give it. But even the contents of many of most varied figures succeed one another, his poems are capable of giving a certain sense Rhampsinitus, Edith with the swan neck, of it. Here, for instance, is a poem in which he makes his profession of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, the child of some simple mining people having their hut among the pines at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the Christian creed : Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while I yet sate upon my mother's knee, I believed in God the Father, who rules up there in Heaven, good and great; "Who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful men and women thereon; who ordained for sun, moon, and stars their courses. compre "When I got bigger, my child, I hended yet a great deal more than this, and comprehended, and grew intelligent; and I believe on the Son also; "On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revcaled love to us; and for his reward, as always happens, was crucified by the ple. peo "Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have travelled much, my heart swells within me, and with my whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost." "The greatest miracles were of his working, and still greater miracles doth he even now work; he burst in sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he burst in sunder the bondsmen's yoke. "He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old right; all mankind are one race of noble equals before him. "He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cobwebs of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for us, which day and night have lowered on us. "A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he has put courage into their souls. "Their good swords flash, their bright banners wave; what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to look upon such gallant knights? "Well, on me, my child, look! kiss me, and look boldly upon me! one of those knights of the Holy Ghost am I." One has only to turn over the pages of his Romancero-a collection of poems written in the first years of his illness, with his whole power and charm still in them, and not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched by the air of his Matrazzen-gruft, his mattressgrave to see Heine's width of range; the Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, a heroine of Mabille, Melisanda of Tripoli, Richard Coeur de Lion, Pedro the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr. Döllinger; but never does Heine attempt to be hübsch objectiv, “ beautifully objective," to become in spirit an old Egyptian, or an old Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or a Spanish adventurer, or rich Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. an English royalist; he always remains HeinTo give you a notion of his tone I will quote a few stanzas at the end of the Spanish Atridæ, in which he describes, in the character of a visitor at the court of Henry of Transtamare at Segovia, Henry's treatment of the children of his brother, Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego Albuquerque, his neighbor, strolls after dinner through the castle with him :— "In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels where are kept the king's hounds, that with their growling and yelping let you know a long way off where they are, "There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage. "Two human figures sate therein, two young boys; chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw. 66 Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other not much older; their faces fair and noble, but pale and wan with sickness. "They were all in rags, almost naked; and their lean bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage; both of them shivered with fever. 66 6 They looked up at me out of the depth of their misery: Who,' I cried in horror to Don Diego, are these pictures of wretchedness?' 6 "Don Diego seemed embarrassed; họ looked round to see that no one was listening; then he gave a deep sigh, and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man of the world, he said :— 666 These are a pair of king's sons, who were early left orphans; the name of thelr father was King Pedro, the name of their mother Maria de Padilla. "After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of the troublesome burden of the crown, "And likewise of that still more troubleHenry's victorious magnanimity had to deal some burden, which is called life, then Don with his brother's children. "He has adopted them, as an uncle should; and he has given them free quarters | form, by his love of clearness, by his love of in his own castle. 666 The room which he has assigned to them is certainly rather small, but then it is cool in summer, and not intolerably cold in But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do not come every day; and the master of the hounds gives them the treat of his whip. 666 ruff, For the master of the hounds, who has under his superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the nephews' cage also, Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced woman with the white whom we remarked to-day at dinner. "And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives it to the dogs and to the poor little boys. But his majesty has expressed his disapproval of such proceedings, and has given orders that for the future his nephews are to be treated differently from the dogs. "He has determined no longer to entrust the disciplining of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, but to carry it out with his own hands.' "Don Diego stopped abruptly; for the seneschal of the castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope that we had dined to our satisfaction" Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finishing with the grim inuendo of the last stanza but one, is at once truly masterly and truly modern. No account of Heine is complete which does not notice the Jewish element in him. His race he treated with the same freedom with which he treated everything else, but he derived a great force from it, and no one knew this better than he himself. He has excellently pointed out how in the sixteenth century there was a double renaissance-a Hellenic renaissance and a Hebrew renaissance--and how both have been great powers ever since. He himself had in him both the spirit of Greece and the spirit of Judea; both these spirits reach the infinite, which is the true goal of all poetry and all art-the Greck spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sublimity. By his perfection of literary beauty, Heine is Greek; by his intensity, by his untamableness, by his "longing which cannot be uttered," he is Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew