ings may turn out. The
grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper with his wife, is capable of some
day putting a rope round her neck, and taking her to be sold at
Smithfield. The inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his adored
mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais Royal after another.
_But the German will never quite abandon his old grandmother_; he will
always keep for her a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her
fairy stories to the listening children."[160]

Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both the weakness
and the strength of Germany; pedantic, simple, enslaved, free,
ridiculous, admirable Germany?

And Heine's verse,--his _Lieder?_ Oh, the comfort, after dealing with
French people of genius, irresistibly impelled to try and express
themselves in verse, launching out into a deep which destiny has sown
with so many rocks for them,--the comfort of coming to a man of genius,
who finds in verse his freest and most perfect expression, whose voyage
over the deep of poetry destiny makes smooth! After the rhythm, to us,
at any rate, with the German paste in our composition, so deeply
unsatisfying, of--

"Ah! que me dites-vous, et qne vous dit mon ame?
Que dit le ciel a l'aube et la flamme a la flamme?"

what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like--

"Take, oh, take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn--"[161]

or--

"Siehst sehr sterbeblaesslich aus,
Doch getrost! du bist zu Haus--"[162]

in which one's soul can take pleasure! The magic of Heine's poetical
form is incomparable; he chiefly uses a form of old German popular
poetry, a ballad-form which has more rapidity and grace than any
ballad-form of ours; he employs this form with the most exquisite
lightness and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn fulness,
pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms of popular poetry. Thus in
Heine's poetry, too, one perpetually blends the impression of French
modernism and clearness, with that of German sentiment and fulness; and
to give this blended impression is, as I have said, Heine's great
characteristic. To feel it, one must read him; he gives it in his form
as well as in his contents, and by translation I can only reproduce it
so far as his contents give it. But even the contents of many of his
poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, for instance,
is a poem in which he makes his profession of faith to an innocent
beautifu