-

Church Establishment, in a temperate examination of the best mode of re-arranging its revenues, as far as that re-arrangement may be needed, will at once unmask the insidious friendship of those who abolitionists at heart-still talk the smoother language of reform; and, by forcing them to declare their views openly, show how very insignificant a portion of the educated and influential classes of the community are inclined to sever the few remaining and almost imperceptible links which unite the Church and State. Nor do we consider this urgent cry of 'peace! peace!' applicable only to the avowed or secret enemies of the Established Church. If any zealous but imprudent and short-sighted knot of churchmen should endeavour to rouse a spirit of resistance among the clergy to a fair and candid examination of the Church, with a view to such correction, as may be practicable, of its imperfections;-if they should attempt to embarrass the government the only government the country can have, that still retains a profound respect for the ancient institutions of the country-they will be the worst enemies of that Establishment, of which they declare themselves the devoted champions. If, on the other hand, such discussions are carried on with openness, candour, and real liberality, with a fair statement of difficulties, and a tranquil consideration of the remedies proposed, the Establishment of the country will rally round it all the good sense, the moderation, the wisdom, we will venture to say, the genuine Christianity of the country; for the real Christianity of the Dissenters themselves will then have the courage and the justice to disclaim the sentiments of the more violent and factious of that body. When the alternative is fairly placed before the country between an Established Church and the Volun tary System, we have too much confidence in the wisdom of the English nation at large, to have the slightest apprehension of appealing to, and of abiding by, its deliberate and solemn decision.

ART. VIII.-Zur Geschichte der Neueren Schönen Literatur in Deutschland, von Henri Heine. Th. 1 und 2. Paris and Leipzig. 1833.

IT has frequently been made a question, whether the Germans have any well-founded pretensions to wit; and it seemed till lately pretty generally agreed that the maintenance of the national honour in this respect had devolved exclusively on Jean Paul, whose sallies come flashing through his mysticism, like lightning through clouds. Within the last five years, however, a new star

has

has appeared in the literary hemisphere of Germany,-malign in its influence, wavering in its orbit, and unsteady in its light, but sparkling all over with a brilliancy which soon occasioned all eyes and glasses to be turned upon it. Henry Heine came out as a poet and prose-writer-first with his Reisebilder, next with his Contributions towards the Literary History of his Contemporariesand speedily gained for himself the reputation of being one of the cleverest, if not wittiest, writers of his day. We say, for himself— no man having ever been more exclusively the architect of his own reputation than Heine; for at starting he wantonly provoked a whole host of detractors by his impertinences-and, by his hardly concealed contempt for existing creeds and establishments, he has often managed to reduce even his most ardent admirers to the condition of apologists. At the present moment, he is regarded as a regular outlaw, a downright caput lupinum, in the literary circles of Germany, where his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against him.' Yet we believe him to be possessed of many noble and generous qualities (as, indeed, what man of true genius is not?) -we are told that he is now eagerly striving to work himself pure— and nourish a strong hope that he will come round, ere long, to a due sense of the evil of his ways. But the undoubted ability of his writings, apart from their tendency, will amply justify the passing notice we are about to take of the volume named at the head of this paper-a work much better fitted for our purpose than the Reisebilder, which, as the name partly imports, is a mere collection of thoughts, fancies, images, and descriptions, picked up or suggested during journeys to well-known places of resort-acute, lively, and graphic, but wild, wandering, and desultory. The volume now before us, on the contrary, is the commencement of a regular critical history of the recent German literature, addressed, indeed, to French readers, and professedly composed as a suppliment to Madame de Staël's celebrated De L'Allemagne,' but not the less adapted to England on that account; for we believe the two nations (always excepting our inner circle of adepts) are much upon a par as regards the peculiar kind of information conveyed by Heine, and still look equally to Madame de Staël as their principal authority on all matters connected with the belleslettres and philosophy of Germany. Yet it is clear to demonstration, that mighty changes have been effected since she wrote; and it would be by no means difficult to prove that she had at best but a superficial acquaintance with the subjects about which she discourses so pleasantly. Robert Hall says he threw aside the book disdainfully on finding her, in her account of the metaphysicians, coolly setting down a well-known idealist among the

realists;

realists; and it is still related, as characteristic of her style of inquiry in Germany, that her first address to Schelling was:Monsieur, voudriez-vous bien m'expliquer votre système en peu de mots? Her accounts of books, also, are singularly defective; her analysis of Faust, for instance, shows that she had never read above a third of it. But on the subject of Madame's merits and demerits Heine himself shall speak

