Chapter XI · (continued 3)

For Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea. But what is this idea?

Just because this idea has not yet been clearly comprehended, and because the essential has been mistaken for the fundamental, there is as yet no history of the Church. Two antagonistic factions write the history of the Church, and contradict each other incessantly. But the one as little as the other will ever distinctly state what that idea really is which is the underlying principle of Christianity, of its symbolism, of its dogma, of its public worship, and which strives to reveal itself throughout its whole history, and has manifested itself in the actual life of Christian nations.

...How this idea was historically evolved, and disclosed itself in the world of phenomena, may be discovered as early as the first centuries after the birth of Christ, if we study impartially the history of the Manicheans and the Gnostics. Although the first were branded as heretics, and the latter defamed, and both anathematised by the Church, yet their influence on the doctrines of the Church was lasting. Out of their symbolism Catholic art was developed, and their modes of thought penetrated the whole life of Christendom. The First Cause of the Manicheans does not differ much from that of the Gnostics. The doctrine of the two principles, the good and the evil, constantly opposing each other, is common to both. The Manicheans derived this doctrine from the ancient Persian religion, in which Ormuz, the light, is at enmity with Ahriman, the darkness. The others, the real Gnostics, believed in the pre-existence of the good principle, and accounted for the rise of the evil through emanation, through the generation of Æons, which, the farther they are removed from their origin, the more vicious and evil do they become.

...This Gnostic theory of the universe originated in ancient India, and brought with it the doctrine of the incarnation of God, of the mortification of the flesh, of spiritual introspection and self-absorption. It gave birth to the ascetic, contemplative, monkish life, which is the most logical outgrowth of the Christian principle. This principle has become entangled among the dogmas of the Church, and has been able to express itself but very obscurely in the public worship. But everywhere we find the doctrine of the two principles prominent; the wicked Satan is always contrasted with the good Christ. Christ represents the spiritual world, Satan the material; to the former belong our souls, to the latter our bodies. Accordingly, the whole visible world, which constitutes nature, is originally evil, and Satan, the prince of darkness, through it seeks to lure us to ruin. Therefore it behoves us to renounce all the sensuous joys of life, to torture the body, which is Satan's portion, in order that the soul may the more majestically soar aloft to the bright heavens, to the radiant kingdom of Christ.

This theory of the universe, which is the true fundamental idea of Christianity, spread itself with incredible rapidity, like a contagious disease, over the whole Roman empire. These sufferings, at times strung to fever-pitch, then again relaxing into exhaustion, lasted all through the middle ages; and we moderns still feel in our limbs those convulsions and that debility. And if among us, here and there, there be one who is already convalescent, he cannot flee from the universal hospital, and feels himself unhappy as the only healthy person among invalids.

When once mankind shall have recovered its perfect life, when peace shall be again restored between body and soul, and they shall again interpenetrate each other with their original harmony, then it will be scarcely possible to comprehend the factitious feud which Christianity has instigated between them. Happier and more perfect generations, begot in free and voluntary embraces, blossoming forth in a religion of joy, will then smile sadly at their poor ancestors, who held themselves gloomily aloof from all the pleasures of this beautiful world, and through the deadening of all warm and cheerful sensuousness almost paled into cold spectres. Yes, I say it confidently, our descendants will be more beautiful, more happy, than we; for I have faith in progress; mankind is destined to be happy, and I have a more favourable opinion of the Divinity than those pious souls who imagine that He created mankind only to suffer. Already here on earth, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, would I seek to found that millennium which, according to the belief of the pious, is not to be until the day of judgment. The one is perhaps as visionary a hope as the other, and possibly there will be no resurrection of humanity, either in the politico-moral or in the apostolic-Catholic sense. Perhaps mankind is doomed to eternal misery; the masses are perhaps condemned to be for ever trodden under foot by despots, to be plundered by their accomplices, and to be jeered at by their lackeys. Alas! in that case we must seek to maintain Christianity, even if we recognise it to be an error. Barefoot, and clad in monkish cowls, we must traverse Europe, preaching the vanity of all earthly good, and inculcating resignation. We must hold up the consoling crucifix before scourged and derided humanity, and promise, after death, all the seven heavens above.

...The final fate of Christianity is dependent upon our need of it. This religion has for eighteen centuries been a blessing to suffering humanity; it was providential, divine, holy. All that it has benefited civilisation, by taming the strong and strengthening the weak, by uniting the nations through like emotions and a like language, by all that its panegyrists extol—all these are insignificant in comparison with that great consolation which in itself is bestowed upon mankind. Eternal praise is due to that symbol of a suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of thorns, the Christ crucified, whose blood was a soothing balsam dripping into humanity's wounds. The poet, in particular, will reverently recognise the solemn grandeur of that symbol. The whole system of allegory, as expressed in the life and art of the middle ages, will in all times excite the admiration of poets. What colossal consistency in the Christian art!—that is, in architecture! How harmoniously those Gothic cathedrals are adapted to the religious services of the Church, and how the fundamental idea of the Church itself is revealed in them! Everything towers upward; everything transubstantiates itself; the stone blossoms into branches and foliage and becomes a tree; the fruits of the vine and of the wheat-stalk become blood and flesh; man becomes God, and God becomes a pure, abstract spirit. The Christian life during the middle ages is for the poet a rich, inexhaustible store-house of precious materials. Only through Christianity could, in this world, such varied phases arise—contrasts so striking, sorrows so diverse, beauties so strange, that one is inclined to believe that they never did exist in reality, and that all was but a colossal fever-dream, a delirious fantasy of an insane God. Nature herself appeared in those times fantastically disguised; but notwithstanding that man, occupied with abstract metaphysical speculations, turned peevishly away from her, yet at times she awoke him with a voice so solemnly sweet, so deliciously terrible, so enchanting, that he involuntarily listened and smiled, then shrank back with terror, and sickened even unto death. The story of the nightingale of Basle here comes to my mind, and, as it is probably unknown to you, I will relate it.

In May 1433, at the time of the Ecumenical Council, a party of ecclesiastics, prelates, learned scholars, and monks of every shades took a walk in a grove near Basle, wrangling over theological disputations, drawing hair-splitting distinctions, or arguing concerning annates, expectatives, and reservations, debating whether Thomas of Aquinas was a greater philosopher than Bonaventura, and what not! But suddenly, in the midst of their abstract and dogmatical discussions, they paused, transfixed, before a blooming linden-tree, on which sat a nightingale, trilling and trolling the sweetest and tenderest strains. The learned men were ravished with delight. The glowing melodies of spring penetrated to their scholastic, musty, bookworm hearts, their souls awoke from the mouldy, wintry sleep, they looked at one another in astonished ecstasy. But finally one of them made the sagacious remark that such things could not come of good, that the nightingale might be a devil, and that this devil might be seeking through its sweet music to decoy them from their pious conversations and to lure them to voluptuousness and similar pleasant sins; and then he began to exorcise, probably with the usual formula—"Adjuro te per cum, qui venturus est, judicare vivos et mortuos," etc. It is said that at this conjuration the bird replied, "Yes, I am an evil spirit!" and flew away, laughing. But those who heard its song sickened that very night, and soon after died.

This legend needs no commentary. It bears distinctly the horrible impress of a time when all that was sweet and lovely was denounced as diabolical. Even the nightingale was slandered, and it was customary to make the sign of the cross when she sang. The true Christian, like an abstract spectre, walked timorously, with closed senses, amidst the loveliness of nature.

...As regards the good principle, the same conception prevailed over all the Christian countries of Europe. The Roman Catholic Church took care of that, and whoever deviated from the prescribed faith was a heretic. But in relation to the evil principle and the empire of Satan, different views were held in different countries, and the Germanic North had quite different conceptions from the Latin South. This was caused by the fact that the Christian priesthood did not reject the previously existing national gods as baseless fantasies of the brain, but conceded to them an actual existence; asserting, however, that all these gods were nothing but male and female devils, who, through the victory of Christ, had lost their power over mankind, and now sought through wiles and stratagems to lure them to sin. All Olympus was now transformed into an airy hell; and if a poet of the middle ages sang of Grecian mythology ever so beautifully, the pious Christian would persist in seeing therein only devils and hobgoblins. The gloomy fanaticism of the monks alighted with special severity on poor Venus: she was considered a daughter of Beelzebub, and the good knight Tannhäuser tells her to her face—

Tannhäuser had been enticed by her into that wondrous mountain-cavern called the Venusburg, where, according to tradition, dwelt the beautiful goddess with her nymphs and her paramours, beguiling the hours with the most wanton carousings and dancing. Even poor Diana was not spared, and, notwithstanding her previous reputation for chastity, similar scandals were fastened on her good name. It is said that she, together with her nymphs, indulged in nightly rides through the forest; hence the legend of a strange midnight chase, by wild and furious hunters. This legend reveals clearly the then pervading Gnostic theory of the degeneration of the former divinities. In this transformation of the ancient national religion the underlying principle of Christianity is most fully manifested. The national religion of Europe in the North, even more than in the South, was pantheism. All the mysteries and symbols of that religion were founded on and had reference to a worship of nature; each of the elements was regarded as the embodiment of some mysterious being, and as such was revered and worshipped; in every tree dwelt a divinity, and all nature swarmed with gods and goddesses. Christianity exactly reversed this, and in place of gods it substituted devils and demons. The cheerful figures of Grecian mythology, beautified as they were by art, had taken root in the South along with Roman civilisation, and were not so easily to be displaced by the hideous, weird, and satanic divinities of the German North. The latter seemed to have been fashioned without any particular artistic design, and even before the advent of Christianity they were as sombre and as gloomy as the North itself. Hence there could not arise in France so frightful a devil-dom as among us in Germany, and even the witchcraft and sorcery of the former assumed a cheerful guise. How lovely, fair, and picturesque are the popular superstitions of France as compared with the bloody, hazy, and misshapen monsters which loom gloomily and savagely from out the mists of German legendary lore!

