The news of the Paris revolution, whose confirmation had reached Berlin
in the last few days of February, had caused all this growth and
blossoming like sunshine and warm rain. There was no repressing it, and
the authorities felt daily more and more that their old measures of
restraint were failing.

The accounts from Paris were accompanied by report after report from the
rest of Germany, shaking the old structure of absolutism like the
repeated shocks of a battering-ram.

Freedom of the press was not yet granted, but tongues had begun to move
freely-indeed, often without any restraint. As early as the 7th of
March, and in bad weather, too, meetings began to be held in tents. As
soon as the fine spring days came we found great crowds listening to
bearded orators, who told them of the revolution in Paris and of the
addresses to the king--how they had passed hither and thither, and how
they had been received. They had all contained very much the same
demands--freedom of the press, representatives of the people to be chosen
by free election, all religious confessions to be placed on an equal
footing in the exercise of political rights, and representation of the
people in the German Confederacy.

These demands were discussed with fiery zeal, and the royal promise, just
given, of calling together the Assembly again and issuing a law on the
press, after the Confederate Diet should have been moved to a similar
measure, was condemned in strong terms as an insufficient and half-way
procedure--a payment on account, in order to gain time.

On the 15th the particulars of the Vienna revolution and Metternich's
flight reached Berlin; and we, too, learned the news, and heard our