He

best but a ghastly mockery of life, or aimed merely at producing some such impression as a fairy tale leaves upon the mind. With few exceptions, as soon as they indulged in fiction they lost their hold not only on the spirit of the age, but on actual life altogether. It was in these that Heine sought his inspiration. What artists call his motives are constantly real and modern. It is always some personal experience, impression, or observation, or some phase of passing events, that sets his imagination in motion; but as soon as this impulse has been given, he removes the poetical suggestion from the midst of its prosaic surroundings, and places it in a fairy-land where it assumes some grotesque or eerie form. translates the gossip of Paris into Egyptian or Oriental history, and finds his own biography written in medieval chronicles. And as his wildest and most romantic poems are constantly suggested by our real modern life, so in turn they constantly re-suggest it. We can hardly say of any single verse that it is either ancient or modern, fanciful or real; it is all these at one and the same moment, and in such a way that while we feel the contrast it does not pain us. The consciousness of the actual world, which we are never permitted long to lose, lends the dream-picture a vividness and pungency which is quite wanting in the works of the Romantic poets, while the truth itself gains from the imaginative setting a deeper, a manifold significance.

It

But in order fully to enjoy "Atta Troll" and "Romancero," the reader must approach them with a perfectly free and open mind. He must give himself up to the impression of the moment, and allow his imagination passively to respond to the rapid changes of the poet's verse. Above all, he must not seek in these poems a purpose which they do not possess. That they, like Heine's earlier works, have acted as a powerful solvent on many an old conviction and many a new ideal, is doubtless true; but this is owing to the nature of the writer's mind, not to his intention, which is here purely æsthetical, even when he treats religious or poetical themes. Indeed, he constantly appeals to the influence still possessed by the creeds and sentiments he had done so much to overthrow. is because these ghosts still retain their terrors that we tremble when he derides them; because we half believe in these gods that we shudder at his mockery. And this shock and shudder lie quite as much within. his purpose as the laugh or sigh that follows. There may be something morbid in this phase of his taste, but it is certain that in this last period simple emotions no longer interest him. While his laugh is loudest, the tears are gathering in his eyes, and before they have finished flowing, the smile again brightens on his lip. He mixes his purest joy with some strange sense of sin and horror-there is the thrill of a forbidden pleasure in his verse-the sweetness of stolen waters. On those who have never held the faiths he ridicules, this, his strangest and most peculiar charm, must be entirely lost. In a word, Heine was the poet of an age of doubt, of intellectual ferment, of rapid spiritual transitions, which at one moment clung lovingly and timorously to the breast of

the past, and at the next cried passionately with outstretched hands for the baubles that gleamed through the half-closed fingers of the futurean age of infinite hope and infinite despair, when Germany, sated with her intellectual triumphs, yearned blindly, and as yet vainly, for the life of action which had hitherto been denied her. We all know the story of Tannhäuser; it might have become the epic of that generation. They too had begun by fighting bravely in a sacred cause; then they had cast off the old spiritual yoke, had broken, at least intellectually, through every conventional restraint, had hastened with eager hearts and flushing checks to the witching cavern where the Queen of Joy and Love had so long held her secret court. But there, in the midst of the softest dalliance, some distant tone as of a church bell suddenly fell; old memories awakened, and pleaded with a pathetic irresistible power. The loudest music could not drown, the sweetest kisses of the heathen goddess could not silence them. Had not these men been baptized? Were they not the heirs of an infinite longing? So they rushed wildly forth, and fell heartbroken before the old shrines, only to find that no word but one of mockery would rise to their lips. Then they rose and returned, sadly and silently, to the House of Venus, whose realm they accepted, not now as very heaven indeed, but as the only poor substitute earth supplied for what had been eternally lost.

We Englishmen belong to a sober race. Since the times of the Puritans we have never dreamed of realizing a heaven upon earth. As Mr. Ruskin says, the best of us would probably be surprised if he were to see a group of angels singing in the fog that too often overhangs Holborn Viaduct. Indeed, our last great effort in a celestial direction was so painful a failure, that we were heartily glad to return to the earthly roast beef and plum-pudding of the Restoration, and have ever since felt a wholesome dread of those who would induce us to repeat the sublime but somewhat hazardous and uncomfortable experiment. Well, if we have not turned our Parliament into a conventicle, or our studies into oratories, we have certainly never joined in the unholy festivities of the Venusberg. We are, as I have said, a sober people. And the Germans of the day?-Well, they have done great things, and a noble future lies open before them. But one thing they have not done -they will not do. They have not found the blue flower, the woodland

chapel still is hid.

"Ach warum steht der Tempel nicht am Flusse,
Ach warum ist die Brücke nicht gebaut ?''

For them, as for us, the day of intense belief in an ideal, of passionate effort to realize it, is past. That period of their national life which was so noble in its aspiration, so wide and fervent in its sympathies, so poor in its achievement, so wild in its despair-the period of illusion and of disillusion, has fallen quite dead and silent; all that remains of it is the echo that rings through a poet's verse.

