was whipped. But he expected to be | silence all over the House. He quotes whipped on an ordinary place with an the words of a journalist of the time in ordinary cane; and when he came to ex- describing the great orator. perience it, he was whipped on an extraordinary place with an extraordinary bunch of birch twigs. And so Heine, having fortified his mind against wonder, found that his anticipations of what London would be like were entirely false, and had to wonder all the same. Heine remained in England from the 17th of April to the 8th of August, and in that time not only saw the various objects of interest in and around the metropolis, but gained a wonderful knowledge of our political life. As soon as Parliament opened he became an assiduous attender on the debates. Canning was prime minister; Castlereagh had just committed suicide. The great political question of the hour was the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. The great rock ahead was the national debt, which then amounted to £1,125,000,000, and which, according to the political prophets of the time, was soon to land the nation in utter bankruptcy. In the House of Lords he was greatly pleased with Lord King, and in the House of Commons with Lord Brougham, and gives us a sketch of each. Lord Brougham was the great orator of the day. Heine describes him as a man of middle size and of a slender build. His face was thin, his head was sparsely covered with black hair lying flat on the temples; his black dress gave him an ecclesiastical air; but the moment he began to speak you saw that he was an advocate. He had a way of pointing with his forefinger and of holding his head which are confined to speakers at the bar. The muscles of his face had a weird twitching motion that enabled those who were near to see his thoughts before they were uttered, and, in the case of witty remarks, rather spoiled their effect. For making a witty remark, as Heine says, is like borrowing money of a friend; the more sudden the surprise, the greater is our chance of success. But what astonished Heine most of all was the restless activity of the Scottish lawyer. He made his most famous speeches after a day's pleading of nine hours in the law courts, while the previous night had been spent in writing on educational and criminal reform for the Edinburgh Review. Heine was not present when he delivered any of his great speeches, although he heard him several times. But he noticed that whenever he rose there was a look of expectancy on every face and an unusual This writer tells us that he began slowly, and with great hesitation in his utterance. He laid down his premisses clearly and with deliberation, as a mathematician lays down the data in a proposition of Euclid. His premisses are so clear and simple and self-evident and convincing that they seem truisms. When this is done, he gathers them all together, he builds up his argument, his voice rising the while until he shakes the rafters like thunder, and sweeps everything before him. Then comes a pause. The stranger thinks his exertions have exhausted his strength, and expects to see him fall back on his seat in a swoon. Not at all. This is only the trick of the tiger crouching low that he may spring the higher. He has laid down his proposition, and he has proved it; and it now remains for him to shatter the arguments of his antagonists to atoms. Woe unto them that have now to bear the brunt of his anger! His pale face becomes livid with rage, his blue eyes flash fire, and he hurls the thunderbolts of his rhetoric against them without mercy. And, now that his task is done, he sits down amid a storm of applause. Heine was greatly pleased with some aspects of our political life. In the House of Commons the honorable members laugh and joke and talk in their natural tone of voice, even in debating the most serious questions. In a debate where the lives of thousands of men and the safety of the entire country are at stake nobody thinks it necessary to make a long, grinning face like a German deputy, or to talk pathetically in the manner of the French. The result of this is that the Parliamentary debates are interesting reading, and are read by the outside public, a thing that did not then happen in the south of Germany. As illustrations of the pleasantries of Parliamentary debate, he quotes Lord King's Turkish apologue, in which, under the form of an Arabian tale, he caricatures the members of the Cabinet. He quotes, also, Spring Rice's comparison of the predictions made in 1753, when the bill for the emancipation of the Jews was brought forward, to the predictions that were now being made on the emancipation of the Roman Catholics. But these are serious questions, and he approaches the national debt in a humorous vein. Debt is one of the prerogatives of humanity. The beasts of the fields have no debt And national debt has taken the place of fatum, fate in the modern world. It is now what fate was in ancient times. Now, it is easy to see how John Bull has got so deeply into debt. (1) John is a vain creature, fond of military glory, and easily puffed up by victories; and when he cannot win them himself he must pay others to win them for him. So he bought a great many victories all over the world, subsidizing ever so many foreign nations. (2) John was terrified lest the democratic ideas, the fruit of the French Revolution, should cross the Channel and leaven the English people, that is to say, deprive the aristocracy of their privileges and the clergy of their tithes. He set himself to prevent this, and to do it the more effectually, he denounced everything that was French. He worked himself into a mortal hatred of that people, and fought against them whenever he had a chance. He not only fought himself, but he paid others to help him. Not that John had the money to pay it with. He borrowed it from the banker, and left posterity to pay the interest. But the sum