THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
doubts came back. I went to my teacher of religion and confided to him the condition of my mind with perfect frankness. We had a series of conversations, in which, however, he had little to say to me that I had not heard before. I confessed to him with the utmost candor, that while I should be glad to be convinced by what he said, he had not so convinced me; whereupon I also was relieved of the obligation of attending religious observances until I myself felt an urgent desire to resume them. I zealously studied ecclesiastical history and dogmatic writings, and availed myself of every opportunity to listen to preachers of renown; but the longer and more earnestly I continued those studies the less could I find my way back to the articles of faith which were so repugnant to my sense of justice. There remained, however, within me a strong religious want, a profound respect for religious thought. I have never been able to listen to a light-minded scoffer about religious subjects without great repugnance.
While my friends could not tell me much that was soothing on religious topics, they opened to me vistas in German literature—especially the political part of it—which were new and fascinating. Of Heine, my teacher, Professor Pütz, had told me, but I knew of him little more than his name; of Freiligrath, only a few of his pictures of the tropics; of Gutzkow, Laube, Herwegh, and so on, nothing at all.
Petrasch lent me Heine's “Book of Songs.” This was to me like a revelation. I felt almost as if I had never before read a lyric poem; and yet many of Heine's songs sounded to me as if I had always known them, as if the fairies had sung them to me at my cradle. All the verses that I myself had written until then, and which were mostly of the declamatory kind, went at once into the fire, and I saw them burn with genuine relief. The reading and the rereading of the “Book
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