have the greatest expectations of a propaganda which aspires to restore the authority of the Church by educational establishments and by influencing the country populations. With the faith of the fathers the rights of the fathers shall also be established. Therefore ladies of the noblest birth are to be seen who, like lady patronesses, as it were, of religion, make a spectacle of their devout sentiments in order to win souls for heaven, and through their elegant example entice the whole of high society to the Church. The churches, therefore, were never so full as last Easter. Especially did devotion en grande toilette crowd to Saint Roch and Nôtre Dame de Lorette; here shone the most splendid ravishing toilettes, here the fine dandy handed the holy wafers to the ladies with spotless kid gloves, here the graces prayed. Will this last long? Will this religiosity, if it were the vogue of fashion, not also be subjected to the rapid vicissitudes of fashion? Is this bloom a sign of health? "God has a good many visits to-day," I said to a friend last Sunday as I witnessed the crowds pressing into the churches. "Visits P.P.C.," the unbeliever replied.' Yes, Heine was under the delusion that this renaissance of Catholicism was a fleeting whim of the time; but he was wrong-it has had immense influence on the destinies of France. In fact, if it be true, that the Empress was in the Imperial Council the most, as is believed, vehement advocate of a war with Prussia on Catholic grounds, and inspired by Catholic advisers, France may ascribe chiefly to this neo-Catholicism all the horrors and losses of the Franco-Prussian war.

Nevertheless, though Heine was mistaken in underrating the importance of the cause which Michelet and Quinet in those days pleaded with a vehemence and eloquence which impassioned the youths of the Sorbonne and filled their lecture-rooms to overflowing, his sympathies were with them, and we find sketches of these two great men in these letters which show that Heine was fully capable of appreciating the

special nature of the genius of these remarkable writers. Neither Michelet nor Quinet, however, have met with the recognition due to such very exceptional qualities as they have given proof of in their writings; and those who think the estimate Heine sets upon Michelet extravagant should read the essay on his 'History of France,' written by John Stuart Mill.

'The clergy,' writes Heine of this battle between the Ultramontanes and the University, desires, as it always did desire, to have the rule in France, and we are impartial enough not to ascribe its secret and public strivings to little motives of ambition, but to the most unselfish care for the salvation of the people. The education of youth is a means whereby the holy aim is forwarded the most advantageously, and already in this way has the most incredible progress been made, and the clergy was bound of necessity to fall into collision with the authority of the University. In order to get rid of the supervision of the liberal organised form of instruction established by the State, they sought to enlist in their service the revolutionary antipathies against privileges of every kind; and the men who, if they once obtained power, would not even allow liberty of thought, are most enthusiastic now in inspired phraseology about liberty of teaching, and complain about a spiritual monopoly.'

We shall treat in another chapter of the final evolutions of opinion which proceeded from Heine's sceptical spirit under the influence of contemporary events, and content ourselves here by finally noting how vastly different is their tone from that which animates his political correspondence of 1831-2. All trace of liberal enthusiasm has disappeared, and the poet has taken a large stride towards that sceptical political indifferentism in which he passed the latter part of life; he is so far now from being eager for France to enter upon a war of propaganda in favour of liberal ideas, that he trembles at the thought of peace being broken. He even speaks without smiling of 'Louis Philippe' as the 'Napoleon

of Peace,' and declares that peace is dependent on his preservation. The bourgeoisie domination, which he formerly thought more ignoble than that of the mistresses of Louis XIV., he now accepts, if not with satisfaction, at least as something inevitable, and he trusts to that alone to delay the arrival of that communistic rule which is to give the future law to the world. He even beheld with aversion the cabals and combinations of the so-called conservative deputies which have for aim the imposition on the bourgeoisie of ministers of their own choice; being, however, quite contradictory to himself in this view, for he regards the stability of the ministry of M. Guizot, which was sustained alone by the corrupt collusion of these conservative deputies, as a present means of salvation for France. Singular, too, is the fashion in which he terminates his last political letter-the relation of the anecdote about Lafayette, and his evident scepticism as to the value to be placed on declarations of the rights of man. Although there is manifest contradiction to be observed in all this political disbelief, in all these gloomy views of the future of humanity on the one side, and in his vague continuing faith in progress and in the 'democratisation of freedom,' when the spirit of liberty shall pass into the masses themselves, into the lowest classes of society, and become people on the other, few politicians, even by profession, can triumph over Heine on account of such contradictions, for indeed contradiction among the articles of faith of the professors of political opinions is rather the rule than the exception, and Heine was strangely right in some of his forecasts, if wrong-headed in others.

CHAPTER XI.

ATTA TROLL AND THE TENDENCY POETS.

OUT of the poetical inactivity of the last sad years, Heine aroused himself to write the first of the two longest of connected compositions which he ever undertook-the satirical poem Atta Troll,' in twenty seven chapters, and filling one hundred and twelve pages of his works.

It would, we fear, be taxing too much the patience of an English reader to explain minutely the political and literary condition of Germany which gave rise to the production of this singular satire, and assuredly it will be necessary even for the Germans themselves of future ages to have as many scholia attached to it as there are to the Satires of Juvenal and Perseus to make it wholly intelligible.

Let us first take Heine's own account of the origin of the poem published in 1846, premising that the poem first appeared before the world in fragmentary fashion in the pages of the Elegante Welt' in 1842, the journal then conducted by his friend Laube.

""Atta Troll," says Heine, was born in the autumn of 1841, at a time when the great émeute, which foes of the most different colours had got up against me, had not yet stormed itself out. It was a very great émeute, and I never imagined that Germany could produce so many rotten apples as were pitched at my head. Our Vaterland is a blessed country; no citrons and no golden oranges grow there, and the laurel itself only thrives painfully in our soil in a creeping way; but rotten apples thrive in the most delightful

abundance, and all our great poets have had a song to sing of them. In this émeute, which aimed at depriving me of my crown and my head, I lost neither, and the absurd charges wherewith the mob were excited against me have since that time come to a pitiful end, without any need of my having to refute them. I once undertook my justification, and even the various German governments, whose attentions I must carefully acknowledge, have in this respect deserved my thanks. The warrants of arrest which waited longingly for the return home of the poet at every frontier post, were always carefully renewed every year about the holy season of Christmas, when the cheerful lamps are sparkling on the Christmas trees. On account of such insecurity attending my passage, it has been made very difficult for me to travel into German districts, and on this account I pass my Christmases in a foreign land, and shall probably also finish my days in a foreign land, in exile. The valiant champions for light and truth who accused me of inconstancy and of servility, are meanwhile walking securely about in the Vaterland, either as well-stalled state servants, or as office-holders in some corporation or other, or as habitués of a club where of an evening they pathetically refresh themselves with the grapejuice of Vater Rhine, and with the oysters of SchleswigHolstein meerumschlungen.

'I have stated the period at which "Atta Troll" was composed for special reasons, for at that time the so-styled political poetry was in full bloom. The Opposition, as Ruge says, sold off its leather and took to poetry. The Muses received the strongest warning thenceforward not to conduct themselves with such insolence and with such levity, but to enter into Vaterland-ish service-to become something in the way of sutler-wenches to Liberty or washerwomen to Christiano-German nationality. Then arose among the. German bards that vague barren pathos, that useless vapour of enthusiasm, which set death at defiance and plunged into