had reached the total of £1,125,000,000, and the interest was so excessive as to threaten the country with bankruptcy. Patrick Colquhoun, a Scotchman, tried to comfort the despairing people by making an estimate of the wealth and resources of the nation, and by showing that the wealth of the nation was so great as to leave no cause for alarm. He had made an estimate of the yearly income of the people, but he was met with the reply from Cobbett that his statistics were utterly useless. The people need their yearly income for their own wants, and cannot give it away to pay the debt of the nation. He declared that Colquhoun's reasoning and figures are no more to the point than if he had estimated the value of the blood in the veins of the people to make black puddings. then, for opposition omnibuses to compete so keenly for the traffic as to reduce the profits to a mere trifle. Of course, the omnibuses could not pay, and, sooner or later, one of them had to retire from the contest. The successful coach now raised its fare to suit itself, sometimes to an exorbitant charge, as it had now no rival to fear, and had to make up for previous losses. The passengers are completely at the coachman's mercy. They must pay what fare he chooses to ask, or walk. Now, this is how political parties work in England. The opposition party continually harasses the party in power, until they force them to resign, when their own party gets into power and does what it thinks best. And He has a word to say on the prime minister, but it is a word of pity. În his boyhood he used to read the news from Turkey, to see whether the grand vizier to the sultan had got the honor of the silken rope, that is, had been hanged. what astonished him was that, when one grand vizier had been strangled, there were always plenty ready to take his place. But the object of his wonder changed when he came to England. It was turned to the prime minister. The poets of the ancient world compared the State to a ship, and the prime minister to the pilot at the helm. But the ship of the State has become a steamer, and the prime minister is chief engineer. His work is down below, watching the enormous and complicated machinery, half suffocated with the smell of his heated oil, and half roasted with the blazing furnace. He is shaking with anxiety from morning till night. A boiler may burst, or a piston may break, or they may run upon a rock in the darkness, and he will be blamed for it all. The passengers walk the deck in the bright sunshine, and sleep securely in their cabins at night—but he must be ever on the watch. The very barber that shaved Heine The most of these prime ministers fall could speak of nothing but the national under the load of responsibilities. Sad debt. As he rubbed the soap on his face was the death of the great Pitt, more sad he kept muttering to himself, "lords, dogs, still was the death of the still greater Fox. priests," and, flourishing his razor, he de- Perceval would have died of the ministeclared that if he had any of these spend-rial malady if the dagger had not hurried thrift ministers under his hand he would save him the trouble of cutting his own throat as Castlereagh had just done. Heine has an article on the Whigs and the Tories which shows that, although he was only four months in the country, he has grasped the secret of our political life. He compares them to the opposition coaches of that time. It was common, on his end. Lord Castlereagh, driven to despair, took his own life. Lord Liverpool fell in the same manner, in a death of imbecility. The noble Canning, his life embittered by the Tories, succumbed like a sick Atlas under the weight of a world. In sad succession are buried in Westminster Abbey these poor ministers, who, night and day, have thought for the kings He Another characteristic of English life that seemed wonderful to Heine was the perfection of our machinery. There was something uncanny to him in seeing combinations of iron and wood doing the work that seemed to be the prerogative of man. Our spinning, weaving, printing machines, inspired him with a feeling of awe. tells the story of an English mechanic who, after many inventions, resolved to make a man. He did so, making his body of iron and brass, and his lungs of leather. He was so successful that the automaton could perform all the ordinary functions of a human creature. But the automaton was not satisfied with this, and kept running after his maker crying, "Give me a soul!" of England, while they, in florid health | the hurrying crowd than from all the books and free from care, live to a good old age. in Leipsig Fair. This Fleet Street is He went also to Westminster Abbey, Beresina Bridge, and every man and and spent hours of musing in the Poet's woman on it is hurrying as if for very life. Corner. From his early infancy he had It is every one for himself here. You known the English language, and had must be wide awake, and have your studied its greatest masters, and he is now thoughts fixed on yourself, or you will be in their national tomb. Many of them are trampled in the mud. And so a poor dear to him, but the dearest of them all is dreaming poet, who goes about with his Shakespeare. Everything in England re- thoughts in fairyland, and his eyes withminds him of the world's greatest genius. out vision in them, is sure to come to The history of England is embalmed for- grief. ever in his plays; and he hears them quoted in the Houses of Parliament for their historical value. The streets and public places of London have been rendered familiar by his works. Heine heard him spoken of everywhere. The beefeaters in the Tower took him into the dungeon where the princes were murdered, and recited Shakespeare. The members of Parliament quote him; Charles Kean clothes his plays with life and beauty on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre. Every lion in London speaks of the still greater