Since I have been in Frankfort, an event has occurred, which shows very distinctly the principles at work in Germany, and gives us some foreboding of the future.  Ferdinand Freiligrath, the first living poet with the exception of Uhland, has within a few weeks published a volume of poems entitled, “My Confession of Faith, or Poems for the Times.”  It contains some thrilling appeals to the free spirit of the German people, setting forth the injustice under which they labor, in simple but powerful language, and with the most forcible illustrations, adapted to the comprehension of everyone.  Viewed as a work of genius alone, it is strikingly powerful and original:  but when we consider the effect it is producing among the people—­the strength it will add to the rising tide of opposition to every form of tyranny, it has a still higher interest.  Freiligrath had three or four years before, received a pension of three hundred thalers from the King of Prussia, soon after his accession to the throne:  he ceased to draw this about a year ago, stating in the preface to his volume that it was accepted in the belief the King would adhere to his promise of giving the people a new constitution, but that now since free spirit which characterises these men, who come from among the people, shows plainly the tendency of the times; and it is only the great strength with which tyranny here has environed himself, and the almost lethargic slowness of the Germans, which has prevented a change ere this.

In this volume of Freiligrath’s, among other things, is a translation of Bryant’s magnificent poem “The Winds,” and Burns’s “A man’s a man for a’ that;” and I have translated one of his, as a specimen of the spirit in which they are written: 

FREEDOM AND RIGHT.

Oh! think not she rests in the grave’s chilly slumber
Nor sheds o’er the present her glorious light,
Since Tyranny’s shackles the free soul incumber
And traitors accusing, deny to us Right! 
No:  whether to exile the sworn ones are wending,
Or weary of power that crushed them unending,
In dungeons have perished, their veins madly rending,[*]
Yet Freedom still liveth, and with her, the Right! 
Freedom and Right!

A single defeat can confuse us no longer: 
It adds to the combat’s last gathering might,
It bids us but doubly to struggle, and stronger
To raise up our battle-cry—­“Freedom and Right!”
For the Twain know a union forever abiding,
Together in Truth and in majesty striding;
Where Right is, already the free are residing
And ever, where dwell the free, governeth Right! 
Freedom and Right!

And this is a trust:  never made, us at present,
The glad pair from battle to battle their flight;
Never breathed through the soul of the down-trodden peasant,
Their spirit so deeply its promptings of light! 
They sweep o’er the earth with a tempest-like token;
From strand unto strand words of thunder are spoken: 
Already the serf finds his manacles broken,
And those of the negro are falling from sight
Freedom and Right!