in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she teems with them
and loves them, but, as I have said, in her feeble and hesitating
application of modern ideas to life. Heine's intense modernism, his
absolute freedom, his utter rejection of stock classicism and stock
romanticism, his bringing all things under the point of view of the
nineteenth century, were understood and laid to heart by Germany,
through virtue of her immense, tolerant intellectualism, much as there
was in all Heine said to affront and wound Germany. The wit and ardent
modern spirit of France Heine joined to the culture, the sentiment, the
thought of Germany. This is what makes him so remarkable: his wonderful
clearness, lightness, and freedom, united with such power of feeling,
and width of range. Is there anywhere keener wit than in his story of
the French abbe who was his tutor, and who wanted to get from him that
_la religion_ is French for _der Glaube_: "Six times did he ask me the
question: 'Henry, what is _der Glaube_ in French?' and six times, and
each time with a greater burst of tears, did I answer him--'It is _le
credit_' And at the seventh time, his face purple with rage, the
infuriated questioner screamed out: 'It is _la religion_'; and a rain of
cuffs descended upon me, and all the other boys burst out laughing.
Since that day I have never been able to hear _la religion_ mentioned,
without feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks grow red
with shame."[157] Or in that comment on the fate of Professor Saalfeld,
who had been addicted to writing furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and
who was a professor at Goettingen, a great seat, according to Heine, of
pedantry and Philistinism. "It is curious," says Heine, "the three
greatest adversaries of Napoleon have all of them ended miserably.
Castlereagh[158] cut his own throat; Louis the Eighteenth rotted upon
his throne; and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Goettingen."
[159] It is impossible to go beyond that.

What wit, again, in that saying which every one has heard: "The
Englishman loves liberty like his lawful wife, the Frenchman loves her
like his mistress, the German loves her like his old grandmother." But
the turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so well known;
and it is by that turn he shows himself the born poet he is,--full of
delicacy and tenderness, of inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and
striking:--

"And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how th