lion Shakespeare. And so Heine stands before his bust in deep meditation. He looks at his pale lips and the blank scroll in his hand. He looks round at the tombs of England's kings and queens, of its heroes in arts and arms. He sees Shake- Heine was a satirist, and he foretells a speare, at the witching hour of twelve, call danger that lies before our country. The them all forth from their graves. They very manufacture and serving of machines come in their rusty armor, cavaliers of the has a tendency to render human work Red Rose and of the White Rose, cour-mechanical. A man's work becomes less tiers in their stars and garters, and grand ladies in their silks and jewels. He hears the clinking of their swords, and the sounds of their laughter, and the hissing of their curses. He searches their reins and their hearts, and reveals the inmost recesses of their souls unto themselves and unto the world. With his magic pen he makes the dead past live again. He gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. And so he wears the triple crown of the dramatist, the historian, and the poet. As Heine left the Abbey he gave the verger his fee of one shilling and sixpence, with the remark that he would gladly have paid double the money if the collection had been complete. We next find Heine standing at a shopwindow in Fleet Street. He is looking at a picture of Beresina Bridge. But he has scarcely time to see it. He is jostled on this side and on that, and compelled to move on. And so he cries, Send a German philosopher to London, but, for pity's sake, no poet. The philosopher will learn more in an afternoon in Fleet Street from and less the exponent of his thought, and so loses the great characteristic that makes labor sublime. And so Heine, hearing everywhere the clank of machinery, and seeing everywhere men and women laboring like automata, declares that John Bull is a born materialist, who can only learn mechanics, analytical method, and the art of ready reckoning. He cannot understand philosophy, and will never excel in the fine arts. After exhausting the sights of London, Heine went to the seacoast for the warm weather. He there made the acquaintance of a charming lady, whom he calls Miss Gordon. She seems to have fascinated him very much, and he declares that John Bull's daughters are beyond all praise. But his money, by this time, was getting scarce. He had spent a guinea and a half on the steamer for food and steward's fees, and two guineas a day ever since. He had been in debt at home, and although his uncle, a rich banker, had given him a letter of credit for £400, he had added a strict order that it was not to be cashed. Heine, however, was too From Macmillan's Magazine. JUANA ALVAREZ. A SOUTH AMERICAN SKETCH. As one journeys in a south-westerly direction from Buenos Ayres towards the Andes, leaving behind the railways of advancing civilization and the flat, far. stretching pastures, here and there divided by wire fences and dotted with estancia houses, whose white walls can scarce be seen through the surrounding clumps of trees, one comes by slow stages and painful travelling to a country equally flat and far more desolate, where the soft grasses, meet for sheep and cattle, give way to the hard and unprofitable pampas that stretches its feathered heads on all sides to the horizon. Not a tree is in sight, and hardly a habitation, save an occasional squatter's hut with its mud-built walls and grass-thatched roof, around which stray, half hidden in the tall grass, a few horses or cows, or a flock of ragged sheep. Only a few years ago and not even they would have been seen; for not far distant lay the great lake, the Laguna de los Indios, and near it were the toldos of Waikeleofu and his tribe. Poor Waikeleofu! He led a pleasant life as cacique with some two hundred lances behind him. Fine it was to scour the plain, chasing the fleet deer or fleeterostrich; or better still to sweep off in some night raid the cattle of a too confiding settler. What if they did murder and pillage- were they not the true sons of the country, and who had a better right than they? But evil times and an ambitious commandante fell upon Waikeleofu. His toldos were surrounded and burnt, his men were massacred or taken prisoners, and he, with many others, was brought bound to Buenos Ayres, where he was exhibited to the curious at so much a head. It is not necessary to relate here how the commandante found promotion and a rich wife in consequence, or how Waikeleofu shortly died, partly from rum, partly from a general disinclination to live in his altered surroundings. His faithful followers who survived him buried him with all due rites, and slaughtered a horse over his grave, that he might have something to ride when he arrived at his new destination. Waikeleofu was gone, and his place knew him no more. Settlers came there and built their ranchos, and profited by his absence. The land had probably been sold in large tracts by the government to capitalists who considered it yet too distant to yield any immediate profit. The country still had its drawbacks; it was terribly far from any market, and although good pasture was fairly abundant, pumas were also abundant, and well pleased to carry off a sheep now and then, much preferring a diet of mutton to one of venison. Nevertheless, when one pays no rent it is not good to grumble over much (unless, of course, one is an Irish farmer); and the settlers in general, and Anselmo Alvarez in particular, were well content with the locality. Like the others, Anselmo Alvarez was a mere squatter, settling on land which belonged to some city merchant who was probably ignorant even of the whereabouts of his property; but unlike the others, he had been possessed of a considerable amount of stock before bad years and heavy losses had driven him with the scanty remnant of his flocks to take refuge in what was practically no man's land. An old man