Madame de Staël's Germany is the only comprehensive piece of information which the French have received as to the intellectual life of Germany; and yet, since the appearance of this book, a long period has elapsed, and an entirely new literature has developed itself in Germany. Is it but a transient literature? Is it already in the sere and yellow leaf? Opinions are divided upon these points. Most believe that, with the death of Goethe, a new literary period begins in Germany; that old Germany is gone with him to the grave; that the aristocratic season of literature is at an end, the democratic, beginning; or, as a French journalist lately expressed it, "The spirit of individuals has ceased, the spirit of all has commenced." As to myself, I cannot so confidently decide on the future evolutions of the German mind. The termination of the Goethe period of art, by which name I first designated this period, I had for many years foreseen. I might well prophesy! I had a thorough knowledge of the ways and means of those unquiet ones, who would fain make an end of the Goethe dynasty; and in the risings of that time against Goethe, I myself was certainly to be seen. Now that Goethe is dead, a strange pang comes over me to think of it.

As I announce these pages as a continuation, in some sort, of Madame de Staël's work, I am obliged, whilst honouring the instruction derivable from it, to recommend, notwithstanding, a certain caution in the use of it, and most particularly to proclaim it a coterie book. Madame de Staël, of glorious memory, has here, in the form of a book, opened, as it were, a drawing-room, in which she received German authors, and gave them an opportunity of familiarizing themselves with the civilized world of France; but in the hubbub of the most various voices which cry from out this book, clear above all is heard the fine descant of Mr. A. W. Schlegel. Where she is all herself, where the magnanimous Madame speaks out directly with her own whole heart-even with the entire fire-work of her own brilliant absurdities-there, good and excellent is the production. But so soon as she

*He added, when something was said about the flights of her fancy, that for his part, he could not admire her flights, for to him she was generally invisible; not because she ascended to a great height above the earth, but because she invariably selected a foggy atmosphere.'-Gregory's Life of Hall, p. 235.

The same mode of inquiry seems to have been adopted by M. Thiers during his ten days' journey to England in 1833, in which time he pledged himself to the citizenking to learn all that was worth learning concerning us. He wrote as follows to a gentleman then connected with the Treasury:

Mon cher Monsieur,-Pourriez-vous me donner un petit quart d'heure pour m'expliquer le système financier de votre pays? Tout à vous, THIERS.

lends

lends an ear to others' whisperings; so soon as she does homage to a school, whose very existence is altogether foreign and incomprehensible to her; so soon as, by extolling this school, she is detected in forwarding certain ultramontane tendencies, which are in direct contradiction with her own protestant clearness-then, is her book poor and uncongenial.'

The school in question is the Romantic school: but this differed very widely from the romantic school in France, of which Victor Hugo is now regarded as the chief:

เ

But what was the Romantic school in Germany? It was nothing else but the re-awakening of the poetry of the middle ages, as manifested in their songs, paintings, buildings, in their art, and in their life. But this poetry had proceeded from Christianity; it was a passion-flower, sprung from the blood of Christ. I know not whether the melancholy flower, which we call passion-flower in Germany, bears the same name in France, nor whether the same mystic origin is attributed to it by popular tradition. It is that strangely coloured flower in whose chalice we see copied the instruments of martyrdom employed at the crucifixion, namely, hammer, pincers, nails, &c.--a flower which is not altogether hateful but only spectral, nay, whose aspect actually excites a gloomy pleasure in the soul, like the convulsively sweet sensations which spring from pain itself. In this point of view this flower would be the most appropriate symbol for Christianity, whose most awful charm consists in the very enjoyment of pain.

