ere was at least nothing petty or rancorous in a nature
which showed so rare an appreciation of genius, and an equal capacity
for warm and disinterested friendship.

In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is
full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and
reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection
with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their
names.

But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A
letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her
childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself,
wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that
covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we
have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle
comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from
his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps
as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of
thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for
example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and
its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his
works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the
malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been
exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among
these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial
origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of
society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and
after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient
element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a
philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had
still to be fought out.'"

Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and
Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the
biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world;
while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt
whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information
he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege
of Lyons occurred under the _Directory_--which it preceded by a year
or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered
the navy, was pr