ever treated the things of the He brews like this? "There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging in the Baker's Broad Walk, a man whose name is Moses Lump; all the week he goes about in wind and rain, with his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings; but when on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the candlestick with seven candles lighted, and the table covered with a fair white cloth, and he puts away from him his pack and his cares, and he sits down to table with his squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, and eats fish with them, fish which has been dressed in beautiful white garlic-sauce, sings therewith the grandest psalms of King David, rejoices with his whole heart over the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, rejoices, too, that all the wicked ones who have done the children of Israel harm, have ended by taking themselves off; that King Pharoah, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, Antiochus, Titus, and all such people are well dead, while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and eating fish with wife and daughter; and I can tell you, Doctor, the fish is delicate and the man is happy, he has no call to torment himself about culture, he sits contented in his religion and in his green bed-gown, like Diogenes in his tub, he contemplates with satisfaction his candles, which he on no account will snuff for himself; and I can tell you, if the candles burn a little dim, and the snuffers-woman, whose business it is to snuff them, is not at hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that moment to come in, with all his brokers, bill-discounters, agents, and chief clerks, with whom he conquers the world, and Rothschild were to say, Moses Lump, ask of me what favor you will, and it shall be granted you; -Doctor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly answer, Snuff me those candles!' and Rothschild the Great would exclaim with admiration, If I were not Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump."" There Heine shows us his own people by its comic side; in the poem of the Princess Sabbath he shows it to us by a more serious side. The Princess Sabbath," the tranquil Princess, pearl and flower of all beauty, fair as the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's bosom friend, that blue-stocking from Ethiopa who wanted to shine by her esprit, and with her wise riddles made herself in the long run a But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, suddenly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes once more a human being. "A man with the feelings of a man, with head and heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb, he enters the halls of his Father. "Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father! Ye tents of Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts!"'" Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belonging to "the great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish school of poets," a contemporary of the troubadors :"Ie, too, the hero whom we sing, Jehuda ben Halevy, too, had his lady-love; but she was of a special sort. "She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in the cathedral on Good Friday kin dled that world-renowned flame. "So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the fore-time to look upon Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have risen out of his grave. “But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on his barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a naked javelin ; "Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow." "Quietly flowed the Rabbi's life-blood, quietly he sang his song to an end; and his last dying sigh was Jerusalem!" Nor must Heine's sweetest note be unheard -his plaintive note, his note of melancholy. Here is a strain which came from him as he lay, in the winter night, on his "mattressgrave at Paris, and let his thoughts wander to Germany, "the great child, entertaining herself with her Christmas-tree.” * tookest," he cries to the German exile— Thou "She was no châtelaine, who in the bloom-fireside. ing glory of her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the victor's crown. "No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady doctrinaire, who delivered her oracles in the judgment-chamber of a Court of Love. She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a wobegone poor darling, a mourning picture of desolation; and her name was Jerusalem." 66 Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and there, amid the ruins, sings a song of Zion which has become famous among his people: That lay of pearled tears is the widefamed Lament, which is sung in all the scattered tents of Jacob throughout the world. "On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, on the anniversary of Jerusalem's destruction by Titus Vespasianus. "Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben Halevy sang with his dying breath amid the holy ruins of Jerusalem. "Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there upon the fragment of a fallen column; down to his breast fell, "Like a gray forest, his hair; and cast a weird shadow on the face which looked out through it, his troubled pale face, with the spiritual eyes. could get home no Many a one, alas! became crippled, and more longingly he stretches out his arms; God have mercy upon him!" God have mercy upon him! for what remain of the days of the years of his life are few and evil. "Can it be that I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodious the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in high oaks whose tops shine like green flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving; for over my mattress-grave here in Paris no green leaves rustle; and early and late I hear nothing but the rattle of carriages, hammering, scolding, and the jingle of the piano. A grave without rest, death without the privileges of the departed, who have no longer any need to spend money, or to write letters, or to compose books. What a melancholy situation!" He died, and has left a blemished name; with his crying faults, his intemperate susceptibility, his unscrupulousness in passion, his inconceivable attacks on his enemies, his is Nature ! With what prodigality, in the still more inconceivable attacks on his friends, march of generations, she employs human his want of generosity, his sensuality, his in- power, content to gather almost always little cessant mocking, how could it be otherwise? result from it, sometimes none! Look at Not only was he not one of Mr. Carlyle's "re- Byron, that Byron whom the present generaspectable" people, he was profoundly dis- tion of Englishmen are forgetting; Byron, respectable; and not even the merit