"Our departure was to take place at Christmas; it was very painful for us to take leave. I shortened as much as possible my separation from the scholars. I gave to each of them a book, said farewell, and hastened from them. A young man who had not been at the school, but had acted as a soldier in 'Hans Waldmann,' inquired from what coachman at Solothurn I should hire my carriage. I told him the man. The following day he returned to me, and informed me that he had engaged himself as servant to this liveryman, and had asked low wages that he might be allowed to drive us to Germany, for he wished to take care that we were as well attended to as in Grenchen.
"It was a cold, dark winter morning when we drove from the inn in which we had passed the last night. Great was our surprise, when, at that early hour and in the bitter cold, we saw the whole population, men, women, and children, thronging before the house and along the high road. They wished once more to press our hands, they said farewell, and many other things; 'It is wrong of you to leave us,' 'You must come back again,' 'You shall have the freedom of the city.' They raised their children up aloft, 'Look at him yet again, look at him yet once more!' The whip cracked, and the carriage drove away."
Here we end the narrative of the former schoolmaster of Grenchen.
More than twenty years have passed since the German teacher departed from the Swiss village. He had been a strong and moderate leader in the political struggles of Germany, he had clearly seen where the greatest danger threatened, and his name was often mentioned with warm veneration, or with bitter hatred. When years of weak reaction came, he went to the north of Germany, and again lived in the active performance of his duties as a citizen. Then the faithful companion of his life fell sick, and the physicians advised a long residence in pure mountain air; they determined to go to the village around which hovered so many delightful reminiscences of past times.
The village had changed its aspect; people no longer travelled by the high-roads but on the railway to Grenchen, manufactures had been introduced, watch-making and inlaid work, and the manufacture of cement, and other branches are increasingly developed. But the travellers found the old feeling, not only among the old men, but also through tradition among the younger ones. On the Sunday after their arrival, a long procession moved in the evening from the village to the baths. Foremost were the military bands of two battalions, which were formed of Grencheners under the direction of the new district-master, then the bearers of coloured lanterns, which were a large portion of the population. The multitude arranged themselves before the balcony of the house in which "Hans Waldmann" had been performed. Great chafing-dishes threw a red light over the ponds, jutting fountains and the pleasure grounds of the baths, whilst rockets ascended and lighted up at intervals the dark background, the mountains of the Jura. The guests had to place themselves on the balcony. The music ceased, and a former scholar, now a physician in Grenchen, stepped from out of the ranks. He commenced his greeting by calling to mind, that on the day of their arrival, there had been a great eclipse of the sun; two-and-twenty years before, their guests had entered among them at a period of intellectual darkness, they had helped to make light victorious; he concluded with the assurance that Grenchen would always consider the two strangers as belonging to them. When later the people of the village joyfully thronged round the friends, the parents pointed to a race of young giants that had meanwhile grown up amongst them, saying, "See these are the little ones who used to play with your children, and could not then go to your school." The German had by his side his eldest scholar, Xaver Reis, who had again come to him, over the mountain.
The district school has now three masters and ample funds. The new school-house rises on a height in front of the church, and is a conspicuous object to the surrounding country. The school has trained its own advocates and supporters.
The Master who gives this narrative is Karl Mathy, the State councillor of Baden, in the year 1848 a member of the Imperial ministry, one of the best and strongest champions of the Prussian party.
These pictures began with a description of peasant life at an earlier period, it concludes with a true village story of the latest bygone times. It is a Swiss village of German race, to which the reader has been introduced. Many of its circumstances, the worth and energy of the inhabitants, and their self-government, recall to us a lively recollection of a German time which is removed from us by many centuries. Betwixt the Alps and the Jura also did misrule long retard the culture of the country people, but its pressure was harmless in comparison with the fate of the German nation: its bondage, and the Thirty Years' War.
It was one of the objects of these pages to represent the elevation of the German popular mind, from the devastation of that war, and from the tyrannical rule of the privileged classes. Deliverance has come to the Germans, but they have not recovered their old strength in every sphere of life. But we have a right to hope; for we live in the midst of manly efforts to remove the old wall of partition that still exists between the people and the educated, and to extend, not only to the peasant, but also to the prince, and to the man of family, the blessing of a liberal education.