stablishment of the earliest theological seminaries
of the Episcopal Church in America, as well as of the first Unitarian
Divinity School at Harvard. William Cullen Bryant, barely come of age,
published his master work, "Thanatopsis," in the "North American Review."

[Sidenote: Stenography]

[Sidenote: German liberalism]

[Sidenote: The Wartburg festival]

[Sidenote: European courts alarmed]

[Sidenote: Advances in scholarship]

[Sidenote: African missionary work]

In other parts of the world, likewise, the return of peace was followed by
a general advance in culture and civilization. Shortly after the
re-establishment of the American National Bank, Canada followed suit with
government banks at Montreal and Quebec. Hanka, in Bohemia, claimed to have
discovered the famous medieval lyrics of Rukopis Kralodvorsky written at
the end of the thirteenth century. Across the border in Poland the new
University of Cracow began its career. In Munich, Franz Gabelsberger
invented the first working system of shorthand, which, in a perfected form,
is still in use in Germany. During this year common school education took
an immense stride in Germany, after the establishment in Prussia of a
distinct Ministry for Public Education. Unfortunately the government soon
came into conflict with the bolder spirits at the universities. By reason
of the more liberal privileges allowed to it by the Duke of Weimar, the
University of Jena took the lead in the national Teutonic agitation
inaugurated by Fichte. On October 18, the students of Jena, aided by
delegates from all the student fraternities of Protestant Germany, held a
festival at Eisenach to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the
Reformation. It was also the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Five
hundred ardent young men, among them scholars who had fought at Leipzig,
Ligny and Waterloo, assembled in the halls of Luther's Wartburg Castle.
They sang and drank, and fraternized with the members of the militia of
Eisenach. In the evening they had a torchlight procession and lighted a
huge bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. In imitation of Martin
Luther's burning of the Pope's Bull they consigned a number of their pet
aversions to the flames. Thus they burned a soldier's straight-jacket and
corporal's cane, as well as a recent pamphlet by one Schmalz written in
defense of the old Prussian bureaucracy. Rash words were uttered about the
broken faith of princes. They were