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Some gentlemen ,, travelling from Strasbourg to Freybury , stopped at the village of Altenh « lm , in Baden , at an inn kept by a respectable man who farmed his own estate of 100 acres . Perceiving how loaded tlie trees of his orchard were , the English gentleman spoke of the great crop of apples and of cider . The German informed them that no cider was made in that couutry ; the juice was mixed with the juice of grapes , and made into wine . And next , to Mr . Koberts ' s historical note on criminal ordeals : — In the year 1613 , there lived in the country , on the southern , border of Somerset , near Wambrook , a Master Babb , who advanced his suit to marry a widow near Taunton . She gave him a refusal ; but he afterwards secreted himself in her brewhouse , in order to have an opportunity of again preferring his suit . The widow , when she heard his offer , exclaimed , in the emphatic language of the time , " Have thee , base rascal ? No ! " and struck him on the head with a pewter candlestick . Babb killed her with sixteen wounds , and put the knife in a wound , and in her hand , to make it be believed it was a case of self-destruction .
Mr . Warre , an-influential magistrate of Hestercombe House , a seat near Taunton , believed the common opinion of the time , that if the murderer touched the corpse of liis victim the blood would immediately flow from the wound , and discover the guilty . This active magistrate caused the body to be disinterred , that all the inhabitants living within a circle of three miles might assemble to touch the body , and go through this painful ordeal . Babb ran away to escape this dreadfnl mode of testing each neighbouring inhabitant's innocence . His racking conscience left him no repose : he returned and yielded himself up to justice . The Assizes for Somerset were held at Chard in 1613 , where Babb was tried , and received sentence . He was hanged near Wambrook . Sir Symonds D ' Ewes went to see the execution from his school , or from Coaxden Hall , which is at a short distance only from the former place .
These manners were consistent with the prejudices of an age in which potatoes were denounced as the cause of leprosy , and coals as the ori g in of the plague . " N"o potatoes , no Popery ! " was a popular cry . Stow himself declared that God would punish those who built towers to their houses . Mr . Roberts ' s volume , though not written with any special purpose , is , to some extent , directed against the idea that the England of the Tudors was preferable to . the England of our own days . Certainly j the good old times will not bear close inspection . If any reader be sceptical on this point , or , whether sceptical or not , be . in search of a book by which to be at once amused and informed , " TheSocialHistory of the Southern Counties" will satisfy him .
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RECOLLECTIONS OF HEINE . Heinrich Heine . Erinnerungen von Alfred 3 feissner . ( Recollections of Heinrich Heine , by Alfred Meissner . ) Triibner and Co . It is the base habit of us mortals generally , to enjoy things first and find fault with them afterwards , to reap some pleasant fruit from other men ' s doings and then cry out against them as misdoings . Thus we , after running through these Recollections of Heine with considerable interest , and gathering from them several details which enable us to correct or fill up the picture of him in our imagination , axe inclined , now we lay down Herr Meissner s book , to blame him for falling into the temptation of bookmaking , and diluting , into a volume the matter which might easily have been conveyed in an article . But since , after all , the volume is a small one , and is written . agreeably enough ^ , we repress our critical impulse , and prefer noticing with satisfaction the at onoe sympathetic and impartial spirit in which these Recollections are written . Herr Meissner is himself a poet , and what is more , n poet with whom Heine never quarrelled ; during several long visits to
Paris he was a frequent visitor , and in the intervals a constant correspondent of Heine ' s ; and he saw him both alone and in the society of others at different stages of his seven years * lingering death ; so that he gives us the « xj > erience of an appreciatory friend , and not the gossip of a tourist or a lion-hunter . The fact that this experience was always personally agreeable to himself has not prevented him from forming a sober estimate of Heine , and he does not discredit his own testimony by iudiscriminating laudation . Considering his opportunities , we might have expected a greater amount of positive material in these Recollections ., if we had not remembered how fragmentary and often incommunicable are the particulars from which we build up our conception even of many whom we call our intimate friends . Herr Meissner , however , has the power of Reproducing such particulars with considerable vividness , and from his successive sketches , for which he assures us ho has not drawn on his memory , but on notes carefully made while a scene or conversation was fresh in his mind , the reader may very well gather an idea of Heine ' s habits and entourage at diUcrent epochs during the later years of his life .
