and had
endured the first ordeal of lovers and poets--a refusal. It was not
until a year after that he found a Berlin publisher for his first volume
of poems, subsequently transformed, with additions, into the "Buch der
Lieder." He remained between two and three years at Berlin, and the
society he found there seems to have made these years an important epoch
in his culture. He was one of the youngest members of a circle which
assembled at the house of the poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the
translator of Byron--a circle which included Chamisso, Varnhagen, and
Rahel (Varnhagen's wife). For Rahel, Heine had a profound admiration and
regard; he afterward dedicated to her the poems included under the tide
"Heimkehr;" and he frequently refers to her or quotes her in a way that
indicates how he valued her influence. According to his friend F. von
Hohenhausen, the opinions concerning Heine's talent were very various
among his Berlin friends, and it was only a small minority that had any
presentiment of his future fame. In this minority was Elise von
Hohenhausen, who proclaimed Heine as the Byron of Germany; but her
opinion was met with much head-shaking and opposition. We can imagine
how precious was such a recognition as hers to the young poet, then only
two or three and twenty, and with by no means an impressive personality
for superficial eyes. Perhaps even the deep-sighted were far from
detecting in that small, blonde, pale young man, with quiet, gentle
manners, the latent powers of ridicule and sarcasm--the terrible talons
that were one day to be thrust out from the velvet paw of the young
leopard.

It was apparently during this residence in Berlin that Heine united
himself with the Lutheran Church. He would willingly, like many of his
friends, he tells us, have remained free from all ecclesiastical ties if
the authorities there had not forbidden residence in Prussia, and
especially in Berlin, to every one who did not belong to one of the
positive religions recognized by the State.

"As Henry IV. once laughingly said, '_Paris vaut bien une messe_,' so
I might with reason say, '_Berlin vaut bien une preche_;' and I could
afterward, as before, accommodate myself to the very enlightened
Christianity, filtrated from all superstition, which could then be
had in the churches of Berlin, and which was even free from the
divinity of Christ, like turtle-soup without turtle."

At the same period,