Although in France the Roman faith alone is understood to be included under the name Christianity, [!!!] I must most particularly declare beforehand that I am speaking only of the Roman Catholic faith. I speak of that religion in whose first dogmas a proscription of all flesh is contained; which not merely assigns to the spirit a dominion over the flesh, but even aims at totally depriving the one of life, to give supremacy to the other: I speak of that religion through whose unnatural exposition sin and hypocrisy came into the world, since even by the proscription of the flesh the most innocent sensual gratifications became sin, and, in consequence of the impossibility of being all spirit, hypocrisy inevitably sprung up: I speak of that religion which likewise, through the doctrine of the utter worthlessness of all earthly goods, through the dog-humility and angel-patience enjoined by it, soon became everywhere the most approved prop of despotism. Men have now learnt the real nature of this religion; they are no longer to be satisfied with pointings to heaven; they know that the material, too, has its good, and is not entirely of the devil; and they now vindicate the enjoyment of earth, this lovely garden of God, our inalienable inheritance. Simply because we now so thoroughly comprehend the consequences of that absolute spirituality, may we also believe that Roman Catholic Christianity, as regards its worldly policy, has reached its acme. For every age is a sphynx which throws itself from the rock so soon as its riddle has been guessed.

'I am here, however, by no means denying the benefits conferred

on

on Europe by Catholicism. It was necessary as a wholesome reaction against the gloomy colossal materialism which had unfolded itself in the Roman empire, and threatened to annihilate all the spiritual excellence of man. As the loose memoirs of the preceding century form, as it were, the pièces justificatives of the French revolution; as the terrorism of a Committee of Public Safety appears to us a necessary medicine, after reading the confessions of the patrician world of France subsequent to the Regency; just so is the wholesomeness of the ascetic spirituality recognized after reading Petronius or Apuleius, books which may be regarded as the pièces justificatives of Catholicism. The flesh had become so wanton in this Roman world, that the monastic discipline might well be necessary to mortify it. After the feast of a Trimalchion, there was need of a fasting regimen.'

He proceeds to specify the effects of this spirit upon the romantic literature of the middle ages, in which he thinks self-denial too rigidly inculcated; excepting, however, he might have made abundance of exceptions-Gottfried of Strasburg, who, by the way, is supposed to be the author of the book which lured Dante's Paulo and Francesca into sin. Music, painting, and architecture, suffered, he says, from the same cause; but it will be sufficient to quote what he says about the last :

'The art of building bore the same character as the other arts in the middle ages; as, indeed, at that time all manifestations of life harmonized most surprisingly with one another. Here, in architecture, is exhibited the same parabolical tendency as in poetry. When we now enter an old cathedral, we hardly feel any longer the exterior sense of its stone-work symbolicism. Only the general impression strikes immediately into the soul. We here feel the elevation of the spirit, and the prostration of the flesh. The interior of the cathedral is itself a hollow cross, and we there walk in the very instrument of martyrdom; the variegated windows cast their red lights upon us, like drops of blood; funeral hymns are trembling round us; under our feet, tombstones and corruption; and the spirit struggles, with the colossal pillars, towards heaven, painfully tearing itself asunder from the body, which drops, like a worn-out garment, to the ground.

When we look upon it from the outside, this same Gothic cathedral, these enormous piles of building, which are so airy, so fine, so ornamental, so transparently elaborated, that one might suppose them carved out, that one might take them for Brabant points of marble: then do we first truly feel the power of that age, which knew how to obtain such a mastery over stone itself, that it seems almost spectrally instinct with spirit, that this hardest of material things expresses the spiritualism of Christianity.'

Coleridge had probably something of the same sort in his mind, when he said that an old Gothic cathedral always looked to him like a petrified religion. Heine continues:

But the arts are nothing but the mirrors of life, and as Catho-, licism was extinguished in life, so also did it grow faint and die away