HEINE'S "REISEBILDER."
Pictures of Travel. By Heinrich Heine. A New Translation by Russell Davis Gillman. (Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. 10s. 6d.)—This is an excellent and painstaking, though here and there rather laboured, translation of some of Heine's best and most pleasantly characteristic work. It contains Heinean gems in prose like: "Nothing in Gottingen is stagnant but the Professors, and they are changeless as the Pyramids Of Egypt. Yet there is a difference. In these Pyramids of Gottingen no wisdom is concealed." It also contains—in "The Return Home "—such gems in verse as :- " The world and this life are too scattered by far, I'll seek a Professor to mend them ; His wisdom may put them together again, Its follies, his system may end them."
Sometimes, indeed, Heine's satire runs to riot too suggestive of mere modern smoking-room "smartness." One gets tired almost to death of such painfully palpable hits as : "The whole book reeks of cheese, beer, and tobacco, so that you might suppose you were reading a romance by Clausen." But, on the whole, be is seen here at his best, if not as a lyrist, certainly as a lover of Nature and as a master in the graphic. The book is most enjoy able,—so enjoyable that it does not read like a trauslation.
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