well as in that
he was supposed to have joined. In the second volume of the "Salon," and
in the "Romantische Schule," written in 1834 and '35, the doctrine of
Pantheism is dwelt on with a fervor and unmixed seriousness which show
that Pantheism was then an animating faith to Heine, and he attacks what
he considers the false spiritualism and asceticism of Christianity as the
enemy of true beauty in Art, and of social well-being. Now, however, it
was said that Heine had recanted all his heresies; but from the fact that
visitors to his sick-room brought away very various impressions as to his
actual religious views, it seemed probable that his love of mystification
had found a tempting opportunity for exercise on this subject, and that,
as one of his friends said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine
to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the
epilogue to the "Romanzero," dated 1851, there appeared, amid much
mystifying banter, a declaration that he had embraced Theism and the
belief in a future life, and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and
reliability to this affirmation was the fact that he took care to
accompany it with certain negations:

"As concerns myself, I can boast of no particular progress in
politics; I adhered (after 1848) to the same democratic principles
which had the homage of my youth, and for which I have ever since
glowed with increasing fervor. In theology, on the contrary, I must
accuse myself of retrogression, since, as I have already confessed, I
returned to the old superstition--to a personal God. This fact is,
once for all, not to be stifled, as many enlightened and well-meaning
friends would fain have had it. But I must expressly contradict the
report that my retrograde movement has carried me as far as to the
threshold of a Church, and that I have even been received into her
lap. No: my religions convictions and views have remained free from
any tincture of ecclesiasticism; no chiming of bells has allured me,
no altar candles have dazzled me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and
have not utterly renounced my reason."

This sounds like a serious statement. But what shall we say to a convert
who plays with his newly-acquired belief in a future life, as Heine does
in the very next page? He says to his reader:

"Console thyself; we shall meet again in a better world, where I also
me