“ Send a philosopher to London, but, for your life, no poet! Send a philosopher there, and station him at a corner of Cheapside, where he will learn more than from all the books of the last Leipzig fair; and as the billows of human life 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 ”

“ Drummer Jack!—drum, drum. Danger! danger! Drummer Jack!" From without resounded the deep, beery voice of Drummer Jack, "Death and destruction! The devil take the Jews. That's the third time today that you've roused me out of a sound sleep, Nose Star! Don't make me mad! For when I am mad I'm the very devil himself; and then as sure as I'm a Christian, I'll up with my gun and shoot through the grated window in your gate—and then fellow, let everybody look out for his nose!" ”

“ BEETHOVEN.
NO. 45 TO COUNTESS GIULIETTA GUICCIARDI On the 6th July, 1801, in the morning
My Angel, My All, My Very Self:
Just a few words today, and indeed in pencil—with thine—only till tomorrow is my room definitely engaged; what an unworthy waste of time in such matters—why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks! Can our love endure otherwise than through sacrifices, through restraint in longing? Canst thou help not being wholly mine, can I, not being wholly thine? Oh! gaze at nature in all its beauty, and calmly accept the inevitable—love demands everything, and rightly so. ”

“ Jason, I know a song.
CREUSA. She knows a song
That thou wert wont to sing. I pray thee, listen,
And she will sing it thee.
JASON. A song? Well, well!
Where was I, then?—From childhood I was wont
To dream and dream, and babble foolishly
Of things that were not and could never be.
That habit clung to me, and mocks me now.
For, as the youth lives ever in the future,
So the grown man looks alway to the past,
And, young or old, we know not how to live
Within the present. ”

“ With thee and thine in Corinth, never saw
The Golden Fleece, nor stepped on Colchis' strand,
Ne'er saw that woman that I now call wife!
Send thou her home to her accursed land,
Cause her to take with her all memory
That she was ever here.—Do thou but this,
And I will be a man again, and dwell
With men.
CREUSA. Is that thy charm? I know a better;
A simple heart, I mean, a mind at peace.
JASON. Ah, thou art good! Would I could learn this peace
Of thee!
CREUSA. To all that choose, the gods will give it.
Thou hadst it once, and canst have yet again. ”

“ The blooming rosy flesh in the pictures of Titian is all Protestantism. The limbs of his Venus are more thorough theses than those which the German monk pasted on the church door of Wittenberg. Then it was that men felt as if suddenly freed from the force and pressure of a thousand years; the artists, most of all, again breathed freely as the nightmare of Christianity seemed to spin whirling from their breasts, and they threw themselves with enthusiasm into the sea of Greek joyousness from whose foam rose to them goddesses of beauty. Painters once more limned the ambrosial joys of Olympus ”

“ This world, on the contrary, is that in which the water "murmurs and rustles so wonderfully, the birds pour forth broken love-sick strains, the trees whisper as if with a thousand maidens' tongues, the odd mountain flowers peep up at us as if with a thousand maidens' eyes, stretching out to us their curious, broad, drolly scalloped leaves; the sunrays flash here and there in sport, the herbs, as though endowed with reason, are telling one another their green legends, all seems enchanted"—in other words, a wonderland disturbed by no doubts on the part of a rationalistic Alice. ”

“ Where is there marble as pure as the heart of old Lafayette, or metal as firm as his fidelity? It is true that he was always one-sided, but one-sided like the magnetic needle, which always points to the north, and never once veers to south or west. So he has for forty years said the same thing, and pointed constantly to North America. He is the one who opened the Revolution with the declaration of the rights of man; to this hour he perseveres in this belief, without which there is no salvation and no health to be hoped for—the one-sided man with his one-sided heavenly region of freedom. ”

“ And should you ever send a German poet thither—a dreamer, who stares at everything, even a ragged beggar-woman, or the shining wares of a goldsmith's shop—why, then, at least he will find things going right badly with him, and he will be hustled about on every side, or perhaps be knocked over with a mild "God damn!" God damn!—damn the knocking about and pushing! I see at a glance that these people have enough to do. They live on a grand 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. ”

