In contrast with this chapter is the one on the Berrys, which is full of interesting details in regard to those remarkable women, and reveals a pathetic history hardly to have been expected in connection with the amusing gossip that has hitherto clustered around their names.
But by far the most interesting paper is that on Heinrich Heine. A letter from an English lady whom Heine had known and petted in her childhood, and who visited the poet in his last days, when he himself, wasted by disease, "seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet that covered him," gives what is perhaps the most lifelike picture we have ever had of a nature that seems equally to court and to baffle comprehension. Lord Houghton has little to add, on this subject, from his personal recollections; but his comments upon it evince perhaps as close a study and sagacious criticism, if not as much subtlety of thought, as Matthew Arnold's famous essay. The following passage, for example, sums up very felicitously the social aspect of Germany, and its influence on Heine: "The poem of 'Deutschland' is the one of his works where his humor runs over into the coarsest satire, and the malice can only be excused by the remembrance that he too had been exposed to some of the evil influences of a servile condition. Among these may no doubt be reckoned the position of a man of commercial origin and literary occupation in his relation to the upper order of society in the northern parts of Germany. ...Here there remained, and after all the events of the last year there still remains, sufficient element of discontent to justify the recorded expression of a philosophic German statesman, that 'in Prussia the war of classes had still to be fought out.'"
Of the other papers in the volume, those on Humboldt, Landor and Sydney Smith, though readable, contain little to supplement the biographies and correspondence that have long been before the world; while the one on "Suleiman Pasha" (Colonel Selves) suggests a doubt whether Lord Houghton has always taken pains to sift the information he has so eagerly accumulated. When we find him stating that the siege of Lyons occurred under the Directory—which it preceded by a year or two; that his hero, then seven years old, "grew up," entered the navy, was present at the battle of Trafalgar (1805), and, subsequently enlisted "in the Army of Italy, then flushed with triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits"—language indicating the campaign of 1796-97; that "soon after his enrollment in the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise [acquired apparently on shipboard] was of the greatest use and brought him into general notice"—making him, we may infer, a special favorite of Bonaparte;—we can easily believe that these things were related, as he tells us they were, "with epic simplicity," and may even conclude that some other qualities of the epic would to more cautious ears have been equally perceptible in the narration. Of a like character, we suspect, is the statement that Selves, being on the staff of Grouchy on the day of Waterloo, "urgently represented to that general the propriety of joining the main body of the army as soon as the Prussians, whom he had been sent to intercept, were out of sight." Lord Houghton has evidently not read the best and most recent criticisms on the Waterloo campaign, but he should at least have known that Grouchy was sent, not to intercept, but to follow the Prussians in their retreat from Ligny, and that, if he lost sight of them, it was because, instead of falling back on their own line of communication, as Napoleon had expected them to do, they turned off to effect a junction with the English army.
Books Received.
Key to North American Birds: containing a concise account of every species of living and fossil bird at present known from the continent north of the Mexican and United States boundary. Illustrated by six steel plates and upward of two hundred and fifty wood-cuts. By Elliott Coues, Assistant Surgeon United States Army. Salem: Naturalists' Agency.
Modern Diabolism, commonly called Modern Spiritualism, with New Theories of Light, Heat, Electricity and Sound. By M.J. Williamson. New York: James Miller.
The True Method of Representation in Large Constituencies. By C.C.P. Clarke of Oswego, N.Y. New York: Baker & Godwin.
On the Eve: A Tale. By Ivan S. Turgénieff. Translated from the Russian by C.E. Turner. New York: Holt & Williams.
The Prophecies of Isaiah: A New and Critical Translation. By Franz Delitzsch, D.D. Philadelphia: The Lutheran Bookstore.