Those German poets of the middle ages who chose such themes as had originated, or been first treated, in Brittany and Normandy, thereby invested their poems with somewhat of the cheerfulness of the French temperament. But the old Northern sombreness, of whose gloom we can now scarcely form any idea, exercised full sway over such of our literature as was distinctly national, and over such popular traditions as have been orally transmitted. The superstitions of the two countries offer as striking a contrast as that which exists between a Frenchman and a German. The supernatural beings that figure in old French fabliaux and legends are bright and cheerful creations, and remarkable for a cleanliness which is noticeably lacking in our filthy rabble of German hobgoblins. French fairies and sprites are as distinguishable from German spectres as a spruce and daintily-gloved dandy, jauntily promenading the Boulevard Coblence, is different from a burly German porter, carrying a heavy load upon his shoulders. A French nixen, such as a Melusina, is to a German elf as a princess to a washerwoman. The fay Morgana would stand aghast at sight of a German witch, her body naked and besmeared with ointment, riding on a broom-stick to the Brocken. The Brocken is no merry Avalon, but a rendezvous for all that is weird and hideous. On the very summit of the mountain sits Satan, in the shape of a black goat. The infamous sisterhood form a circle around him and dance, and sing, "Donderemus! Donderemus!" Mingled in the infernal din are heard the bleating of the goat and the shouting of the demoniac crew. If, during the dance, a witch happens to drop a shoe, it is an evil omen, and portends that she will be burned at the stake ere the year ends. But all the terror which such a portent inspires is forgotten amid the wild and maddening Berlioz-like music of the witches' sabbath—and when in the morning the poor witch awakens from her delirium, she finds herself lying, stark naked and tired, by the glimmering embers of her hearth.

The most complete account of witches we find in the learned Dr. Nicolai Remigius's Demonology. This sagacious man had the best opportunity to learn the tricks of witches, as he officiated at their trials, and during his time, in Lotharingia alone, eight hundred women were burned at the stake, after trial and conviction. The trial was generally as follows:—Their hands and feet were tied together, and then they were thrown into the water. If they went under and were drowned, it was a proof that they were innocent, but if they floated on the surface, they were recognised as guilty and burned. Such was the logic of those times.... When the learned Dr. Remigius had completed his great work on witchcraft, he deemed himself so great a master of his subject as to be able to work magic, and, conscientious man that he was, did not fail to accuse himself before the courts; in consequence of which accusation he was burned as a sorcerer.

...I must confess that Luther did not understand the real nature of Satan. Whatever evil may be said of the devil, it cannot be denied that he is a spiritualist. Still less did Luther understand the real nature of Catholicism. He did not comprehend that the fundamental idea of Christianity, the deadening of the senses, was too antagonistic to human nature to be ever entirely practicable in life; he did not comprehend that Catholicism was a concordat between God and the devil—that is to say, between the spirit and the senses, in which the absolute reign of the spirit was promulgated in theory, but in which the senses were nevertheless practically reinstated in the enjoyment of their rights. Hence a wise system of concessions allowed by the Church to the senses, always, however, under formalities which cast a slur on every act of the senses, and maintained the sham usurpation of the spirit. You might yield to the tender impulses of your heart and embrace a pretty girl, but you must confess that it was a flagrant sin, and for this sin you must make atonement. That this atonement might be made with money was as beneficial to humanity as useful to the Church. The Church imposed fines, so to say, for every indulgence of the flesh; hence there arose taxes on all sorts of sins, and there were pious colporteurs who, in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, hawked for sale through the land absolutions for every taxed sin. Such a one was that Tetzel against whom Luther first entered the field.

...Leo X., the keen Florentine, the pupil of Politian, the friend of Raphael, the Greek philosopher with the triple crown, bestowed by the Conclave, probably because he suffered from a disease, nowise due to Christian abstinence, which was then very dangerous, Leo of Medici, how he must have smiled at the poor, chaste, simple-minded monk who imagined that the evangelic gospels were the chart of Christianity, and that this chart must be a truth! Perhaps he never comprehended what Luther was aiming at, for at that time he was busily occupied with the building of St. Peter's Cathedral, the cost of which was defrayed by the money derived from these sales of absolutions, so that sin actually furnished the means wherewith to build this church, which became thereby, as it were, a monument to the lusts of the flesh, like that pyramid which an Egyptian girl built with the money she had earned by prostitution. Of this house of God it perhaps might be said more truly than of Cologne Cathedral, that it was built by the devil. This triumph of spiritualism, compelling sensualism itself to build its most beautiful temple—this reaping from the multitude, by concessions made to the flesh, the means wherewith to beautify spiritualism, was not understood in the German North. For there, more easily than under the burning skies of Italy, was it possible to practice a Christianity that should make the fewest concessions to the senses. We Northerners are cold-blooded, and needed not so many price-lists of absolution for sins of the flesh as the fatherly Leo sent us. The climate makes the exercise of Christian virtues easier for us; and when, on the 31st of October 1517, Luther nailed to the door of St Augustine's Church his thesis against indulgences, the city moat of Wittenberg was, perhaps, already frozen over with ice thick enough for skating, which is a chilly pleasure, and therefore no sin.

...In Germany the battle against Catholicism was nothing else than a war begun by spiritualism when it perceived that it only reigned nominally and de jure; whereas sensualism, through conventional subterfuges, exercised the real sovereignty and ruled de facto. When this was perceived, the hawkers of indulgences were chased off, the pretty concubines of the priests were exchanged for plain but honest wedded wives, the charming Madonna pictures were demolished, and there reigned in certain localities a puritanism inimical to every gratification of the senses. In France, on the contrary, during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, the war was begun by sensualism against Catholicism, when it saw that while it, sensualism, reigned de facto, yet every exercise of its sovereignty was restrained in the most aggravating manner by spiritualism, and stigmatised as illegitimate. While in Germany the battle was fought with chaste earnestness, in France it was waged with licentious witticisms, and while there theological disputations were in vogue, here many satires were the fashion.

...Truly, Jansenism had much more cause than Jesuitism to feel aggrieved at the delineation of Tartuffe, and Molière would be as obnoxious to the Methodists of to-day as to the Catholic devotees of his own time. It is just because of this that Molière is so great, for, like Aristophanes and Cervantes, he levelled his persiflage not only at temporary follies, but also against that which is ever ridiculous—the inherent frailties of mankind. Voltaire, who always attacked only the temporary and the unessential, is in this respect inferior to Molière.

...Then why my aversion to spiritualism? Is it something so evil? By no means. Attar of roses is a precious article, and a small vial of it is refreshing, when one is doomed to pass one's days in the closely-locked apartments of the harem. But yet we would not have all the roses of life crushed and bruised in order to gain a few drops of the attar of roses, be they ever so consoling. We are like the nightingales, that delight in the rose itself, and derive as delicious a pleasure from the sight of the blushing, blooming flower as from its invisible fragrance.

...But there was one man at the Diet of Worms who, I am convinced, thought not of himself, but only of the sacred interests which he was there to champion. That man was Martin Luther, the poor monk whom Providence had selected to shatter the world-controlling power of the Roman Catholic Church, against which the mightiest emperors and most intrepid scholars had striven in vain. But Providence knows well on whose shoulders to impose its tasks; here not only intellectual but also physical strength was required. It needed a body steeled from youth through chastity and monkish discipline to bear the labour and vexations of such an office.

...Luther was not only the greatest, but also the most thoroughly German hero of our history. In his character are combined, on the grandest scale, all the virtues and all the faults of the Germans, so that, in his own person, he was the representative of that wonderful Germany. For he possessed qualities which we seldom find united, and which we usually even consider to be irreconcilably antagonistic. He was simultaneously a dreamy mystic and a practical man of action. His thoughts possessed not only wings, but also hands; he could speak and could act. He was not only the tongue, but also the sword of his time. He was both a cold, scholastic word-caviller, and an enthusiastic, God-inspired prophet. When, during the day, he had wearily toiled over his dogmatic distinctions and definitions, then in the evening he took his lute, looked up to the stars, and melted into melody and devotion. The same man who could scold like a fish-wife could be as gentle as a tender maiden. At times he was as fierce as the storm that uproots oaks; and then again he was mild as the zephyr caressing the violets. He was filled with a reverential awe of God. He was full of the spirit of self-sacrifice for the honour of the Holy Ghost; he could sink his whole personality in the most abstract spirituality, and yet he could well appreciate the good things of this earth, and from his mouth blossomed forth the famous saying—

He was a complete man—I would say an absolute man, in whom spirit and matter were not antagonistic. To call him a spiritualist would, therefore, be as erroneous as to call him a sensualist. How shall I describe him? He had in him something aboriginal, incomprehensible, miraculous.

