized with a horror of such places as strong, as when we read what Jean Paul has depicted in such fearful colours of a similar unfortunate:--"And he brought out of the whole rich life nothing but errors, sins and diseases; a wasted body and a weary soul; a breast full of poison and an age full of remorse. His beautiful youthful days now changed themselves into spectres, and dragged him back to that sweet morning where his father had first placed him, at the point of the diverging paths of life, the right hand of which leads into the sun-path of virtue, into a wide quiet land, full of light and of harvest-fields, and of angels; and that of the left conducts down through the mole-burrowings of crime, into a black cavern full of down-dropping poison, of darting snakes, and of a damp and sultry vapour. Ah! the snakes hang on his bosom, and the poison drops on his tongue, and--he knew where he was. Wild, and with inexpressible horror and anguish, he cried to heaven--'Give me my youth again! O Father!

place me again on the diverging path that I may choose differently!'"

I say, we, and more especially the foreigner, hearing and seeing such things, should regard those places with horror. But let the latter think, how many young people here are collected together; and that amongst them must of a certainty be many very thoughtless, and no few of them decidedly bad characters. Let him recollect that these numbers, who have just escaped from the strict bondage of the schools, now suddenly stand free, torn loose from all family bonds, to act without restraint, and at their own pleasure. Let him reflect that they are in a place where opportunities for every species of extravagance are so freely offered; where, if their purses are exhausted, so many are at hand ready to lend. Let him again reflect, that the student is exposed to all those temptations at an age at which the pa.s.sions rage often with a fearful strength; at an age which causes him to stagger between its extremes. Let him, and let us, weigh all this, and then we cannot wonder, if many a one in this contest goes down; if many a one fails to accomplish the aim of his ideal activity; and we shall even rejoice that so many honourably pa.s.s through the ordeal, and choose the right.

Goethe's Wahrheit und Dichtung presents us with a pa.s.sage which is particularly applicable to this subject.

"All men of good disposition feel, in the progress of their education, that they have a double part to play in the world--an actual and an ideal one,--and in this feeling is to be sought the ground of every thing that is n.o.ble. What of the actual is allotted to us, we find only too clear; what concerns the ideal, we can seldom come into a distinct conception of. The man may seek his higher destiny on the earth or in heaven, in the present or in the future; but on that account he remains exposed to a constant wavering from within, and to a constantly disturbing influence from without, till he once for all takes the resolution to declare that is the right which is conformable to his individual condition and character."

But before we take our leave of those who, as we have said, have chosen the right, and now leave the university to enter upon a new life, let us cast one sorrowful retrospective glance at him, whom death so early has s.n.a.t.c.hed away from his brethren. And here it rejoices us to behold how the student seeks to honour and preserve the memory of the for-ever departed.

When youth, in its strength, in its beauty and freshness, is s.n.a.t.c.hed away, and is borne to the grave, who does not feel sorrow at heart, even if he were a stranger to the departed? But in such sorrowful moments we feel a peculiar pleasure in mounting higher and higher into a sentiment of grief, till the exhausted spirit dissolves itself in an infinitude of wo. In the decoration of the funeral procession with every symbol of sorrow, we behold the desire of friends to do the greatest possible honour to the deceased in the eyes of the world, and to bring even this to partic.i.p.ate in the mournful interest. If then this be the intention of the last honours, no one has perhaps more completely accomplished the object than the student, when he accompanies his departed friend to his last resting-place by night, and with the light of torches.

In the streets a curious mult.i.tude has gathered together to behold the solemn train, and moves. .h.i.ther and thither. The tolling of the funeral bell, announcing the setting forward of the train, has brought us also to the window, and in silence we look forth into the yet dark streets.

Busy fancy carries us quickly far away to the parents of the deceased, who now, in unspeakable grief, bewail perhaps the only son, him whom they hoped soon again, after the years of separation, to have folded in their arms; who, so thought they, should now cheer and enliven their old age. Then conducts it us to his solitary death-bed, where in vain he called on the names of those whom he loved--of those who watched his childhood; where sorrowfully he thought of their pain; where, finally, he thanked the friends who, though they had been but for a short period united to him in friends.h.i.+p, had, through their sympathy and faithful affectionate care, softened and made consolatory his last hours.

An uncertain and ruddy light now plays upon the houses and the waving folk's-ma.s.s, and the night brings to us the long-drawn tones of the trumpets, which, wailing with sorrow, make every chord of our inner life vibrate. Now they call back to us the dear ones that we have already borne to the grave, and the uncertain light of the torches causes their forms to sweep before our excited imaginations in a spirit-train. Now these thrilling notes seem to lament the transitoriness of all earthly things, and to complain of the dreadful ordinations of heaven.

