for recruits, Hecker arrived at Kandern with twelve hundred men. Here Gagern met him with a few hundred regular troops. Hecker attempted to gain them over with the cry of "German brotherhood," but Gagern kept them steady until he fell, mortally wounded, on the bridge. Then there was a slight skirmish; both parties retreated, and act the first of the drama closed. Meanwhile the _Vor Parlament_ had been summoned, and the National Assembly of Frankfort had met in the Paulskircke, to the number of four hundred deputies; their self-constituted task was simply to reform all Germany. Frankfort was stirring and joyous upon this occasion, as it had used to be in former days, when within its walls was elected the Head of the Holy Roman Empire. Bells were rung, cannon fired, triumphal arches raised, green boughs and rainbow-colored banners waved, flowers strewn in the streets, tapestries hung from windows and balconies, hands stretched forth in greeting, voices strained to call down blessings; all that popular enthusiasm could invent was there, and one immense cry of rejoicing saluted what was fondly termed the "Regeneration of Germany." The tumults, the misery, the bloodshed, and the disappointment that followed, until the Rump of this "magniloquent Parliament" sought shelter at Stuttgardt, are fresh in our memory. [2: Germania: its Courts, Camps, and People. By the Baroness Blaze de Bury. London: Colburn.] Hecker, having done his utmost to "agitate" his country, and having failed "to inspire a dastard populace with the spirit of the ancient Roman people," as Madame expresses it, he fled to America. But his name was still a tower of strength to his Red brethren and the _Freicorps_ of the Schwartzwald and the Rhine. In Western Germany a year ago last summer his return was enthusiastically expected by the revolutionary army. "When Hecker comes," said they, "we shall be invincible." He came: his followers crowded round him and implored him at once to lead them on to victory! "Victory be d--d," was the reply of the returned exile; "go home to your plows and your vines and your wives and children, and leave me to attend to mine." Hecker had only come to Europe for his family, and he returned almost immediately to America. Meanwhile the war blazed up for a little while and then expired, leaving behind it the _Deutsche Verwirrung_[3] as it now presents itself in Germania.[4] [3: Literally, the _German entanglement_.] [4: Hecker seems to have been a sincere enthusiast; and it is always observed by his friends that he renounced ease and comfort for the cause that he espoused. We append a single verse from one of the "Hecker songs" that were in 1849 in the mouth of every Badish republican:--