The faith in the mysterious might of music and of song, which so beautifully expressed itself in the Mythology of the Greeks, shone forth also in newer Sagas; and even refined Christendom has not disdained to employ music to work upon the hearts of its votaries. Goethe has done homage to this beautiful faith when, in his Prologue to Faust, he causes Raphael to speak. The sun, in its old way, goes sounding, With brother-spheres in rival song, And its prescribed course thus rounding, Careers with thunder-speed along. Thus the Germans rejoice themselves in an affluence of popular songs, although they possess but few national poets. This latter fact easily explains itself, when one reflects how late the German speech arrived at a greater perfection, and that, at the same time that Germany achieved a literary independence and literary greatness, it lost its political freedom, and came out of its captivity a dismembered whole. Take from Germany its wine, its songs, and we might name yet a third particular of a less middle character,[30] and it will become quite another country. The German expresses the most varied feelings in song, though he does not go quite so far as the opera, in which you cannot, without smiling, hear the Czar of Russia conclude a contract with the English and French ambassadors singing, and ratify the Treaty of Peace in the most exquisite melodies. But the Germans acknowledge the truth of what Goethe has said: What I erred in, what I sought for; What I lived through, what I fought for; Are but flowers in this bouquet: And the young, the old and ailing, And each virtue as each failing, Speak their language in some lay. The common man in Germany sings as he goes to his labour; he sings while he works, in order to enliven himself, and when he has concluded he naturally sounds forth his song of satisfaction. A pleasure, without the accompaniment of singing, he does not understand. Thus the foreigner, who has a taste for singing, hears, with surprise, a chorus-song resounding from a public-house, or passing along the streets, which might not sustain a very severe criticism, but which does all honour to the uneducated singers. So they establish themselves in the smallest villages into Gesang-vereine (singing companies), and the author recollects with particular pleasure, a serenade, which he heard in returning late one evening from Schriesheim, in the village of Handschuhsheim; and also the delightful choral-song, which a company of peasants and peasantesses, frequently raised in the summer evenings in the castle-gardens at Schwetzingen, and which in the stillness of twilight, when the splashing of the distant fountains were only heard besides, produced an extraordinary effect.