The scene becomes continually clearer and brighter; the individual torches and their bearers appear distinctly, and behold! the ma.s.s of people separates before our eyes. To right and left they shrink back, as if the mult.i.tude feared that advancing train would yet s.n.a.t.c.h another out of this moving throng, out of the gladsome drift of life into the chill of the grave.

A numerous band of music comes at the head of the procession, lighted by torch-bearers. Then follows the funeral car, covered with black cloth and drawn by black horses. Upon the car lies the Ch.o.r.e-band, the Ch.o.r.e-caps of the deceased, and two crossed swords, all covered with mourning c.r.a.pe, and surrounded with mourning wreaths. We remark also particularly one smaller garland; it is formed of white roses, and is, so we are told, from the sorrowing hand of some unknown fair one.

This car, this coffin, incloses the mortal remains of the student whom so lately we saw traversing these streets in the freshness of youth, whose strong arm has lifted one of these swords in defence of his honour. This city, the witness of his fresh and lively existence, will soon have forgotten him.

Through life's course unto his goal With the tempest's speed roan driveth; Then within the true friend's soul Yet a little while surviveth.

_Uhland_.

Immediately before the car, go two of the beadles carrying fasces wreathed with c.r.a.pe. On each side and behind the car, walk the companions of the Ch.o.r.e, all in simple black mourning, and with hats.

Immediately behind the Ch.o.r.e also we see two clergymen in black costume walking. This whole group is surrounded by the torch-bearers. Then come all the other students who were acquainted with the deceased, and who have added themselves to the train. Before them goes the leader of the procession, with two attendants or marshals. The peculiar mourning costume--the buckskins and great jack-boots--the large storm or two-c.o.c.ked hat, bordered with black and white c.r.a.pe, with sweeping feathers--the great leathern gauntlets--the sword trailing in its sheath--the broad Ch.o.r.e-riband, veiled in c.r.a.pe; all these particulars point him out. His two attendants are similarly attired, but without the storm-hat. The students then follow two and two, in divisions according to their Ch.o.r.es, and others add themselves. In two long lines they advance slowly on each side of the street, and from time to time we observe an officer marching between these lines, distinguished by his cerevis cap and riband, while he carries in his hand his sword, its colours also veiled in c.r.a.pe, and its sheath hanging from his left side. These maintain the order of the procession. Formerly it was customary for them to be more ceremoniously attended, similarly to the leader of the train. In the same costume as the leader of the train, however, comes its closer, also accompanied by his two attendants; and these personages are chosen by the Ch.o.r.es from amongst their tallest members, as a matter of state.

Thus the procession moves on slowly through the streets, and we see a seriousness expressed on the countenances of most of the attendants, which the peculiar paleness that the torchlight is wont to give, greatly heightens. While the murmur of the thoughtless mult.i.tude announces to us the termination of the train, let us hasten, by a shorter cut than they, to the Friedhof, the churchyard where the students are interred. Here the train a.s.sembles itself around the open grave. The clergyman steps into the midst of the silent throng, and having p.r.o.nounced his address, closes it with his last benediction.

Then steps forward one of the friends of the deceased, to clothe in words once more before the a.s.sembled crowd, his painful feelings. Yet once more calls he to their remembrance the true friends.h.i.+p of the departed, his manly worth, and his genuine German mind. Yet once more he dwells on all that they have lost in him. A few stanzas are sung, from the beautiful hymn "From High Olympus," which he had so often joined them in. And now the coffin must descend; and all press forward to discharge to him their last duty, by throwing each a handful of earth upon him. Lastly, the lowered swords are crossed over his grave, and their clash is the signal for the return of the train.

We perceive in many of these funeral ceremonies a similarity to those with which the deceased soldier is interred; and this is still more strikingly shown in the manner in which they return to one of the larger squares, there to burn the torches--a manner which we can by no means approve.

No longer solemnly and silently tread back the throng; but instead of mourning airs, we hear the march, nay, even the merry waltz and the gallopade. Arrived in one of the larger squares, the train march round it, and turning towards the centre, at a given signal, let their torches fly up into the air, and fall on a heap in the midst. They whirl up, describing many a fiery circle and convolution ere they reach the flaming pile; and now, while this one animated and huge torch lights up all around with a strong radiance, and the dark and giant clouds of smoke, which rolling up, mixed with the many-coloured flames, spread themselves to the heavens, the voices of the a.s.sembled students join in chorus the music-accompanied song of

Gaudeamus igitur, Juvenes dum sumus.

And we see how speedily youth can step from one feeling to another. We see also the thought--"Though an individual falls, the great whole yet continues; it was for that, that he laboured, and his exertions have not been in vain;" we see this thought expressed in--

It shall live! the Academical Freedom!

which bursts forth from a thousand voices, amid the clas.h.i.+ng together of the swords.

Finally, the torch-pile having nearly consumed itself in its splendid light, is extinguished--an image of the high-aspiring youth who has been borne to the grave; and--