...All praise to Luther! Eternal honour to the blessed man to whom we owe the salvation of our most precious possessions, and whose benefactions we still enjoy. It ill becomes us to complain of the narrowness of his views. The dwarf, standing on the shoulders of the giant, particularly if he puts on spectacles, can, it is true, see farther than the giant himself; but for noble thoughts and exalted sentiments a giant heart is necessary. It were still more unseemly of us to pass a harsh judgment on his faults, for those very faults have benefited us more than the virtues of thousands of other men. The refinement of Erasmus, the mildness of Melanchthon, could never have brought us so far as the godlike brutality of Brother Martin.

...From the day on which Luther denied the authority of the Pope, and publicly declared in the Diet "that his teachings must be controverted through the words of the Bible itself, or with sensible reasons," there begins a new era in Germany. The fetters with which Saint Boniface had chained the German Church to Rome are broken. This Church, which has hitherto formed an integral part of the great hierarchy, now splits into religious democracies. The character of the religion itself is essentially changed: the Hindoo-Gnostic element disappears from it, and the Judaic-theistic element again becomes prominent. We behold the rise of evangelical Christianity. By recognising and legitimising the most importunate claims of the senses, religion becomes once more a reality. The priest becomes man, takes to himself a wife, and begets children, as God desires.

...If in Germany we lost through Protestantism, along with the ancient miracles, much other poetry, we gained manifold compensations. Men became nobler and more virtuous. Protestantism was very successful in effecting that purity of morals and that strictness in the fulfilment of duty which is generally called morality. In certain communities, indeed, Protestantism assumed a tendency which in the end became quite identical with morality, and the gospels remained as a beautiful parable only. Particularly in the lives of the ecclesiastics is a pleasing change now noticeable. With celibacy disappeared also monkish obscenities and vices. Among the Protestant clergy are frequently to be found the noblest and most virtuous of men, such as would have won respect from even the ancient Stoics. One must have wandered on foot, as a poor student, through Northern Germany, in order to learn how much virtue—and in order to give virtue a complimentary adjective, how much evangelical virtue—is to be found in an unpretentious-looking parsonage. How often of a winter's evening have I found there a hospitable welcome,—I, a stranger, who brought with me no other recommendation save that I was hungry and tired! When I had partaken of a hearty meal, and, after a good night's rest, was ready in the morning to continue my journey, then came the old pastor, in his dressing-gown, and gave me a blessing on the way,—and it never brought me misfortune; and his good-hearted, gossipy wife placed several slices of bread-and-butter in my pocket, which I found not less refreshing; and silent in the distance stood the pastor's pretty daughters, with blushing cheeks and violet eyes, whose modest fire in the mere recollection warmed my heart for many a whole winter's day.

...How strange! We Germans are the strongest and wisest of nations; our royal races furnish princes for all the thrones of Europe; our Rothschilds rule all the exchanges of the world; our learned men are pre-eminent in all the sciences; we invented gunpowder and printing;—and yet if one of us fires a pistol he must pay a fine of three thalers; and if we wish to insert in a newspaper, "My dear wife has given birth to a little daughter, beautiful as Liberty," then the censor grasps his red pencil and strikes out the word "Liberty."

...I have said that we gained freedom of thought through Luther. But he gave us not only freedom of movement, but also the means of movement; to the spirit he gave a body; to the thought he gave words. He created the German language.

This he did by his translation of the Bible.

In fact, the divine author of that book seems to have known, as well as we others, that the choice of a translator is by no means a matter of indifference; and so He himself selected His translator, and bestowed on him the wonderful gift to translate from a language which was dead and already buried, into another language that as yet did not exist.

...The knowledge of the Hebrew language had entirely disappeared from the Christian world. Only the Jews, who kept themselves hidden here and there in stray corners of the world, yet preserved the traditions of this language. Like a ghost keeping watch over a treasure which had been confided to it during life, so in its dark and gloomy ghettos sat this murdered nation, this spectre-people, guarding the Hebrew Bible.

...Luther's Bible is an enduring spring of rejuvenation for our language. All the expressions and phrases contained therein are German, and are still in use by writers. As this book is in the hands of even the poorest people, they require no special learned education in order to be able to express themselves in literary forms. When our political revolution breaks out, this circumstance will have remarkable results. Liberty will everywhere be gifted with the power of speech, and her speech will be biblical.

...More noteworthy and of more importance than his prose writings are Luther's poems, the songs which in battle and in trouble blossomed forth from his heart. Sometimes they resemble a floweret that grows on a rocky crag, then again a ray of moonlight trembling over a restless sea. Luther loved music, and even wrote a treatise on the art; hence his songs are particularly melodious. In this respect he merits the name, Swan of Eisleben. But he is nothing less than a wild swan in those songs wherein he stimulates the courage of his followers and inflames himself to the fiercest rage of battle. A true battle-song was that martial strain with which he and his companions marched into Worms. The old cathedral trembled at those unwonted tones, and the ravens, in their dark nests in the steeple, startled with affright. That song, the Marseillaise of the Reformation, preserves to this day its inspiriting power.

...The expressions "classic" and "romantic" refer only to the spirit and the manner of the treatment. The treatment is classic when the form of that which is portrayed is quite identical with the idea of the portrayer, as is the case with the art-works of the Greeks, in which, owing to this identity, the greatest harmony is found to exist between the idea and its form. The treatment is romantic when the form does not reveal the idea through this identity, but lets this idea be surmised parabolically. (I use the word "parabolically" here in preference to "symbolically.") The Greek mythology had an array of god-figures, each of which, in addition to the identity of form and idea, was also susceptible of a symbolic meaning. But in this Greek religion only the figures of the gods were clearly defined; all else, their lives and deeds, was left to the arbitrary treatment of the poet's fancy. In the Christian religion, on the contrary, there are no such clearly-defined figures, but stated facts—certain definite holy events and deeds, into which the poetical faculty of man could place a parabolic signification. It is said that Homer invented the Greek gods and goddesses. That is not true. They existed previously in clearly-defined outlines; but he invented their histories. The artists of the middle ages, on the other hand, never ventured the least addition to the historical part of their religion. The fall of man, the incarnation, the baptism, the crucifixion, and the like, were matters of fact, which were not to be intermeddled with, and which it was not permissible to remould in the least, but to which poetry might attach a symbolic meaning. All the arts during the middle ages were treated in this parabolic spirit, and this treatment is romantic. Hence we find in the poetry of the middle ages a mystic universality; the forms are all so shadowy, what they do is so vaguely indicated, all therein is as if seen through a hazy twilight intermittently illumined by the moon. The idea is merely hinted at in the form, as in a riddle; and we dimly see a vague, indefinite figure, which is the peculiarity of spiritual literature. There is not, as among the Greeks, a harmony, clear as the sun, between form and meaning, but occasionally the meaning overtops the given form, and the latter strives desperately to reach the former, and then we behold bizarre, fantastic sublimity; then, again, the form has overgrown itself, and is out of all proportion to the meaning. A silly, pitiful thought trails itself along in some colossal form, and we witness a grotesque farce: misshapenness is nearly always the result.

The universal characteristic of that literature was that in all its productions it manifested the same firm, unshaken faith which in that period reigned over worldly as well as spiritual matters. All the opinions of that time were based on authorities. The poet journeyed along the abysses of doubt as free from apprehension as a mule, and there prevailed in the literature of that period a dauntless composure and blissful self-confidence such as became impossible in after-times, when the influence of the Papacy, the chief of those authorities, was shattered, and with it all the others were overthrown. Hence the poems of the middle ages have all the same characteristics, as if composed not by single individuals, but by the whole people en masse: they are objective, epic, naïve.

In the literature that blossomed into life with Luther we find quite opposite tendencies.

Its material, its subject, is the conflict between the interests and views of the Reformation and the old order of things. To the new spirit of the times, that hodge-podge religion which arose from the two elements already referred to—Germanic nationality and the Hindoo-Gnostic Christendom—was altogether repugnant. The latter was considered heathen idol-worship, which was to be replaced by the true religion of the Judaic-theistic Gospel. A new order of things is established; the spirit makes discoveries which demand the well-being of matter. Through industrial progress and the dissemination of philosophical theories, spiritualism becomes discredited in popular opinion. The tiers-état begins to rise; the Revolution already rumbles in the hearts and brains of men, and what the era feels, thinks, needs, and wills is openly spoken; and that is the stuff of which modern literature is made. At the same time the treatment is no longer romantic, but classic.

...The universal characteristic of modern literature consists in this, that now individuality and scepticism predominate. Authorities are overthrown; reason is now man's sole lamp, and conscience his only staff in the dark mazes of life. Man now stands alone, face to face with his Creator, and chants his songs to Him. Hence this literary epoch opens with hymns. And even later, when it becomes secular, the most intimate self-consciousness, the feeling of personality, rules throughout. Poetry is no longer objective, epic, and naïve, but subjective, lyric, and reflective.