“ By this time Beautiful Sara had somewhat awakened from her dreams, and she gazed at the hills on the shore, on the summits of which lights of castles were gleaming, and at the foot of which the mist, shimmering in the moonlight, was beginning to rise. Suddenly she seemed to see her friends and relatives, as they, with corpse-like faces and flowing shrouds, passed in awful procession along the Rhine.... The world grew dark before her eyes, an icy current ran through her soul, and, as if in sleep, she only heard the Rabbi repeating the night-prayer slowly and painfully, as if at a deathbed. ”

“ RACHEL. I would
Not look at it at all—at least not now.
But only if our prison lasts too long,
I'll try divert eternal wretchedness,
And shall adorn myself unto my death.
But see, who nears? Ha, ha, ha, ha, it is,
In sooth, our father, armèd cap-a-pie!
[ISAAC, a helmet on his head, under his long coat a cuirass, enters from the left.]
ISAAC. 'Tis I, the father of a wayward brood,
Who ere my time are shortening my days.
In harness, yes! When murder stalks abroad,
Will one's bare body save one from the steel? ”

“ To me, as a passionate lover of mankind, especially of the common people, and more especially so when, united into a mass, the individuals forget for a time their own private ends and consider themselves part of a whole, in which there is, after all, the spirit of divinity, nay, God Himself—to me every popular festival is a real soul-festival, a pilgrimage, an act of devotion. ”

“ And oh, Señora, wherewith shall I compare that bosom? For in all the world there is no flower, no fruit, which is like to it! It is the one thing of its kind! Though the wind tears away the leaves from the tenderest rose, your bosom is still a winter rose which defies all storms. Though the sour lemon, the older it grows the yellower and more wrinkled it becomes, your bosom rivals in color and softness the sweetest pineapple. Oh, Señora, if the city of Amsterdam be as beautiful as you told me yesterday, and the day before, and every day, the ground on which it rests is far lovelier still. ”

“ That this my neck, made short by hangman's hand,
That this my breast, a shield against thy foe—
But that thou wishest not!
KING. A charming shield!
Now go, and God be with you.—Garceran,
(more softly)
I do not wish that she, whom I protect
Should be insulted by improper jests,
Or any way disturbed—
RACHEL (with her hand on her brow) .
I cannot walk.
KING (as Garceran is about to offer his arm) .
And why your arm? The woman can assist.
And do thou, gaffer, watch thy daughter well,
The world is ill! Do thou protect thy hoard. ”

“ But all at once, casting aside with a violent effort the seriousness into which he had involuntarily fallen, Jäkel plunged again into his mad buffoonery, and went on in his harsh jester tones, "Don't be afraid, beautiful lady, Nose Star will not harm you. He is only dangerous to old Schnapper-Elle. She has fallen in love with his nose—which, faith! deserves it. Yea, for it is as beautiful as the tower which looketh forth toward Damascus, and as lofty as a cedar of Lebanon. Outwardly it gleameth like gold loaf and syrup, and inwardly it is all music and loveliness. ”

“ He is indeed no genius, as was Napoleon, in whose head the eagles of inspiration built their nests, while the serpents of calculation entwined in his heart; but then he was never intimidated by eagles nor seduced by serpents. As a young man he was wise as a graybeard, as a graybeard fiery as a youth, a protector of the people against the wiles of the great, a protector of the great against the rage of the people, compassionating yet combating, never arrogant and never discouraged, equally firm and mild—the unchangeable Lafayette! ”

“ And when some one casts with indifferent hand a crust into thy lap, how bitter must the tears be wherewith thou moistenest it! Thou poisonest thyself with thine own tears. Well art thou in the right when thou alliest thyself to Vice and Crime! Outlawed criminals often bear more humanity in their hearts than those cool, reproachless town burghers of virtue, in whose white hearts the power of evil, it is true, is quenched—but with it, too, the power of good. And even vice is not always vice. I have seen women on whose cheeks red vice was painted, and in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity. ”

