"What!" would exclaim our enthusiast, "have we not all our bodily and our mental, energies? Doth not dame Nature, in our birth, as in our death, deal out impartial justice? She may endow me with stronger limbs, than another:--our feelings as we grow up, may not be chained down to one servile monotony;--the lip of the precocious cynic"--this was addressed to a young matter of fact Englishman--"who sneers at my present animation, may not curl with a smile as often as my own; but let our powers of acting be equal,--our prerogatives the same."
Carl Obers, with his youth and his vivacity, carried his auditors--a little knot of beer drinking liberty-mongers--with him, and for him, in all he said; and the orator would look round, with conscious power, and considerable satisfaction; and flatter himself, that his specious arguments were as unanswerable, as they were then unanswered.
Many of our generation may remember the unparalleled enthusiasm, which, like an electric flash, spread over the civilised world; as Greece armed herself, to shake off her Moslem ruler.
It was one that few could help sharing.
To almost all, is Greece a magic word. Her romantic history--the legacies she has left us--our early recollections, identifying with her existence as a nation, all that is good and glorious;--no wonder these things should have shed a bright halo around her,--and have made each breast deeply sympathise with her in her unwonted struggle for freedom.
Carl Obers did not hear of this struggle with indifference. He at once determined to give Greece the benefit of his co-operation, and the aid of his slender means. He immediately commenced an active canvass amongst his personal friends, in order to form a band of volunteers, who might be efficient, and worthy of the cause on which his heart was set.
He now first read an useful lesson from life's unrolled volume.
Many a voice, that had rung triumphantly the changes on liberty, was silent now, or deprecated the active attempt to establish it.
The hands that waved freely in the debating room, were not the readiest to grasp the sword's hilt. Many who had poetically expatiated on the splendours of modern Greece; on reflection preferred the sunny views of the Neckar, to the prospect of eating honey on Hymettus.
Youth, however, is the season for enterprise; and Carl, with twenty-three comrades, was at length on his way to Trieste.