...The God of the pantheists differs from the God of the theists in so far that the former is in the world itself, while the latter is external to, or, in other words, is over the world. The God of the theists rules the world from above as a quite distinct establishment. Only in regard to the manner of that rule do the theists differ among themselves. The Hebrews picture God as a thunder-hurling tyrant; the Christians regard him as a loving father; the disciples of Rousseau and the whole Genevese school portray him as a skilful artist, who has made the whole world somewhat in the same manner as their papas manufacture watches; and as art-connoisseurs, they admire the work and praise the Maker above.

...From the moment that religion seeks assistance from philosophy her downfall is unavoidable. She strives to defend herself, and always talks herself deeper into ruin. Religion, like all other absolutisms, may not justify herself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent power. Æschylus represents the personification of brute force as not speaking a single word. It must be dumb.

...Moses Mendelssohn was the reformer of the German Israelites, his companions in faith. He overthrew the prestige of Talmudism, and founded a pure Mosaism. This man, whom his contemporaries called the German Socrates, and whose nobleness of soul and intellectual powers they so admired, was the son of a poor sexton of the synagogue at Dessau. Besides this curse of birth, Providence made him a hunchback, in order to teach the rabble in a very striking manner that men are to be judged not by outward appearance but by inner worth. As Luther overthrew the Papacy, so Mendelssohn overthrew the Talmud; and that, too, by a similar process. He discarded tradition, declared the Bible to be the well-spring of religion, and translated the most important parts of it. By so doing he destroyed Jewish Catholicism, for such is the Talmud. It is a Gothic dome which, although overladen with fanciful, childish ornamentation, yet amazes us by the immensity of its heaven-aspiring proportions.

...No German can pronounce the name of Lessing without a responsive echo in his breast. Since Luther, Germany has produced no greater and better man than Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. These two are our pride and joy. In the troubles of the present we look back at their consoling figures, and they answer with a look full of bright promise. The third man will come who will perfect what Luther began and what Lessing carried on—the third Liberator.

Like Luther, Lessing's achievements consisted not only in effecting something definite, but in agitating the German people to its depths, and in awakening through his criticism and polemics a wholesome intellectual activity. He was the vivifying critic of his time, and his whole life was a polemic. His critical insight made itself felt throughout the widest range of thought and feeling—in religion, in science, and in art. His polemics vanquished every opponent, and grew stronger with every victory. Lessing, as he himself confessed, needed conflict for the full development of his powers. He resembled that fabulous Norman who inherited the skill, knowledge, and strength of those whom he slew in single combat, and in this manner became finally endowed with all possible excellencies and perfections. It is easily conceivable that such a contentious champion should stir up not a little commotion in Germany,—in that quiet Germany which was then even more sabbatically quiet than now. The majority were stupefied at his literary audacity. But this was of the greatest assistance to him, for oser! is the secret of success in literature, as it is in revolutions,—and in love. All trembled before the sword of Lessing. No head was safe from him. Yes, many heads he struck off from mere wantonness, and was moreover so spiteful as to lift them up from the ground and show to the public that they were hollow inside. Those whom his sword could not reach he slew with the arrows of his wit. His friends admired the pretty feathers of those arrows; his enemies felt their barbs in their hearts. Lessing's wit does not resemble that enjouement, that gaîté, those lively saillies, which are so well known here in France. His wit was no petty French greyhound, chasing its own shadow: it was rather a great German tom-cat, who plays with the mouse before he throttles it.

Yes, polemics were our Lessing's delight, and so he never reflected long whether an opponent was worthy of him,—thus through his controversies he has saved many a name from well-merited oblivion. Around many a pitiful authorling he has spun a web of the wittiest sarcasm, the most charming humour; and thus they are preserved for all time in Lessing's works, like insects caught in a piece of amber. In slaying his enemies he made them immortal. Who of us would have ever heard of that Klotz on whom Lessing wasted so much wit and scorn? The huge rocks which he hurled at, and with which he crushed, that poor antiquarian, are now the latter's indestructible monument.

It is noteworthy that this wittiest man of all Germany was also the most honourable. There is nothing equal to his love of truth. Lessing made not the least concession to falsehood, even if thereby, after the manner of the worldly-wise, he could advance the victory of truth itself. He could do everything for truth, except lie for it. Whoever thinks, he once said, to bring Truth to man, masked and rouged, may well be her pander, but he has never been her lover.

...It is heart-rending to read in his biography how fate denied this man every joy, and how it did not even vouchsafe to him to rest with his family from his daily struggles. Once only fortune seemed to smile on him; she gave him a loved wife, a child—but this happiness was like the rays of the sun gilding the wings of a swift-flying bird: it vanished as quickly. His wife died in consequence of her confinement, the child soon after birth. Concerning the latter, he wrote to a friend the horribly-witty words, "My joy was brief. And I lost him so unwillingly, that son! For he was so wise, so wise! Do not think that the few hours of my fatherhood have already made a doting parent of me. I know what I say. Was it not wisdom that he had to be reluctantly dragged into the world with iron tongs, and that he so soon discovered his folly? Was it not wisdom that he seized the first opportunity to leave it? For once I have sought to be happy like other men; but I have made a miserable failure of it."

...Lessing was the prophet who from the New Testament pointed towards the Third Testament. I have called him the successor of Luther; and it is in this character that I have to speak of him here. Of his influence on German art I shall speak hereafter. On this he effected a wholesome reform, not only through his criticism, but also through his example; and this latter phase of his activity is generally made the most prominent, and is the most discussed. But, viewed from our present standpoint, his philosophical and theological battles are to us more important than all his dramas, or his dramaturgy. His dramas, however, like all his writings, have a social import, and Nathan the Wise is in reality not only a good play, but also a philosophical, theological treatise in support of the doctrine of a pure theism. For Lessing, art was a tribune, and when he was thrust from the pulpit or the professor's chair he sprang on to the stage, speaking out more boldly, and gaining a more numerous audience.

I say that Lessing continued the work of Luther. After Luther had freed us from the yoke of tradition and had exalted the Bible as the only well-spring of Christianity, there ensued a rigid word-service, and the letter of the Bible ruled just as tyrannically as once did tradition. Lessing contributed the most to the emancipation from the tyranny of the letter.

Lessing died in Brunswick, in the year 1781, misunderstood, hated, and denounced. In the same year there was published at Königsberg the Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant. With this book there begins in Germany an intellectual revolution, which offers the most wonderful analogies to the material revolution in France, and which to the profound thinker must appear equally important. It develops the same phases, and between the two there exists a very remarkable parallelism. On both sides of the Rhine we behold the same rupture with the past: it is loudly proclaimed that all reverence for tradition is at an end. As in France no privilege, so in Germany no thought is tolerated without proving its right to exist: nothing is taken for granted. And as in France fell the monarchy, the keystone of the old social system, so in Germany fell theism, the keystone of the intellectual ancien régime.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It is horrible when the bodies which we have created ask of us a soul. But it is still more horrible, more terrible, more uncanny, to create a soul, which craves a body and pursues us with that demand. The idea which we have thought is such a soul, and it allows us no peace until we have given it a body, until we have brought it into actual being. The thought seems to become deed; the word, flesh. And, strange! man, like the God of the Bible, needs but to speak his thought, and the world shapes itself accordingly: light dawns, or darkness descends; the waters separate themselves from the dry land, and even wild beasts appear. The universe is but the signature of the word.

Mark this, ye haughty men of action. Ye are naught but the unconscious servants of the men of thought, who, oftentimes in the humblest obscurity, have marked out your tasks for you with the utmost exactitude. Maximilian Robespierre was only the hand of Jean Jacques Rousseau—the bloody hand that from the womb of time drew forth the body whose soul Rousseau had created. Did the restless anxiety that embittered the life of Jean Jacques arise from a foreboding that his thoughts would require such a midwife to bring them into the world?

Old Fontenelle was perhaps in the right when he declared, "If I carried all the ideas of this world in my closed hand, I should take good heed not to open it." For my part, I think differently. If I held all the ideas of the world in my hand, I might perhaps implore you to hew off my hand at once, but in no case would I long keep it closed. I am not adapted to be a jailor of thoughts. By Heaven! I would set them free. Even if they assumed the most threatening shapes and swept through all lands like a band of mad Bacchantes; even if with their thyrsus staffs they should strike down our most innocent flowers; even if they should break into our hospitals and chase the sick old world from its bed! It would certainly grieve me sadly, and I myself should come to harm. For, alas! I too belong to that sick old world; and the poet says rightly that scoffing at our own crutches does not enable us to walk any the better. I am the most sick among you all, and the most to be pitied, for I know what health is. But you know it not, you enviable ones. You can die without noticing it yourselves. Yes, many of you have already been dead for these many years, and you think that now only does the true life begin. When I contradict such madness, then they become enraged against me, and rail at me, and, horrible! the corpses spring on me and reproach me; and more even than their revilings does their mouldy odour oppress me. Avaunt, ye spectres! I am speaking of one whose very name possesses an exorcising power: I speak of Immanuel Kant.

It is said that the spirits of darkness tremble with affright when they behold the sword of an executioner. How, then, must they stand aghast when confronted with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason! This book is the sword with which, in Germany, theism was decapitated.