Nothing could be more common-place than Heine ' s Paris home—three small rooms on the third story , moderately furnished , and looking on a narrow , dimly-lighted court . The sitting-room had the usual Avhitc marble ohimney-pieee , with the inevitable Parisian mirror and vases filled with artificial flowers ; and this chimney-piece was the most striking object in the room . All that seemed exceptional about thia home Avas , that when you knocked at the door , it was opened by an old pock-markud ncgresa , in a motley silk turban , and you heard tho screaming of n parrot from Madame I lei no ' s room . And what sort of woman , was Madame Heine ? Ilure is Mcissncr ' s answer to this question : —
It ia possibles to bo of opinion that Heine ought to have made a rii / lcrcut choice , but it muHt bo admitted that Ihm marriage was characteristic and poetic , lie had lived several , years with his wifo—CroHcenee Mathilda Mirat was her full name—without being married to her . It wiw one of those unioiiH which arc ho frequent in Paris that they are almost legitimized in the eyes of the world , and arc culled vivnuyvx J ' arisittH 8 . Innumerable nro the marriages of thin kiiiti , especially among artists ; the woman enjoys all the . rights of n legitiinato wifo , and only thu moat intimutu friends know that the ecclesiastical blowing and tbo civil contract aro wanting . It ia only after tho lapse of Home yoaia—usually when thcru arc children and t | io parents become more closely linked together—that , tho sanction of tho church is nought for , and that happens as with Uerangor , Avho in a similar way lived for yoaiu with hia much oung Liactto : — " Cos deux tfponx out mis on fin Do l ' ottu brinito dans lour vin . "
Heine had . no children ; but , on the other Jiand f there was another reason for his completing his marriage in the strictest form . It was the duel with Herr . S . Ia order that Matilda might not be unprovided for , that his relatives ; might take ' care of her , in case of his death , he made her his wife Matilda ' s nature was the simplest , and her amusements the . most harmless conceivable . To chat with her parrot , with Pauline , her companion—to take a drive every day in ; the Champs Elyse ' , and then tell what she had seen—this was her life . Heine had a true horror of a learned and strong-minded woman , a blue-stocking , and a feminina reasoner ; Matilda attached him by her innocent chat , her cheerful disposition , and her excellent heart . She had a crucifix and a small waxen Jesus in her room , ami kept "up the practice of prayer in which she had been bred . Heine never disturbed her in these habits . " She is a child , a perfect child ! " he used to say ; and he was rights . . . . In his last years Heine required two nurses , so much was there to be done for him : almost uninterruptedly . It is evident that the active- assistance of his wife was thus
rendered superfluous . Nevertheless , she sat by his bed , held his hand in hers ,. watched by him , did not leave him . But he , roguish in the midst of his suffering , made the drollest accusations against her with half-suppressed laughter . "Ah ! what « . night was last night ! " he said one morning . ' " I was not able to close my eyes . We had a misfortune in the house ; the cat fell down the chimney and grazed her right ear . It even bled a little . Such a crying and wailing ! My good Matilda sat up and applied cold bandages to the cat all night . She never sat up on my account . " . . . But this was only the summer lightning of his playful nature . When I remember , and weigh everything , I believe that the poet loved his Matilda more than any being on earth . On his sick-bed , under the severest pains , his thoughts were constantly directed to . the means of protecting her dignity befoi-e the world , and giving her a secure position for the remainder of her life . It was his perpetual regret that , in . the days of his prosperity , he had been too improvident , and had saved nothing ; and
he sought with all his powers to remedy this omission . It was only for h . er sake that he strung up his last energies for work , and every clause in his Will bears witness to a solicitude which extended beyond his own death . She was his doll , whom he loved to adorn in silk and lace , and whom he -would willingly have dressed in the most beautiful things to be found in Paris . He sent her out to walk , he sent her to theatres and concerts , smiled when she approached him , and had for her nothing but jokes and caressing words . In his intellectual activity she never took any part ; of his mental struggles she knew nothing ; but she lived in . him and stood faithfully by his side for twenty years . He used to say , laughingly , that she had never read a line of his writings . It might be supposed that this would wound him ; on the contrary , it amused him . Thus , for Madame Heine , her husband was not the great poet that he was for the rest of the world ; but he , was for her what the rest of the world denied him to be—an affectionate , upright man .