he was, of a short but wiry build, with keen, greedy eyes, that seemed out of place in his otherwise heavy and stupidlooking features. His neighbors disliked and rather feared him; his wife, Maria Mercedes, feared and worshipped him; and his niece, Juana Alvarez, knew not whether she hated or feared him most. He had a passion for trying to outwit his neighbors which had done much towards ruining him in his old neighborhood; he had a passion for horse-racing, cards, and rum, which had helped not a little to the same end; and he bore a passionate resentment against a certain Juan Romano, a former neighbor, who had had the bad taste to prosper where Anselmo had almost starved, and who had actually bought the land upon which he had originally settled. "Don News came that Juan Romano had been made alcalde of the old district. Juan!" sneered Anselmo. "Look you, how rotten eggs come to the top of the water. Qué tipo!" and he spat on the floor. "I knew his father before him, a man without shame, a robber, and this is the son of his father. What more would never seen before. How could he give you have? And then he would glare at her up? Could he forget those stolen his niece, who had her reason for liking interviews-alas! so short and far bethe Romano family, and who would put tween? No, he would get good wages on an air of very ill-feigned indifference from the Englishman, save his money and as she moved about her household duties. become rich; or perhaps the Englishman When a girl is eighteen, and has a would give him a flock to take care of and pretty face, it is good to have a lover; but a house on the land; and then—and then it is better to choose one who is acceptable Pedro swore by all the saints in the calto her family, and Juana had been sin- endar, and by some that were not saints gularly unfortunate in the choice of hers. at all, that he would have Juana Alvarez Pedro Romano was everything that could to be his wife. be desired in the point of outward appearance, and a very good fellow to boot; but then he was a Romano, and, as the old Anselmo would have added, the son of his father. It was not wonderful, then, that his visits to their old home had been hardly tolerated, and had finally ended in an explosion; after which Pedro was forbidden the house, and poor Juana had sobbed herself to sleep for many a night, having lost a lover and received a good beating in exchange. For nearly two years Anselmo Alvarez had been settled in his new home. His business had been prospering fairly, both his cattle and his sheep had increased, and he had still a little money left from the sale of his last wool. In truth his house was not much to look at; a mud hut divided into two rooms, each with a door and a square hole in the wall, that with the help of a wooden shutter served as a window. There was no chimney. In one room slept Mercedes with her Pedro was not to be shaken off so easily. niece Juana and her little daughter CarWhen the Alvarez family that year moved men; the other served as a kitchen and out westwards to the new territory, he also sleeping-place for a boy that helped Anleft the home of his father and, following selmo in his work. The furniture was them, took service with an Englishman simple; a couple of wooden bedsteads who had bought and stocked a large tract for the women, covered with that coarse of land in their neighborhood. He was white lace that it delights the heart of very young, Pedro, and had fallen in love native women to make; three rickety with Juana with all the fervor of a first chairs, an old wooden press in which were passion. He was proud of his conquest stowed away many treasures, their holiday too, for she was the prettiest girl in all the dresses, all wrapped in paper, a book country round. How could he forget her? which no one could read, the certificates Could he forget that evening when he first for the cattle-brand and sheep-marks, a met her in the shearers' dance, a slight broken rosary, and Carmen's discarded girl of sixteen in a fresh white frock with doll. A colored print of the Virgin hung a red flower in her dark hair, so slight and over one bed; and, as a pendant to it, over fragile that he could scarce feel her weight the other was fixed a colored plate of a as she clung to him, slowly turning in the lady in full ball-dress. In the other room, never-ending habañeras? All that night which served as kitchen and dining-room, he had danced with her alone, heedless of the walls, blackened with smoke, were the grins and innuendoes of the others, hung with bridles and lassoes, and the mindful only of those downcast eyes, floor littered with the countless odds and veiled with their long lashes, and the soft ends of camp life; a few rough wooden cheeks that flushed in answer to his whis-settles and an inverted ox-skull served as pered words. When the morning came, and el viejo, who had been gambling all night, had ridden off too drunk to remember that he was leaving his niece behind, Pedro saddled her horse and put her on it. And then while he arranged the heavy folds of the poncho to guard her against the chill morning air, was it she who bent down her head? He knew not how it happened, his arms had found their way round that slender waist, and hers around his neck; their lips had met in a long, lingering kiss, and his eyes had seen in those dark eyes of hers a fire they had seats, while two or three iron pots, a strip of iron, called an asador, on which to roast their meat, and a few metal spoons, cups, and platters, completed the household belongings. In Arcadia, the houses as a rule are not sumptuously furnished, but at least they are kept fairly clean, and the well-swept mud floors and spotless lace on the beds said much for Doña Mercedes's care for cleanliness. It was a hot summer day, the last day of the year, and Anselmo was sleeping the siesta of a just man, who has a family to work for hím. Mercedes was engaged in |