A curious account of the festival remains, written by Kieser, one of the Professors who took part in it (Kieser, Das Wartburgfest, 1818). It is so silly that it is hard to believe it to have been written by a grown-up man. He says of the procession to the Wartburg, "There have indeed been processions that surpassed this in outward glory and show; but in inner significant value it cannot yield to any." But making allowance for the author's personal weakness of head, his book is a singular and instructive picture of the mental condition of "Young Germany" and its teachers at that time-a subject that caused such extravagant anxiety to Governments, and so seriously affected the course of political history. It requires some effort to get behind the ridiculous side of the students' Teutonism; but there were elements of reality there. Persons familiar with Wales will be struck by the resemblance, both in language and spirit, between the scenes of 1818 and the religious meetings or the Eisleddfodau of the Welsh, a resemblance not accidental, but resulting from similarity of conditions, viz., a real susceptibility to religious, patriotic, and literary ideas among a people unacquainted with public or practical life on a large scale. But the vigorous political action of the Welsh in 1880, when the landed interest throughout the Principality lost seats which it had held for centuries, surprised only those who had seen nothing but extravagance in the chapel and the field-meeting. Welsh ardour, hitherto in great part undirected, then had a practical effect because English organisation afforded it a model: German ardour in 1817 proved sterile because it had no such example at hand.
See the speech in Bernhardi, iii. 669.
Gentz, D.I., ii. 87, iii. 72.
Castlereagh, xii. 55, 62.
Wellington, S.D., xii. 835.
B. and F. State Papers, 1818-19, vi. 14.
Gentz, D.I., i. 400. Gentz, the confidant and adviser of Metternich, was secretary to the Conference at Aix-la-Chapelle. His account of it in this despatch is of the greatest value, bringing out in a way in which no official documents do the conservative and repressive tone of the Conference. The prevalent fear had been that Alexander would break with his old Allies and make a separate league with France and Spain. See also Castlereagh, xii. 47.
"I could write you a long letter about the honour which the Prussians pay to everything Austrian, our whole position, our measures, our language. Metternich has fairly enchanted them." Gentz, Nachlasse (Osten), i. 51.
Metternich, iii. 171.
See his remarks in Metternich, iii. 269: an oasis of sense in this desert of Commonplace.