To be candid, you French are tame and moderate compared with us Germans. At the most, you have slain a king; and he had already lost his head before he was beheaded. And withal you must drum so much, and shout, and stamp, so that the whole world was shaken by the tumult. It is really awarding Maximilian Robespierre too much honour to compare him with Immanuel Kant. Maximilian Robespierre, the great citizen of the Rue Saint Honoré, did truly have an attack of destructive fury when the monarchy was concerned, and he writhed terribly enough in his regicidal epilepsy; but as soon as the Supreme Being was mentioned, he wiped the white foam from his mouth and the blood from his hands, put on his blue Sunday coat with the bright buttons, and attached a bouquet of flowers to his broad coat-lapel.

The life-history of Immanuel Kant is difficult to write, for he had neither a life nor a history. He lived a mechanical, orderly, almost abstract, bachelor life, in a quiet little side-street of Königsberg, an old city near the north-east boundary of Germany. I believe that the great clock of the cathedral did not perform its daily work more dispassionately, more regularly, than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. Rising, coffee-drinking, writing, collegiate lectures, dining, walking—each had its set time. And when Immanuel Kant, in his grey coat, cane in hand, appeared at the door of his house, and strolled towards the small linden avenue, which is still called "the philosopher's walk," the neighbours knew it was exactly half-past four. Eight times he promenaded up and down, during all seasons; and when the weather was gloomy, or the grey clouds threatened rain, his old servant Lampe was seen plodding anxiously after, with a large umbrella under his arm, like a symbol of Providence.

What a strange contrast between the outer life of the man and his destructive, world-convulsing thoughts! Had the citizens of Königsberg surmised the whole significance of these thoughts, they would have felt a more profound awe in the presence of this man than in that of an executioner, who merely slays human beings. But the good people saw in him nothing but a professor of philosophy; and when at the fixed hour he sauntered by, they nodded a friendly greeting, and regulated their watches.

But if Immanuel Kant, that arch-destroyer in the realms of thought, far surpassed Maximilian Robespierre in terrorism, yet he had certain points of resemblance to the latter that invite a comparison of the two men. In both we find the same inflexible, rigid, prosaic integrity. Then we find in both the same instinct of distrust,—only that the one exercises it against ideas, and names it a critique, while the other applies it to men, and calls it republican virtue. In both, however, the narrow-minded shopkeeper type is markedly manifest. Nature had intended them to weigh out sugar and coffee, but fate willed it otherwise, and into the scales of one it laid a king, into those of the other, a God. And they both weighed correctly.

...Pantheism had already in Fichte's time interpenetrated German art; even the Catholic Romanticists unconsciously followed this current, and Goethe expressed it most unmistakably. This he already does in Werther. In Faust he seeks to establish an affinity between man and nature by a bold, direct, mystic method, and conjures the secret forces of nature through the magic formula of the powers of hell. But this Goethean pantheism is most clearly and most charmingly disclosed in his short ballads. The early philosophy of Spinoza has shed its mathematical shell, and now flutters about us as Goethean poetry. Hence the wrath of our pietists, and of orthodoxy in general, against the Goethean ballads. With their pious bear-paws they clumsily strike at this butterfly, which is so daintily ethereal, so light of wing, that it always flits out of reach. These Goethean ballads have a tantalising charm that is indescribable. The harmonious verses captivate the heart like the tenderness of a loving maiden; the words embrace you while the thought kisses you.

...This giant was minister in a lilliputian German state, in which he could never move at ease. It was said of Phidias's Jupiter seated in Olympus, that were he ever to stand erect the sudden uprising would rend asunder the vaulted roof. This was exactly Goethe's situation at Weimar; had he suddenly lifted himself up from his peaceful, sitting posture, he would have shattered the gabled canopy of state, or, more probably, he would have bruised his own head. But the German Jupiter remained quietly seated, and composedly accepted homage and incense.

...When it was seen that such saddening follies were budding out of philosophy and ripening into a baleful maturity—when it was observed that the German youth were generally absorbed in metaphysical abstractions, thereby neglecting the most important questions of the time and unfitting themselves for practical life,—it was quite natural that patriots and lovers of liberty should be led to conceive a justifiable dislike to philosophy; and a few went so far as to condemn it utterly and entirely, as idle, useless, chimerical theorising.

We shall not be so foolish as to attempt seriously to refute these malcontents. German philosophy is a matter of great weight and importance, and concerns the whole human race. Only our most remote descendants will be able to decide whether we deserve blame or praise for completing first our philosophy and afterwards our revolution. To me it seems that a methodical people, such as we Germans are, must necessarily have commenced with the Reformation, could only after that proceed to occupy ourselves with philosophy, and not until the completion of the latter could we pass on to the political revolution. This order I find quite sensible. The heads which philosophy has used for thinking, the revolution can afterwards, for its purposes, cut off. But philosophy would never have been able to use the heads which had been decapitated by the revolution, if the latter had preceded.

...Christianity—and this is its fairest service—has to a certain degree moderated that brutal lust of battle, such as we find it among the ancient Germanic races, who fought, not to destroy, not yet to conquer, but merely from a fierce, demoniac love of battle itself; but it could not altogether eradicate it. And when once that restraining talisman, the cross, is broken, then the smouldering ferocity of those ancient warriors will again blaze up; then will again be heard the deadly clang of that frantic Berserkir wrath, of which the Norse poets say and sing so much. The talisman is rotten with decay, and the day will surely come when it will crumble and fall. Then the ancient stone gods will arise from out the ashes of dismantled ruins, and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes; and finally Thor, with his colossal hammer, will leap up, and with it shatter into fragments the Gothic Cathedrals.

And when ye hear the rumbling and the crumbling, take heed, ye neighbours of France, and meddle not with what we do in Germany. It might bring harm on you. Take heed not to kindle the fire; take heed not to quench it. Ye might easily burn your fingers in the flame. Smile not at my advice as the counsel of a visionary warning you against Kantians, Fichteans, and natural philosophers. Scoff not at the dreamer who expects in the material world a revolution similar to that which has already taken place in the domains of thought. The thought goes before the deed, as the lightning precedes the thunder. German thunder is certainly German, and is rather awkward, and it comes rolling along tardily; but come it surely will, and when ye once hear a crash the like of which in the world's history was never heard before, then know that the German thunderbolt has reached its mark. At this crash the eagles will fall dead in mid air, and the lions in Afric's most distant deserts will cower and sneak into their royal dens. A drama will be enacted in Germany in comparison with which the French Revolution will appear a harmless idyl. To be sure, matters are at present rather quiet, and if occasionally this one or the other rants and gesticulates somewhat violently, do not believe that these are the real actors. These are only little puppies, that run around in the empty arena, barking and snarling at one another, until the hour shall arrive when appear the gladiators, who are to battle unto death.

And that hour will come. As on the raised benches of an amphitheatre the nations will group themselves around Germany to behold the great tournament. I advise you, ye French, keep very quiet then: on your souls take heed that ye applaud not. We might easily misunderstand you, and in our blunt manner roughly quiet and rebuke you, for if in our former servile condition we could sometimes overcome you, much more easily can we do so in the wantonness and delirious intoxication of freedom. Ye yourselves know what one can do in such a condition—and ye are no longer in that condition. Beware! I mean well with you, therefore I tell you the bitter truth. You have more to fear from emancipated Germany than from the whole Holy Alliance, with all its Croats and Cossacks. For, in the first place, you are not loved in Germany,—which is almost incomprehensible, for you are so very amiable, and during your sojourn in Germany took much pains to please at least the better and lovelier half of the Germans. But even if that half should love you, it is just the half that does not bear arms, and whose friendship would therefore avail you but little.

What they really have against you, I could never make out. Once in a beer-cellar at Göttingen, a young Teuton said that revenge must be had on the French for Conrad von Stauffen, whom they beheaded at Naples. You have surely long since forgotten that. But we forget nothing. You see that if we should once be inclined to quarrel with you, good reasons will not be wanting. At all events, I advise you to be on your guard. Let what will happen in Germany, whether the Crown Prince of Prussia or Dr. Wirth hold sway, be always armed, remain quietly at your post, musket in hand. I mean well with you; and I almost stood aghast when I learned lately that your ministry propose to disarm France.

As, notwithstanding your present Romanticism, you are inborn classics, you know Olympus. Among the naked gods and goddesses who there make themselves merry with nectar and ambrosia, you behold one goddess who, although surrounded with mirth and sport, yet wears always a coat of mail, and keeps helm on head and spear in hand.

It is the goddess of wisdom.

FLORENTINE NIGHTS.

[Heine wrote the fragment entitled Florentine Nights in 1835, and published it two years later in the third volume of the Salon. It is a series of brilliant pictures united by a very slight thread of connection. There is unquestionably an additional element of autobiographical interest; Maximilian's visits to Potsdam and London correspond to Heine's, and throughout this various record of impressions we frequently hear Heine's own voice. The translation here given has not been previously published.]

FIRST NIGHT.

IN the ante-room Maximilian found the doctor just as he was drawing on his black gloves. "I am greatly pressed for time," the latter hurriedly said to him. "Signora Maria has not slept during the whole night; she has only just now fallen into a light slumber. I need not caution you not to wake her by any noise; and when she wakes on no account must she be allowed to talk. She must lie still, and not disturb herself; mental excitement will not be salutary. Tell her all kinds of odd stories, so that she must listen quietly."

