The students are a means of perpetuating these notions. The young German is essentially romantic. A poet and a patriot, his dreams are of the greatness of his Fatherland, of its high mission among the nations of Europe; and however he may exaggerate the claims of his country or overrate his own efforts in her cause, his devotion is a noble one; and when sobered down by experience and years, it gives to Germany that race of faithful and high-souled people, the best guardians of her liberty and the most attached defenders of her soil. A great deal of _mauvaise plaisanterie_ has been expended by French and English authors on the subject of the German student. The theme was perhaps an inviting one. Certainly nothing was easier than to ridicule absurdities in their manner and extravagances in their costume--their long pipes and their long beards, their long skirts and long boots and long sabres, their love of beer and their law-code of honour. Russell, in his little work on Germany--in many respects the only English book worth reading on that country--has been most unjustly severe upon them. As to French authors, one never expects truth from _them_, except it slip out unconsciously in a work of fiction. Still, they have displayed a more than common spirit of detraction when speaking of the German student. The truth is, they cannot forget the part these same truths performed in repelling the French invasion of their country. The spirit evoked by Kôrner, and responded to from the Hartz to the Black Forest, was the death-note to the dominant tyranny of France. The patriotism which in the Basque provinces called into existence the wild Guerillas, and in the Tyrol created the Jager-bund, in more cultivated Germany elicited that race of poets and warriors whose war-songs aroused the nation from its sleep of slavery, and called them to avenge the injuries of their nation. Laugh, then, if you will, at the strange figures whose uncouth costumes of cap and jack-boot bespeak them a hybrid between a civilian and a soldier. The exterior is, after all, no bad type of what lies within; its contradictions are indeed scarcely as great. The spectacles and moustaches, the note-book beneath the arm and the sabre at the side, the ink-bottle at the button-hole and the spurs jingling at the heels, are all the outward signs of that extraordinary mixture of patient industry and hot-headed enthusiasm, of deep thought and impetuous rashness, of matter-of-fact shrewdness and poetic fervour, and, lastly, of the most forgiving temper allied to an unconquerable propensity for duelling. Laugh if you will at him, but he is a fine fellow for all that; and despite all the contrarieties of his nature he has the seed of those virtues which in the peaceful life of his native country grow up into the ripe fruits of manly truth and honesty.