Reviews.

and fanaticism have condemned not a few of the writings of older and later specialists ! But , as a fact , this theory in respect of Heinrich Heine is utterly incorrect " per se . " We say nothing of his political professions , ( for they would not suit our pages , ) and it is probable that as they were Heine ' s own , few in England would care to know much

about them , or would be likely to agree with them . But this we may remark , that over Heine , or over most people , there seems to have come a softening influence of life aud experience , and as he incurred the wrath of his early political friends , for what they termed his recreancy and apostacy , he had probably discarded the more violent opinions of his youth . We , in England , hardly make sufficient allowance , perhaps , for what is the license

of subjective opinion on the Continent with respect to such questions , often so difficult , moreover , he it remembered , from the very nature of the case . In England we are accustomed lo dub with the name of " revolutionary" what is , in truth , a seeking after Constitutionalism , which is so familiar to us from long possession , that we hardly sufficiently realize its value to others , or its difficulty of attainment . Of course there are those who imbibe views destructive of all civil order and all social policy , hut such dreamers we do not take into account , and Heine had long parted with such extreme notions , ( if he ever truly held them , ) as it seems hy a verse quoted , aud probably translated , hy Lord Houghton : —

" I would to God I had never met That butterfly ! that false coquette ! With her winning ways , and wanton "faille , " The fair , the fair , the false " canaille ! ' " Heine ' s , too , was an exceptional ease . He lived at a time when the seething turmoil of opinion seemed to boil up like a Geyser spring , around the minds of the thoughtful

and serious . The old-world views and dicta had received a great shock , and tho disciples of free thought had gained an hearing . Hence Heine was precip itated easily into that conflict , which would necessarily arise in Germany as between the ideas and views of great change , and the actual facts of the case—things as they really were . Had Heine lived iu our days , it is certain that his would have been a very philosophical and conservative , ( in no party sense , ) view of affairs !

And while , then , we do not profess to share in , or even [ explain , his political views , or to go any way with the license of his language , we need not , we think , consider such words a bar to our enjoyment of the works of a great thinker , the " outcome " of a vast and remarkable mind . As regards his religion , Heine has been equally misunderstood . He is often said to be an unbeliever—he was always , we fancy , nay we feel sure , a pure Hebraic Theist .

A Jew by family and birth and tradition , he was brought up in Roman Catholic schools , and professed Lntherianism ! A . good example , perhaps , of the then German Indifferentism ! All through his life he had a grave mental struggle between his acquired and professed faiths and his mother creed , tinctured as his abstract and concrete theories ever were , by an intense '' cultus " of Heathendom , Greece especially . But he held certain great truths , lovingly all through , and clung to them firmly to the last .

Talking of the Bible , for instance , he says : " It is God's work . . . . it is the word of God , that , and no more . " This is one of the landmarks of Heine's faith which constitute an impassable gulph as between himself and German Rationalism and Gallic Infidelity . We find in all his poems a belief in God , and we observe a trust in immortality . That he was what we should call " orthodox " we are not contending , but only that the popular view of Heine is absolutely erroneous . Lord Houghton in ' touching monograph gives us a wondrous description of his later hours , his endurance of pain and the ravages of decay ; and we have the highest and most affecting