"Be assured, doctor," replied Maximilian, with a melancholy smile. "I have educated myself for a long time in chattering, and will not let her talk. I will narrate abundance of fantastic nonsense, as much as you require. But how long can she live?"

"I am greatly pressed for time," answered the doctor, and slipped away.

Black Deborah, quick of hearing as she was, had already recognised the stranger's footstep, and softly opened the door. At a sign from him she left as softly, and Maximilian found himself alone with his friend. A single lamp dimly lighted the chamber. This cast now and then half timid, half inquisitive gleams upon the countenance of the sick lady, clothed entirely in white muslin, who lay stretched on a green sofa in calm sleep.

Silent, and with folded arms, Maximilian stood a little while before the sleeping figure, and gazed on the beautiful limbs which the light garments revealed rather than covered; and every time that the lamp threw a ray of light over the pale countenance, his heart quivered. "For God's sake!" he said softly, "what is that? What memories are awaking in me? Yes, now I know. This white form on the green ground, yes, now...."

At this moment the invalid awoke, and gazing out, as it were, from the depths of a dream, the tender dark-blue eyes rested upon him, asking, entreating.... "What were you thinking of, just now, Maximilian?" she said, in that awful, gentle voice so often found in consumptives, and wherein we seem to recognise the lisping of children, the twittering of birds, and the gurgle of the dying. "What were you thinking of, just then, Maximilian?" she repeated again, and started up so hastily that the long curls, like roused snakes, fell in ringlets around her head.

"For God's sake!" exclaimed Maximilian, as he gently pressed her back on to the sofa, "lie still, do not talk; I will tell you all I think, I feel, yes, what I myself do not know!

"In fact," he pursued, "I scarcely know what I was thinking and feeling just now. Dim visions of childhood were passing through my mind. I was thinking of my mother's castle, of the deserted garden there, of the beautiful marble statue that lay in the grass.... I said, 'my mother's castle,' but pray do not imagine anything grand and magnificent. To this name I have indeed accustomed myself; my father always laid a special emphasis on the words, 'the castle,' and accompanied them always with a singular smile. The meaning of that smile I understood later, when, a boy of some twelve years, I travelled with my mother to the castle. It was my first journey. We spent the whole day in passing through a thick forest; I shall never forget its gloomy horror; and only towards evening did we stop before a long cross-bar which separated us from a large meadow. Here we waited nearly half-an-hour before the boy came out of the wretched hut near by, removed the barrier, and admitted us. I say 'the boy,' because old Martha always called her forty years' old nephew 'the lad.' To receive his gracious mistress worthily, he had assumed the livery of his late uncle; and it was in consequence of its requiring a little previous dusting that he had kept us waiting so long. Had he had time, he would have also put on stockings; the long red legs, however, did not form a very marked contrast with the glaring scarlet coat. Whether there were any trousers underneath I am unable to say. Our servant, John, who had likewise often heard of 'the castle,' put on a very amazed grimace as the boy led us to the little ruined building in which his master had lived. He was, however, altogether at a loss when my mother ordered him to bring in the beds. How could he guess that at the 'castle' no beds were to be found, and my mother's order that he should bring bedding for us he had either not heard or considered as superfluous trouble.

"The little house, only one storey high, which in its best days contained, at the most, five habitable rooms, was a lamentable picture of transitoriness. Broken furniture, torn carpets, not one window-frame left entire, the floor pulled up here and there, everywhere the hated traces of the wantonest military possession. 'The soldiers quartered with us have always amused themselves,' said the boy, with a silly smile. My mother signed that we should all leave her alone, and while the boy and John were busying themselves, I went out to see the garden. This also offered the most disconsolate picture of ruin. The great trees were partly destroyed, partly broken down, and parasites were scornfully spreading over the fallen trunks. Here and there by the grown-up box-bushes the old paths might be recognised. Here and there also stood statues, for the most part wanting heads, or at all events noses. I remember a Diana whose lower half the dark ivy grew round in a most amusing way, as I also remember a Goddess of Plenty, out of whose cornucopia mere ill-odorous weeds were blooming. Only one statue had been spared from the malice of men and of time; it had, indeed, been thrown from off its pedestal into the high grass; but there it lay, free from mutilation, the marble goddess with pure lovely features and the noble deep-cleft bosom, which seemed, as it glowed out of the grass, like a Greek revelation. I almost started when I saw it; this form inspired me with a singular feeling, and bashfulness kept me from lingering long near so sweet a sight.

"When I returned to my mother, she was standing at the window, lost in thought, her head resting on her right arm, and the tears were flowing over her cheeks. I had never seen her weep so before. She embraced me with passionate tenderness, and asked my forgiveness, because, owing to John's negligence, I should have no regular bed. 'Old Martha,' she said, 'is very ill, dear child, and cannot give up her bed to you; but John will arrange the cushions out of the coach, so that you will be able to sleep upon them, and he can also give you his cloak for a covering. I shall sleep on the straw; this was my dear father's bed-room; it was much better here once. Leave me alone!' And the tears came still more impetuously.

"Whether it was owing to my unaccustomed place of rest or to my disturbed heart, I could not sleep. The moonlight streamed in through the broken window-panes, and seemed to allure me out into the bright summer night. I might lie on the right or the left side, close my eyes or impatiently open them again—I could still think of nothing but the lovely marble statue I had seen lying in the grass. I could not understand the shyness which had come over me at the sight of it; I was vexed at this childish feeling, and 'To-morrow,' I said softly to myself, 'to-morrow I will kiss you, you lovely marble face, kiss you just on that pretty corner of your mouth where the lips melt into such a sweet dimple!' An impatience I had never before felt was stirring through all my limbs; I could no longer rule the strange impulse, and I sprang up at last with audacious vivacity, exclaiming, 'And why should I not kiss you to-night, you dear image?' Quietly, so that mother might not hear my steps, I left the house; with the less difficulty, since the entrance was furnished with an escutcheon indeed, but no longer with a door, and hastily worked my way through the abundant growth of the neglected garden. There was no sound; everything was resting silent and solemn in the still moonlight. The shadows of the trees seemed to be nailed on the earth. In the green grass lay the beautiful goddess, likewise motionless, yet no stony death, but only a quiet sleep, seemed to hold her lovely limbs fettered; and as I came near, I almost feared lest the least noise should awake her out of her slumber. I held my breath, as I leant over to gaze on the beautiful features; a shuddering pain thrust me back, but a boyish wantonness drew me again towards her; my heart was beating wildly, and at last I kissed the lovely goddess with such passion and tenderness and despair as I have never in this life kissed with again. And I have never been able to forget the fearful and sweet sensation which flowed through my soul as the blissful cool of those marble lips touched my mouth.... And so you see, Maria, that as I was just now standing before you, and saw you lying in your white muslin garments on the green sofa, your appearance suggested to me the white marble form in the green grass. Had you slept any longer my lips would not have been able to resist——"

"Max! Max!" she cried from the depth of her soul. "Horrible! You know that a kiss from your mouth——"

"Oh, be silent only; I know you think that something horrible. Do not look at me so imploringly. I do not misunderstand your feelings, although their causes are hidden from me. I have never dared to press my mouth on your lips."

But Maria would not let him finish speaking; she seized his hand, covered it with passionate kisses, and then said, smiling—"Please tell me more of your love affairs. How long did you adore the marble beauty that you kissed in your mother's castle garden?"

"We went away the next day," Maximilian answered, "and I have never seen the lovely statue again. It occupied my heart, however, for nearly three years. A wonderful passion for marble statues has since then developed in my soul, and this very day I have felt its transporting power. I was coming out of the Laurentian, the library of the Medici, and I wandered, I know not how, into the chapel where that most magnificent of Italian families built for itself a resting-place of jewels, and is quietly sleeping. For a whole hour I was absorbed in gazing on the marble figure of a woman, whose powerful body witnesses to the cunning strength of Michael Angelo, while yet the whole form is pervaded by an ethereal sweetness which we are not accustomed to seek in that master. The whole dream-world, with its silent blisses, lives in that marble; a tender repose dwells in the lovely limbs, a soothing moonlight seems to course through the veins. It is the Night of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. O, how willingly would I sleep the eternal sleep in the arms of that Night!

"Painted women forms," Maximilian pursued, after a pause, "have never so powerfully interested me as statues. Only once was I in love with a painting. It was a wondrously lovely Madonna that I learnt to know at a church in Cologne. I was at that time a very zealous church-goer, and my heart was absorbed in the mysticism of the Catholic religion. I would then have willingly fought like a Spanish knight, at the peril of my life, for the immaculate conception of Mary, the Queen of Angels, the fairest lady of Heaven and earth! I was interested in all the members of the holy family at that time, and I took my hat off in an especially friendly manner whenever I passed near a picture of the holy Joseph. This disposition did not last long, however, and I deserted the Mother of God almost without any explanations, having become acquainted, in a gallery of antiquities, with a Grecian nymph, who for a long time held me enchained in marble fetters."

"And you only loved sculptured or painted women?" said Maria, smiling.

