Professors and
students disliked to be taken so far from their lodgings and their
beerhouses, and the old university had been quite within the city. When
the removal took place, Dr. Neumann sketched the history of the
institution in a lecture, referring to its original establishment at
Ingolstadt, its removal thence to Landschut, and thence to Munich, and
then added, that _'his Majesty King Louis II had now been pleased to
remove it to Schwabing_.' We can imagine the sensation which such a
sally would produce among students already stirred up for its
appreciation, by having to walk from a half mile to a mile from those
depots of beer barrels from which so many of them sucked their sluggish
life and inspiration. But such jokes were not treason, or contempt of
majesty, or anything else against law.
It should be added in this connection, for Dr. Neumann's benefit, that
these stories, and many of the kind, are floating around, and are just
like him, but I have never had any confirmation of them from him, and in
all our intercourse, which was frequent and intimate for six years,
while he spoke much and freely in favor of democratical and against
monarchical institutions, I never found him indulging in coarse and
clamorous denunciations of his king or Government.
When the great revolutionary movement of 1848 broke upon the land, the
sovereigns of Germany saw and accepted their condition.
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