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family, whom that very Napoleon had been the means of getting slaughtered on the battle-field. What tears and what indignation have not been lavished on the 10,000 victims of the French Revolution! while the two millions of men in the prime of life who were butchered to make imperial holidays for a faithless and insatiable soldier, seem to be worthy of little more regard in the eyes of most people, and even of history, than if they had been so many sheep. Strange, too, is it here to notice that on the death of the Duc de Reichstadt no one seems at first to have had a thought of Louis Napoleon, the cousin of the deceased prince, as the next chief and sustainer of the Buonapartist faction.

In the letter written from Rouen are to be found some curious details about the intrigues of the Carlist party, still more implacable enemies than the Buonapartists of the new régime; but we refrain from adding to our pages by inserting more of this correspondence, pregnant as the whole of it is with historic interest.

These letters of a great poet, giving the reflections of his own and other judgments on the events and passions of an extraordinary time, cannot but be, as Heine himself would fain believe, of value to the historian. The fragments of those we have given prove sufficiently that even at this time, when he was in the prime of his intellectual faculties, he was open to the charge of political inconsistency. But since there is hardly a leading politician of our time who has not begun by adoring what he afterwards broke in pieces, and by endeavouring to break in pieces what he afterwards adored, a poet may claim something of the pardon accorded to hand-to-mouth politicians when he descends to treat of politics. Heine ends even in these letters by according much more benevolence to the government of Louis Philippe than he did at first, and in his subsequent correspondence we shall find still more progress in this direction; indeed, he shows himself capable of appreciating the leading principles

of every party with the exception of those of the Legitimists and the Ultramontanes, for whom he entertained the deepest aversion-an aversion which led him to under-estimate their strength and their worth: Catholicism especially he could never bring himself to regard with tolerance.

It was indeed a wondrous and a discordant epoch: the wild and burning hopes of the French Revolution still lived on in many hearts, and high enthusiasm both for the glories of the past and for noble dreams of the future were still capable of firing the hearts of men. The age of steam and iron had not yet commenced; the first railway was not yet laid down.

Heine at this time, both by race and education, was more prone to seek for inspiration in the hopes of the future than in the traditions of the past. We shall see, however, how gradually disease and disappointment chilled nearly to death the warm hopes of a generous heart, and how the darkness of a dissolving and faithless scepticism disfigured more and more the brightness of his intelligence.

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CHAPTER V.

BÖRNE AND SAINT SIMONIANISM.

HEINE's role of political correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung' was destined to come, for a time at least, to a speedy end, and it was not until eight years later that circumstances enabled him to resume his place in the columns of that journal.

His articles on French affairs' had not failed to attract the very general attention as well of the despotic governments of the continent and its officials as of the revolutionary party. Some of his essays had been published whole in the 'Tribune,' a French Republican newspaper; and the 'Temps,' a journal conducted in the interest of the French government, complained bitterly in the beginning of 1832, that the Allgemeine Zeitung' was publishing articles hostile to the government of Louis Philippe, and that while the German censorship allowed not an expression to appear reflecting on their own absolute monarchs, it showed not the slightest consideration for the citizen-king.

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The ministers, however, who then held the fate of Germany in their hands, did not need the warnings of a French journal to call their attention to the peculiar character of Heine's letters. The Allgemeine Zeitung' being the journal the most read in diplomatic and official circles in Germany, the wonder is that Heine's letters found admission into its columns at all. The affected moderation of Heine, and his repeated assertions that he was no republican, did not

blind the quicker-witted statesmen of the day to their real purport, differing in this from the duller wits in the ranks of the liberal party, who found occasion to treat Heine as an apostate from their ranks, in the very mask he had assumed in order to enable him to preach liberal doctrines. Metternich and his ally, the publicist Gentz, especially, both of whom were admirers of Heine's poetry, saw at once clearly into the character of the game the exiled poet was playing, and were perfectly aware of the tendency of his writings. The whole aim of these statesmen was to keep the minds of men in a state of tutelage throughout the limits of the Holy Roman Empire, and to prevent the destructive ideas of the French Revolution from gaining an entrance into it at all; and here was a writer endeavouring to seduce the German reader into taking a passionate interest in the struggles of political parties, in the licence of political debate, and judging all events and actions by the principles of the French Revolution-a writer whose chief imputation against the government of Louis Philippe was that it was not revolutionary, and was not prepared to carry on a war of revolutionary propaganda all over Europe. The cunning Metternich was, however, too wise by any open assault on the Allgemeine Zeitung,' to direct public attention to these productions of Heine more than it had been already directed; so he instructed his scribe, Gentz, to write a private friendly letter to Cotta, the proprietor of the paper, on the subject. The adroit Gentz, who always kept a well-pointed condottiere pen at the service of despotism, took his seat at his desk and wrote a letter to old Cotta, which was as good as a com-、 mand to keep the columns of the Allgemeine' closed to Heine for the future.

Gentz, then, in a cordial letter to his noble friend, mein edler Freund, the old Baron, called attention to the fact that the Allgemeine Zeiturg' had during the last six months done more than any other paper in Europe to make war

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inevitable by their continual depreciation of the ministry of Casimir Perier, and of the government of Louis Philippefrom whom alone peace was to be looked for-and yet one could not expect that the proprietor of the Allgemeine Zeitung' was one of those who looked to war either of a counter-revolutionary or of a revolutionary character, for the salvation of Europe.

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Heine's articles, entitled French Affairs,' had filled the measure up to overflowing. 'What,' says the adventurer Gentz, What an accursed adventurer, "ein verruchter Abenteurer," like Heine, whom I allow to have merit as a poet,-.yea, I even love him, and therefore no personal hatred stirs me against him-what he wants and aims at when he pushes into the mud the present French Government, I cannot here take the trouble to enquire, although it can easily be divined. It seems to me, however, that the unlimited contempt with which these fellows speak of the most estimable people of the middle class ought to turn this class against them. An article in the supplement of April 13 begins with the declaration "that never, not even in the times of a Pompadour and Dubarry, did France appear so ignominiously in the eyes of foreign nations as it did now, and that more honour was to be found in the boudoir of a femme galante than in the parlour of a banker." What must an intelligent merchant think of this? As for priesthood and nobility, that they have renounced; they are done for: requiescant in pace! When, however, men like Perier and their followers-that is, officials, bankers, landed proprietors, and merchants-are to be more held in horror than the old princes, counts, and barons, who is to govern the nations ?'

Baron Cotta, worthy, liberal-minded man as he was, on the receipt of such a persuasive epistle from the chief of the royal-imperial Chancery, and seeing the Liberal German newspapers falling about him thick as autumn leaves by

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