"No, I have also loved dead women," answered Maximilian, over whose face an expression of seriousness had spread. He failed to perceive Maria start and shrink at these words, and quietly proceeded—

"Yes, it is very strange that I once fell in love with a girl after she had been seven years dead. When I became acquainted with little Very I liked her extremely. For three days I occupied myself with this young person, and experienced the greatest pleasure in all that she said and did, and in every expression of her charming wayward being, without being betrayed withal into any over-tender emotion. And so I was not too deeply grieved when a few months later I heard that a fever that had seized her suddenly resulted in death. I forgot her entirely, and I am convinced that from one year's end to another's I had not one thought of her. Seven years passed away, and I found myself at Potsdam, to enjoy the beautiful summer in undisturbed solitude. My society was confined to the statues in the garden of Sansouci. It happened there one day that I recollected certain features, and a singular, lovely way of speaking and moving, without being able to remember to whom they belonged. Nothing is more annoying than such a drifting into old memories, and I was therefore joyfully surprised when, after some days, I recollected little Very, and discovered that it was her dear, forgotten form that had hovered before me so restlessly. Yes, I rejoiced at this discovery like one who unexpectedly meets his most intimate friend; the pale hues gradually grew bright, and at last her sweet little person seemed to stand bodily before me, smiling, pouting, witty, and prettier than ever. From that time forth the sweet vision never left me, it filled my whole soul; wherever I went or stood, that went and stood at my side, spoke with me, laughed with me, always gentle, and yet never over-tender. I was, however, more and more fascinated with this vision, which daily gained more and more reality for me. It is easy to raise ghosts, but it is difficult to send them back again to their dark night; they look at us then so imploringly, our own hearts lend them such powerful intercession. I could not tear myself free, and fell in love with little Very after she had been seven years dead. I lived thus at Potsdam for six months, quite buried in this love. I guarded myself more carefully than ever from any contact with the outer world, and if anyone in the street came at all near me, I experienced the most miserable oppression. I cherished a deep horror of every occurrence, such as, perhaps, the night-wandering spirits of the dead experience; for these, it is said, are terrified when they meet a living man, as much as a living man is terrified when he meets a spectre. By chance a traveller came at that time to Potsdam whom I could not escape—namely, my brother. His appearance and his accounts of the latest news woke me as from a deep dream, and I suddenly felt, with a shudder, in what a frightful solitude I had been so long living. In this condition I had not once noted the change of the seasons, and I now gazed with wonder on the trees, long since leafless, decked in their autumn mellowness. I immediately left Potsdam and little Very, and in another town, where important business was awaiting me, and by means of difficult circumstances and relations, I was soon again plunged into crude reality.

"The living women," Maximilian pursued, while a sorrowful smile played on his upper lip, "the living women with whom I then came into unavoidable contact, how they tormented me, tenderly tormented me with their pouting, jealousy, and constant sighs. At how many balls must I trot round with them, in how much gossip must I mix myself! What restless vanity, what delight in lying, what kissing treachery, what envenomed flowers! These women spoilt all pleasure and love for me, and I was for some time a misogynist, who damned the whole sex. It went with me almost as with the French officer, who, in the Prussian campaign, only saved himself with the greatest difficulty from the ice-pits at Beresina, and since that retains such an antipathy to everything frozen, that now he thrusts away with disgust the sweetest and most delicious of Tortoni's ices. Yes, the remembrance of the Beresina of love that I passed through then spoilt for me, for a time, even the most charming ladies, women like angels, girls like Vanilla sherbert."

"Pray, do not abuse women," exclaimed Maria. "That is a worn-out commonplace among men. In the end, to be happy, you need women after all."

"Oh," sighed Maximilian, "that is true, certainly. But women, unfortunately, have only one way of making us happy, while they have thirty thousand ways of making us unhappy."

"Dear friend," replied Maria, suppressing a little smile, "I am speaking of the concord of two souls in unison. Have you never experienced this joy? But I see an unaccustomed blush spreading over your cheeks. Tell me, Max."

"It is true, Maria, I feel as confused almost as a boy at confessing to you the happy love with which I was once infinitely blessed. That memory is not yet lost to me, and to its cool shades my soul often flies, when the burning dust and day's heat of life grow almost unbearable. Yet I am not able to give you a just idea of her. She was such an ethereal creature that she only seemed revealed to me in dreams. I think that you, Maria, have no vulgar prejudice against dreams; those nightly visions have, in truth, as much reality as the coarser shapes of day, which we can touch with our hands, and by which we are not seldom besmutched. Yes, it was in a dream that I knew that sweet being who has made me most happy on earth. I can say little of her outward appearance. I am not able to describe the form of her features with precision. It was a face that I had never seen before, and that I have never in my life seen since. So much I remember; it was not white and rosy, but all of one colour—a soft, reddened, pale-yellow, transparent as crystal. The charm of this face was not in firm regularity of beauty, nor in interesting vivacity; its characteristic was, rather, a charming, enrapturing, almost terrible veracity. It was a face full of conscious fire and gracious goodness; it was more a soul than a face, and on that account I have never been able to make her outward form quite present to myself. The eyes were soft as flowers, the lips rather pale, but charmingly arched. She wore a silk dressing-gown of a corn-flour blue colour, and in that consisted her entire clothing; neck and feet were naked, and through the thin delicate garment now and then peeped stealthily the slender tenderness of the limbs. Nor can I make plain the words we said to one another; I only know that we betrothed each other, and that we chatted with one another, gay and familiar and open-hearted, like bridegroom and bride, almost like brother and sister. Often we left off talking, and gazed into each other's eyes; we spent whole eternities so. What waked me I cannot say, but I revelled for a long time in the after-feeling of these love-blisses. I was long, as it were, intoxicated with ineffable delight, the pining depth of my heart was filled with bliss, a hitherto unknown joy seemed poured over all my emotions, and I remained glad and joyful, though I never saw the beloved form in my dreams again. But had I not enjoyed whole eternities in her gaze? and she knew me too well not to be aware that I do not like repetitions."

"Truly," exclaimed Maria, "you are an homme à bonne fortune. But, tell me, was Mademoiselle Laurence a marble statue or a painting—was she dead or a dream?"

"Perhaps she was all these together," answered Maximilian, very earnestly.

"I can imagine, dear friend, that this sweetheart was of very doubtful character. And when will you tell me the history?"

"To-morrow. It is too long, and I am tired to-night. I have just come from the opera, and have too much music in my ears."

"You often go to the opera now, and I think, Max, you go there more to see than to hear."

"You are not mistaken, Maria; I go to the opera, indeed, to look at the faces of the beautiful Italian women. In truth, they are beautiful enough outside the theatre, and a connoisseur in faces could easily trace in the ideality of their features the influence which the arts have had on the physique of the Italian people. Nature has taken back from the artists the capital she once lent, and see how delightfully the interest has increased! Nature, who once furnished the artists with their model, now on her side copies the masterpieces which have thus arisen. The sense of the beautiful has permeated the whole people, and as once the flesh on the spirit, so now the spirit works on the flesh. The devotion paid before those fair Madonnas and lovely altar-pieces, which impress themselves on the mind of the bridegroom, while the bride bears a handsome saint in her ardent heart, is not fruitless. From this affinity a race has arisen still fairer than the gracious earth on which it flourishes, and the sunny sky that is as bright around it as a golden frame. The men do not interest me much when they are not painted or sculptured, and I resign to you, Maria, all possible enthusiasm in regard to those handsome, supple Italians, who have such wild-black beards, such bold noble noses, and such soft subtle eyes. They say the Lombards are the most handsome men. I have never made any investigations on the subject, but I have earnestly considered the Lombardy women, and they, I have noted well, are indeed as beautiful as report announces. Even in the middle ages they must have been tolerably beautiful. It is said of Francis I. that the fame of the beauty of the Milanese women was a secret motive which impelled him to the Italian campaign; the chivalrous king was certainly curious whether the kinsfolk of his spiritual muses were really as beautiful as fame reported. Poor rogue! he had to atone dearly for this curiosity at Pavia!

"But how beautiful they are, these Italian women, when music illuminates their countenances! I say 'illuminates,' because the effect of the music, which I marked in the opera, on the faces of the beautiful women altogether resembled those light-and-shade effects which surprise us so when we look at statues by torch-light at night-time. These marble forms reveal to us then, with terrifying truth, their indwelling spirit and their horrible dumb secrets. In the same way the whole life of the fair Italian women becomes known to us when we see them in the opera; the changing melodies wake in their souls a succession of emotions, memories, wishes, scandals, which visibly speak in the movements of their features, in their blushes, in their pallors, and even in their eyes. He who knows how to read them may then see in their faces many very sweet and interesting things—histories as remarkable as Boccaccio's tales, emotions as tender as Petrarch's sonnets, caprices as full of adventure as Ariosto's ottaverime, sometimes, too, fearful treachery and sublime wickedness as poetic as Dante's Inferno. It is worth while to gaze at the boxes. If the men would only express their enthusiasm meanwhile with less frightful sounds! This mad noise in an Italian theatre often annoys me. But music is the soul of these men, their life, their national business. In other countries, certainly, there are musicians who equal the greatest Italian masters, but there is no other musical nation. Here, in Italy, music is not represented by individuals; it manifests itself in the whole population; music has become a nation. With us in the north it is quite different; there music only becomes a man, and is called Mozart or Meyerbeer; and when, moreover, they would accurately investigate what is the best that this northern music offers us, they find it in Italian sunshine and orange-perfume; and much rather than to our Germany those belong to fair Italy, the home of music. Yes, Italy will always be the home of music, even though her great maestri descend early into the grave or become dumb—even though Bellini dies and Rossini keeps silence."