This is Heine's claim to immortality-that in his work the whole spiritual life of his age is reflected and expressed. It was not a great age, it may be; at any rate, it was not a calm and objective one, but it was an age of great problems, and an intensely ardent and strangely varied life. And all its highest intellectual endeavour, its wildest passion, its tenderest emotion, its hope and its heartbreak, find a voice in his verse. A high theme, but one, let me repeat, which he treated in no abstract manner, in no carefully exalted style. His deepest thoughts, his saddest memories and forebodings, he clothed in tales which, as mere stories, delight the schoolboy; in language whose superficial meaning the labourer can understand and enjoy, in measures that the peasant girl can sing to her old ballad tunes. Had he, like Goethe, retired into a world of artistic ideals, he could not thus have expressed the stormy political passion of his age; had he been a political enthusiast like Bōrne, he could not thus have reproduced in a purely poetical form, not only its strength, but its weakness, its failure as well as its success. The best, the conclusive defence of his life and character, is to be found in his works, which, had he been a wiser, a happier, and a better man, he might not perhaps have written, but which it is now very certain the world will not be persuaded to forget.

CHARLES GRANT.

THE FUTURE OF THE CANADIAN

DOMINION.

W

HAT is to be the future of Canada?

To those who do not care to look below the surface of things, or to consider contingencies in advance of the present time, the question may appear an easy and perhaps an unnecessary one.

Have we not promoted and carried out the confederation of our North American colonies into one great Dominion, which stretches across the vast continent at its widest part, and contains within itself such bound less territories, such varieties of soil and climate, such magnificent expanses of river, lake, and forest, and of prairie for cornland and pasture, as seem to constitute it the very paradise for settlers, and to give promise at no distant day of a nation as great, and a national life as progressive, as that of the great Republic which bounds its southern frontier? Have we not laid the foundations of future greatness, and have we anything more to do than wait for the certain results to develop themselves in the years to come?

To those who not only watch the course of events, but study their bearing on the future, the question does not meet with so easy or so satisfactory a solution. To them the present seems full of warning and the future full of peril, if the warning be neglected.

They cannot but see, as every one does see who crosses the Niagara river, that, in spite of all we have done for Canada,—perhaps even just because of a great deal of what we have done for her, though not in the best way, she has hitherto failed to do as much as she might for herself. The settlers on both sides of the river are largely Anglo-Saxon in race, and the conditions of soil and climate are not greatly different; yet evidently the social forces at work must have diverged materially, to judge by the results produced. On the American side all the activities of life scem in fuller tide, and there is a manifest movement and progress for which we look in vain on the Canadian side.

But even if the traveller comes to the conclusion, as he probably would, that the difference of political system is sufficient to account for the difference of development of national life in the two countries, at least up to the period of the confederation, it remains to be considered how far that change may affect the question, and whether it will be sufficient, within any reasonable time, of itself to bring about the needful remedy.

Up to the present time it must be admitted that the signs of improvement are rather meagre. The confederation was brought about with some difficulty. It was cynically said at the time, that with Ontario and Quebec it was rather a divorce than a union; that Nova Scotia was coerced and compensated by damages for the loss of her honour; that New Brunswick was frightened into it, and then compensated; that Manitoba was procured, partly by force, partly by purchase; and Prince Edward Island and British Columbia were seduced by pledges and promises very inconvenient afterwards to fulfil. The confederation has thus hardly reached real union. Representatives of the various provinces can taunt each other that Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and British Columbia are losing concerns, and all show deficits; while Ontario, New Brunswick, and Quebec, with handsome surplus incomes, pay for the whole thing. It is pointed out that confederation has not reduced, but has greatly increased the administrative expenditure, and has already doubled the debt. It may, however, be not unfairly alleged that the period of probation is too brief, and that, however good the policy of confederation may be, it could hardly develop great results in so short a time; but making every reasonable allowance for that, there is abundant room for doubt, if that policy is by itself sufficient to bring about the results aimed at, within any such time as may avert the dangers that loom in the not distant future. One of the difficulties of the situation is, that those who doubt the policy, alike with those who dread it, though for different reasons, are unwilling to wait on a development that seems to move so slowly.

They say that Canada is in the slack water between two great tides of life, and having little part in either.

The national life of America-youthful, tumultuous, and energetic; brimming with hope and purpose-sweeps surgingly past her. The national life of England, mighty in heroic tradition and strengthened by the wisdom of ages, flows on its stately course, little heeding the smaller eddies that circle by its side. England, indeed, is ready to guide and to protect, but she allows her colonies little share in the creation of her history, and none in the higher policy of her Empire.

It is urged that, so long as this system continues, confederation only enlarges the scale of what was, and what continues to be, local and parochial; and that, apart from absolute independence, the only way in which a healthy and vigorous national life can be created in a young country is by allowing it to share in the supreme government of whatever greater nation it may form an integral part.