While we are on the affectionate side of Heine s character , we may cite a pretty trait of his feeling towards his mother , of whom , he says so charmingly " Nach Deutschland lechzt' ich nicht so 6 ehr , Wenn nicht die Mutter dorten war ! Das Vaterland -vvird nicht verderben , Jedoch die alte Frau kann sterben ! " —
he would not yearn so sadly after his native land , if his mother were not there ! Germany is not likely to vanish from the face of the earth , but the old woman can die ! One evening ( says Herr Meissner ) , I happened to look in on Heine , just as he was dictating a letter to his secretary , and on my asking him to whom he was writing , be answered : " To my mother . " " She is still living , then ? " I asked . " Yes , " he said , " old and sick and feeble , alas ! but still with the saino warm mother ' s heart . " " And you often write to her ? " " Regularly every month . " " How distressed she must be at your condition ? " " At my condition ? " answered Heine .
" Oh , as to that , my mother supposes me to be as strong and healthy as I was when she last saw me . She is old and never reads the newspaper ; the few old friends who visit her are in the same predicament . I write to her as cheerfully as I can , tell her about my wife , and how well things are going with me . As it might surprise her that only the signature is from my hand , and all the rest from that of the secretary , I tell her that I have a complaint in the eyes , which will by-and-by be cured , but which iu the meantime prevents me from writing everything myselfc And so she is . happy . For the rest , ho mother could believe that her son was so ill and wretcfied . as I am . " At the end of a long conversation on the Jews , x * ecorded by Meissner , Heine sums up his feeling towards them in this way : —¦
" You hoar , by dear Meissner , how I almost in one breath ridicule and compassionate tho Jews , in fact , they appear to me at once ludicrous and venerable . I could not devote myself to them entirely , ns Gabriel liiesser and others have done ; I unite myself with no party , whether republicans or patriots , Christians or Jews . I have this in common with all artists who write not for enthusiastic moments , but for centuries—not for one land , but for the world—not for one race , but for mankind . It would be absurd and petty in mo if , as people pretend , I had ever been ashamed of being a . lew ; but it would be just as ridiculous if I declared myself to be a Jew . . . . As I was born to deliver over the bad and the rotten , the false and tho foolish , to eternal ridicule , so it is equally in my nature to feel what id sublime , to admire what is great , and to venerate whatever has true life . " Heine had spokon the last words with deop earnestness , and bad become thoughtful . But , as if luughtor must always
resume its wonted soat on his lips , he added , playfully , " If our little friend . Weil comes to see u » soon , you shall have nnothor proof of my piety towards primitive Mosaiam . Weill was formerly a singer in tho synagogue ; ho hue a fine bell-like tonor , and chants the old songs of Judah in all their traditional purity , from their curliest monotonous simplicity to their latest point of Old Testament finish . My good wife , who has no notion that I am a Jew , was not n little amazed when she heard this strange musical lament , thin shaking and quavering . When Wo ill began hia first song-, Minko tho dog crept under the aofn , and Cocotto the parrot tried to hang himself between the bars of his cage . ' Monsieur Weill ! Monsieur Woill !' Matilda cried out , in alarm , ' don ' t carry the joke too far ! ' Weill went on . Matilda turned tome and said , ' Hoary , tell mo what souga aro these V « They are our German national songs , ' 1 answered ; and 1 have obstinately persisted in thia assertion . "
Heine , to the last ., wrote everything himself , except his letters . Paper and pencil lay before him , and as lie was able , Ihj wrote in a largo hand his latest pouins and his yet unpublished Memoirs . When he was tired , or indisposed to work , his ' wifo read to him such light things us Dumas ' s novels ; but he also went through a great deal of serious reading , especially in physiology , anatomy , and pathology . Ho made himself familiar with tho most elaborate works bearing on hin own disease . " My studies , " he uaed to say , " will certainly not be of much n . so to mo . At the utmost , they will enable ine to fj ive lectures in heaven , in order to demonstrate to my nudioilcc how poorly thu physicians on curtli know how to treat diseases of tho spine . " On another occasion , he said , " My nerves aro so utterly shattered , that I
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August 23 , 1656-. ] 3 Pffl : EE LEABE'E , 811
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 23, 1856, page 811, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2155/page/19/
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