of not the greatest natural force, the greatest elebeing a Philistine can make up for a man's mentary power, I cannot but think, which being that. To his intellectual deliverance has appeared in our literature since Shakthere was an edition of something else want- speare. And what became of this wonderful ing, and that something else was something production of nature? He shattered himself, immense; the old-fashioned, laborious, eter- he inevitably shattered himself to pieces, nally needful moral deliverance. Goethe says against the huge black, cloud-topped, interthat he was deficient in love; to me his weak-minable precipice of British Philistinism. ness seems to be not so much a deficiency in But Byron, it may be said, was eminent only love as a deficiency in self-respect, in true dignity of character. But on this negative side of one's criticism of a man of great genius, I for my part, when I have once clearly marked that this negative side is and must be there, have no pleasure in dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something positive. He is not an adequate interpreter of the modern world. He is only a brilliant soldier in the war of liberation of humanity. But, such as he is, he is (and posterity too, I am quite sure, will say this), in the European literature of that quarter of a century which follows the death of Goethe, incomparably the most important figure. What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, by his genius, only by his inborn force and fire; he had not the intellectual equipment of a supreme modern poet; except for his genius he was an ordinary nineteenth-century English nobleman, with little culture and with no ideas. Well, then, look at Heine. Heine had all the culture of Germany; in his head fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. And what have we got from Heine? A half-result, for want of moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and character. That is what I say; there is so much power, so many seem able to run well, so many give promise of running well; so few reach the goal, s0 few are chosen. Many are called, few chosen. MATTHEW ARNOLD. From The Saturday Review. ingly, he consulted the Yavogah, or Governer THE KING OF DAHOMEY AT HOME. of Whydah, who told him to return in seven THE prominence just given to the King of days, when he would "let him know whether Dahomey and his Court by the discussion the king would see him." He returned at which has taken place in one of the dignified the appointed time, and, having been meanséances of the British Association, and the while represented to his majesty as a "good controversy which is going on as to his men- and proper person," with a sort of intimation tal and moral idiosyncrasies, bid fair to make (which seems, by the way, to have been an the name of that potentate a household word. extemporized addition on the part of the He has the reputation of being the chief sup-yavogah) that he came out as a messenger porter of the slave trade in the interior of of the queen, he received the king's invitaAfrica; he is the béte noire of missionaries; tion to his capital in due form. There were and we heard a year or two ago such an ac- two or three things, however, to be seriously count of his customs," and of the hecatombs considered. Our late attack on Porto Novo, of human victims that are consumed in the which belongs to the king's brother, was said celebration of them, that Lord Russell was to have enraged his majesty so much that he recommended to put him down at once as a had expressed a strong desire to lay hands public nuisance. On such occasions it is al- upon an English officer, for certain personal ways advisable to wait a little. Sad as it is and unpleasant purposes. Also, the Euroto be obliged to make the confession, philan- peans at Whydah had spread the most alarmthrophy, when its blood is up, is apt to be as ing reports of the king's hatred of the Engindescriminate in its vengeance as a King of lish, apparently in order to keep the English Dahomey himself; and missionaries are occa- and the king as far apart as possible, and sionally given to premature alarms, wild ex- thereby to hide their own misdeeds from inaggerations, and the vagaries of old-woman- convenient publicity. But the commodore, hood in general. We have lately had a besides his unquestionable pluck and love of picture of the terrible potentate, drawn from adventure, possessed certain special aptitudes the life by one who has had every opportunity for the mission. Among others, he had been of seeing him as he is, who writes with a personally acquainted with the king's father; sailor's brevity and exactness, and who has and he carried about him, if we are rightly presented Parliament with one of the most informed, a substantial and very useful mark readable papers that have adorned that species of his regard. So, with perhaps a few qualms, of literature for years. If it is considerably he sent his ships on a fourteen days' cruise, more favorable than the sketch which has and, accompanied by Captain Luce and Dr. been subsequently given to the world by M. Haran. and joined on his way by the WesJules Gérard, it is more detailed and circum- leyan missionary, he landed at Whydah on stantial, it appears to be founded on fuller the 22d of December, 1862. He was reopportunities of observation than those en-ceived most cordially by the yavogah and joyed by the celebrated ion-hunter, and it chiefs, with drums beating, colors flying, has just been confirmed by the independent muskets firing, dancing, and war-songs, and personal testimony of Mr. Craft at New- and was also treated to a sight of the castle. The narrative of our gallant country-manoeuvers of a slave hunt. All along the man may perhaps assist us in correcting to road the party was treated with great resome extent the very exaggerated and un- spect. Presents of water, fowls, and goats, pleasant impression of the royal character met them everywhere, accompanied with the which M. Gérard's account of his Dahomey usual amount of firing, drumming, dancing, experiences is calculated to produce. singing, etc., and a series of ominous speeches, In November, 1862, Commodore Wilmot signifying the general desire of the speakers was cruising on the West African station in H. to "go to war and cut off heads for their M.S. Rattlesnake, and learned from the Wes-master." A prince was ordered to attend leyan missionary at Whydah that the King them on their journey, and the king sent of Dahomey was most anxious to see "some- three of his "sticks," by special messengers, body of consideration from England-a real to meet them on their way-gold stick, silver Englishman,' with whom he might converse stick, and all the rest of it, of course, just on the affairs of his country." Accord-like St. James's or the Tuileries-possibly a |