[The English Fragments, from which three chapters have been selected for this volume, were published in 1828 in a German magazine of which Heine was one of the editors. They were collected and published with important additions (including the following chapters) in 1831. Mr. Leland's translation, revised throughout, has been here used.]
LONDON.
I HAVE seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit; I have seen it, and am more astonished then ever—and still there remains fixed in my memory that stone forest of houses, and amid them the rushing stream of faces, of living human faces, with all their motley passions, all their terrible impulses of love, of hunger, and of hate—I am speaking of London.
Send a philosopher to London, but no poet! Send a philosopher there, and stand him at a corner of Cheapside, he will learn more there than from all the books of the last Leipzig fair; and as the human waves roar around him, so will a sea of new thoughts rise before him, and the Eternal Spirit which moves upon the face of the waters will breathe upon him; the most hidden secrets of social harmony will be suddenly revealed to him, he will hear the pulse of the world beat audibly, and see it visibly—for, if London is the right hand of the world—its active, mighty right hand—then we may regard that that which leads from the Exchange to Downing Street is the world's radial artery.
But send no poet to London! This downright earnestness of all things, this colossal uniformity, this machine-like movement, this moroseness even in pleasure, this exaggerated London, smothers the imagination and rends the heart. And should you ever send a German poet thither—a dreamer, who stands staring at every single phenomenon, even a ragged beggar-woman, or a shining jeweller's shop—why, then he will find things going badly with him, and he will be hustled about on every side, or even be knocked over with a mild "God damn!" God damn!—the damned pushing! I soon saw that these people have much to do. They live on a large scale, and though food and clothes are dearer with them than with us, they must still be better fed and clothed than we are—as gentility requires. Moreover, they have enormous debts, yet occasionally in a vain-glorious mood they make ducks and drakes of their guineas, pay other nations to fight for their pleasure, give their respective kings a handsome douceur into the bargain—and, therefore, John Bull must work day and night to get the money for such expenses; by day and by night he must tax his brain to discover new machines, and he sits and reckons in the sweat of his brow, and runs and rushes without looking about much from the Docks to the Exchange, and from the Exchange to the Strand, and, therefore, it is quite pardonable if, when a poor German poet, gazing into a print-shop window, stands in his way at the corner of Cheapside, he should knock him aside with a rather rough "God damn!"
But the picture at which I was gazing as I stood at the corner of Cheapside, was that of the passage of the French across the Beresina.
And when, jolted out of my gazing, I looked again on the raging street, where a parti-coloured coil of men, women, and children, horses, stage-coaches, and with them a funeral, whirled groaning and creaking along, it seemed to me as though all London were such a Beresina Bridge, where every one presses on in mad haste to save his scrap of life, where the daring rider stamps down the poor pedestrian, where every one who falls is lost forever; where the best friends rush, without feeling, over each other's corpses, and where thousands, weak and bleeding, grasp in vain at the planks of the bridge, and slide down into the ice-pit of death.
How much more pleasant and homelike it is in our dear Germany! How dreamily comfortable, how Sabbatically quiet all things glide along here! Calmly the sentinels are changed, uniforms and houses shine in the quiet sunshine, swallows flit over the flag-stones, fat court-councilloresses smile from the windows, while along the echoing streets there is room enough for the dogs to sniff at each other, and for men to stand at ease and chat about the theatre, and bow low—oh, how low!—when some small aristocratic scamp or vice-scamp, with coloured ribbons on his shabby coat, or some powdered and gilded court-marshal struts by, graciously returning salutations!
I had made up my mind not to be astonished at that immensity of London of which I had heard so much. But it happened to me as to the poor school-boy, who had made up his mind not to feel the whipping he was to receive. The facts of the case were, that he expected to get the usual blows with the usual stick in the usual way on the back, whereas he received a most unusually severe thrashing on an unusual place with a slender switch. I anticipated great palaces, and saw nothing but mere small houses. But their very uniformity and their limitless extent are wonderfully impressive.