"Indeed," remarked Maria, "Rossini has preserved a very long silence. If I do not mistake, he has been silent for ten years."

"Perhaps that is a joke on his part," answered Maximilian. "He wishes to show that the title, "Swan of Pesaro," which has been conferred upon him, is quite unsuitable. Swans sing at the end of their lives, but Rossini has left off singing in the middle of his life. And I believe that he has done well in that, and shown, even by that, that he is a genius. The artist who has only talent retains to the end of his life the impulse to exercise that talent; ambition stimulates him; he feels that he is constantly perfecting himself, and he is compelled to strive after the highest. But genius has already accomplished the highest; it is content; it contemns the world and small ambition, and goes home to Stratford-on-Avon, like William Shakespeare, or walks about the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and laughs and jokes, like Giacomo Rossini. If genius has a not altogether badly constituted body, it lives on in this way for a good while after it has given forth its masterpieces, or, as people express it, after it has fulfilled its mission. It is owing to a prepossession that people say that genius must die early; I think that from the thirtieth to the thirty-fourth year has been indicated as the most dangerous period for genius. How often have I bantered poor Bellini on this subject, and playfully prophesied that, being a genius, and having reached that dangerous age, he must soon die. Singular! in spite of the playful tone, he tormented himself about this prophecy; he called me his jettatore, his evil eye, and always made the jettatore sign. He so wished to live, he had an almost passionate hatred of death: he would hear nothing of dying; he was frightened of it as a child who is afraid to sleep in the dark.... He was a good, dear child, often rather naughty, but then one only needed to threaten him with an early death, and he would immediately draw in, and entreat, and make with his two raised fingers the jettatore sign. Poor Bellini!"

"So you knew him personally? Was he handsome?"

"He was not ugly. You see, we cannot answer affirmatively when anyone asks us such a question about our own sex. He had a tall, slender figure, which moved in an elegant, I might say a coquettish, manner; always a quatre épingles; a long, regular face, with a pale rosiness; very fair, almost golden, hair, put into small curls; very high noble brows, a straight nose, pale blue eyes, a beautifully-chiselled mouth, a round chin. His features had something vague and characterless; something like milk, and in this milk-face often mingled, half sweet, half bitter, an expression of sorrow. This expression of sorrow compensated for the want of soul in Bellini's face, but it was a sorrow without depth; it glistened in the eyes without poetry, it played passionless about his lips. The young Maestro seemed anxious to make this flat, languid sorrow conspicuous in his whole person. His hair was curled in such a fanciful, melancholy way, his clothes sat so languidly about his frail body, he carried his little Spanish cane in so idyllic a way, that he always reminded me of the affected young shepherds with their be-ribboned sticks, and bright-coloured jackets, and pantaloons that we see in our pastorals. And his gait was so young-lady-like, so elegiac, so ethereal. The whole man looked like a sigh en escarpins. He had received much applause among women, but I doubt if he anywhere awakened a strong passion. In himself his appearance had something comically unenjoyable, the reason of which lay in his way of speaking French. Although Bellini had lived many years in France, he spoke the language so badly, that even in England it could scarcely be spoken worse. I ought not to call it 'bad;' bad is here much too good. One must call it awful, a violation, something enough to overturn the world. Yes, when one was in society with him, and he mangled the poor French words like an executioner, and displayed, unmoved, his colossal coq-à-l'âne, one thought sometimes that the world must fall in with a crash of thunder. The stillness of the grave reigned on the whole room; a death agony was painted on all faces in chalk or in vermilion; the ladies were uncertain whether to faint or to escape; the gentlemen gazed in alarm at their trousers, to convince themselves that they actually had them on; and what was most horrible, this fright raised at the same time a convulsive desire to laugh, which could hardly be suppressed. So that when one was in Bellini's society, his presence inspired a certain anxiety, which by a horrible charm was at once repellant and attractive. Often his involuntary calembours were merely amusing, and in their droll insipidity reminded one of the castle of his fellow-countryman, the Prince of Pallagonia, which Goethe in his Italian Journey has described as a museum of uncouth distortions and absurd deformities. As Bellini on such occasions always imagined he had said something quite harmless and earnest, his face and his words formed the maddest contrast. That which displeased me in his face came at such moments specially prominent. What I disliked could not be exactly described as something lacking, and may not have been displeasing to women at all. Bellini's face, like his whole appearance, had that physical freshness, that bloom of flesh, that rosiness which makes a disagreeable impression on me—on me, because I like much more what is death-like and marble. Later on, when I had known him a long time, I felt some liking for Bellini. This arose after I had observed that his character was thoroughly noble and good. His soul was certainly pure and unspotted by any hateful contagion. And he was not wanting in that good-natured, childlike quality which we never miss in men of genius, even if they do not wear it as an outward show.

"Yes, I remember," Maximilian pursued, sinking down on the chair, on the back of which he had been hitherto leaning—"I remember one moment when Bellini appeared in so amiable a light, that I gazed on him with pleasure, and resolved to become more intimately acquainted with him. But, unhappily, it was the last time I should see him in this life. It was one evening after we had been dining together at the house of a great lady who had the smallest foot in Paris. We were very merry, and the sweetest melodies rang out from the piano. I see him still, the good-natured Bellini, as, at last, exhausted with the mad Bellinism that he chattered, he sank into a seat.... It was a very low one, so that Bellini found himself sitting at the foot, as it were, of a beautiful lady, stretched on a sofa opposite, who gazed down on him with a sweet, malicious delight, as he worked off some French expressions to entertain her, and was compelled, as usual, to communicate what he had said in his Sicilian jargon to show that it was no sottise, but, on the contrary, the most delicate flattery. I think the fair lady paid little attention to Bellini's conversation. She had taken from his hand the little Spanish cane with which he often used to assist his weak rhetoric, and was making use of it for a calm destruction of the elegant curl-edifice on the young Maestro's brows. But this wanton occupation was well repaid by the smile which gave her face an expression which I have seen on no other living human countenance. That face will never leave my memory! It was one of those faces which belong more to the kingdom of poetry than to the crude reality of life, contours which remind one of Da Vinci—that noble oval, with the naïve cheek-dimples and the sentimental pointed chin of the Lombard school. The colouring was more soft and Roman, with the dull gleam of pearls, a distinguished pallor, morbidezza. In short, it was one of those faces which can only be found in early Italian portraits, which, perhaps, represent those great ladies with whom the Italian artists of the sixteenth century were in love when they created their masterpieces, of whom the poets of those days thought when they sang themselves immortal, and which kindled German and French heroes with desire when they girded on their swords and started across the Alps in search of great deeds. Yes, it was such a face, and on it played a smile of sweetest, malicious delight and most delicate wantonness, as she, the fair lady, with the point of the little Spanish cane destroyed the blonde curls on the good-natured Bellini's brows. At that moment Bellini seemed to me as if touched by an enchanted wand, as if transformed, and he was at once akin to my heart. His face shone with the reflection of that smile; it was, perhaps, the most joyful moment of his life. I shall never forget it. Fourteen days afterwards I read in the papers that Italy had lost one of her most famous sons!

"Strange! At the same time Paganini's death was announced. About his death I had no doubt, for the old, ash-coloured Paganini always looked like a dying man; but the death of the young, rosy Bellini seemed to me incredible. And yet the news of the death of the first was only a newspaper error; Paganini is safe and sound at Genoa, and Bellini lies in his grave at Paris!"

"Do you like Paganini?" asked Maria. "He is the ornament of his country," answered Maximilian, "and deserves the most distinguished mention in speaking of the musical notabilities of Italy."

"I have never seen him," Maria remarked, "but according to report his outward appearance does not altogether satisfy the sense of beauty. I have seen portraits of him."

"Which are all different," broke in Maximilian; "they either make him uglier or handsomer than he is; they do not give his actual appearance. I believe that only one man has succeeded in putting Paganini's true physiognomy on to paper—a deaf painter, Lyser by name, who, in a frenzy full of genius, has, with a few strokes of chalk, so well hit Paganini's head that one is at the same time amused and terrified at the truth of the drawing. 'The devil guided my hand,' the deaf painter said to me, chuckling mysteriously, and nodding his head with good-natured irony in the way he generally accompanied his genial witticisms. This painter was, however, a wonderful old fellow; in spite of his deafness he was enthusiastically fond of music, and he knew how, when near enough to the orchestra, to read the music on the musicians' faces, and to judge the more or less skilful execution by the movements of their fingers; indeed, he wrote critiques on the opera for an excellent journal at Hamburg. And is that peculiarly wonderful? In the visible symbols of the performance the deaf painter could see the sounds. There are men to whom the sounds themselves are invisible symbols in which they hear colours and forms."