e wished to become naturalized in France; and his yearning
toward his native land and the accents of his native language is
expressed with a pathos the more reliable from the fact that he is
sparing in such effusions. We do not see why Heine's satire of the
blunders and foibles of his fellow-countrymen should be denounced as a
crime of _lese-patrie_, any more than the political caricatures of any
other satirist. The real offences of Heine are his occasional coarseness
and his unscrupulous personalities, which are reprehensible, not because
they are directed against his fellow-countrymen, but because they are
_personalities_. That these offences have their precedents in men whose
memory the world delights to honor does not remove their turpitude, but
it is a fact which should modify our condemnation in a particular case;
unless, indeed, we are to deliver our judgments on a principle of
compensation--making up for our indulgence in one direction by our
severity in another. On this ground of coarseness and personality, a
true bill may be found against Heine; _not_, we think, on the ground that
he has laughed at what is laughable in his compatriots. Here is a
specimen of the satire under which we suppose German patriots wince:

"Rhenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the German
revolution. Zweibrucken was the Bethlehem in which the infant
Saviour--Freedom--lay in the cradle, and gave whimpering promise of
redeeming the world. Near his cradle bellowed many an ox, who
afterward, when his horns were reckoned on, showed himself a very
harmless brute. It was confidently believed that the German
revolution would begin in Zweibrucken, and everything was there ripe
for an outbreak. But, as has been hinted, the tender-heartedness of
some persons frustrated that illegal undertaking. For example, among
the Bipontine conspirators there was a tremendous braggart, who was
always loudest in his rage, who boiled over with the hatred of
tyranny, and this man was fixed on to strike the first blow, by
cutting down a sentinel who kept an important post. . . . . 'What!'
cried the man, when this order was given him--'What!--me! Can you
expect so horrible, so bloodthirsty an act of me? I--_I_, kill an
innocent sentinel? I, who am the father of a family! And this
sentinel is perhaps also father of a family. One father of a family
kill another father of a