“ The wildness of the region was, as it were, tamed by its uniformity and the simplicity of its elements. Nature, like a true poet, abhors abrupt transitions. Clouds, however fantastically formed they may at times appear, still have a white, or at least a subdued hue, harmoniously corresponding with the blue heaven and the green earth; so that all the colors of a landscape blend into one another like soft music, and every glance at such a natural picture tranquilizes and reassures the soul. ”

“ In music, as in literature, much hinges upon the definition of humor, and there is the same distinction in each art between wit—light and playful, and humor—broad, serious, and, at times, even grim. A genuine humorist is always a deep thinker, one who sees all sides of human nature—the great traits and the petty ones. The poet Lowell has defined humor as consisting in the contrast of two ideas, and in a Beethoven scherzo the gay and the pathetic are so intermingled that we are in constant suspense between laughter and tears. ”

“ ENGLISH FRAGMENTS [56] BY HEINRICH HEINE TRANSLATED BY CHARLES GODFREY LELAND DIALOGUE ON THE THAMES The sallow man stood near me on the deck, as I gazed on the green shores of the Thames, while in every corner of my soul the nightingales awoke to life. "Land of Freedom!" I cried, "I greet thee! Hail to thee, Freedom, young sun of the renewed world! Those older suns, Love and Faith, are withered and cold, and can no longer light or warm us. The ancient myrtle woods, which were once all too full, are now deserted, and only timid turtle-doves nestle amid the soft thickets. ”

“ This smile, his delivery, and the whole being of the man while speaking on the tribune, are indescribable. There is in it all so much that is winsome and yet so much delicate irony, that one is enchained as by a marvelous curiosity, a sweet, strange enigma. We know not if these are the refined manners of a French marquis or the straightforward simplicity of an American citizen. All that is best in the ancien régime, the chivalresque courtesy and tact, are here wondrously fused with what is best in the modern bourgeoisie, love of equality, simplicity, and honesty. ”

“ Napoleon is, for the French, a magic word which electrifies and benumbs them. There sleep a thousand cannon in this name, even as in the column of the Place Vendôme, and the Tuileries will tremble should these cannon once awake. As the Jews never idly uttered the name of their God, so Napoleon is here very seldom called by his, and people speak of him as l'homme, "the man." But his picture is seen everywhere, in engravings and plaster casts, in metal and wood. On all boulevards and carrefours are orators who praise and popular minstrels who sing him—the Man—and his deeds. ”

“ A musician is also a poet, and the magic of a pair of eyes can suddenly cause him to feel transported into a more beautiful world, where great spirits make sport of him and set him mighty tasks. I cannot tell what ideas came into my head when I made your acquaintance. In the little observatory during the splendid May rain—that was a fertile moment for me; the most beautiful themes then glided from your eyes into my heart, which one day will enchant the world when Beethoven has ceased to conduct. If God grant me yet a few years, then I must see you again, dear, dear Bettina ”

“ Here hung the silver memorial-lamp, and there also rose a trellised dais, on whose crossed iron bars were all kinds of sacred utensils, among them the seven-branched candlestick. Before the latter, his countenance toward the ark, stood the choir-leader, whose song was accompanied, as if instrumentally, by the voices of his two assistants, the bass and the treble. The Jews have banished all instrumental music from their church, maintaining that hymns in praise of God are more edifying when they rise from the warm breast of man, than from the cold pipes of an organ. ”

“ But the picture at which I was gazing as I stood at Cheapside corner was that of the French crossing the Beresina.
And when I, jolted out of my gazing, looked again on the raging street, where a parti-colored coil of men, women, and children, horses, stagecoaches, 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 ”

“ Forsooth, thou ne'er hast known or seen this girl!
Take all the faults that on this broad earth dwell,
Folly and vanity, and weakness, too,
Cunning and boldness, coquetry and greed—
Put them together and thou hast this woman;
And if, enigma thou, not magic art,
Shouldst call her power to charm me, I'll agree,
And were ashamed, were't not but natural, too!
QUEEN (walks up and down) .
Believe me, husband, 'twas not natural!
KING (standing still) .
Magic there is, in truth. Its name is custom,
Which first not potent, later holds us fast ”