matter. Nevertheless, she translated one or two of his poems, and when she read'Almansor' (In dem Dome zu Cordova) to him he was delighted with it.

Lady Duff Gordon's mother, who was a philosopher, had handed on to her daughter her emancipated views in regard to revealed religion; and this mental attitude enabled her to give a successful rendering of Heine's free thought. Heine also talked sometimes of his religious feelings, and regretted that all manner of gossip had been published in regard to his having turned Catholic. He felt that self-contempt which always arises when an important step in life has been taken from motives of expediency and contrary to personal convictions. He made the same confession in prose to his lovely Egeria as he had made in verse in his 'Testament,' and to which he had given expression many times, sometimes with mocking irony, sometimes with touching gravity, in his poems of that period. He took leave of her with the hope of seeing her again in England, whither he intended to go as soon as his condition made it possible, in order to make his peace with the people upon whom he had poured such biting mookery.

Heine was prone to exaggeration, and he had probably overstated the case when he represented himself as an Anglophobe; he would have been equally justified in calling himself a Germanophobe. Had he not given full play to his caustic wit on the very subject of the Germans? and had he always been so mild in his judgment of the French? It was no great matter that, as a young man, he wrote from London: Nothing but fog, smoke, porter, and Canning!' His moods and opinions, even in regard to the gravest matters, were remarkably variable. In a letter to Heinrich Laube, he speaks of the February Revolution which had been taking place in his religious thoughts and feelings. He did, indeed, say evil things about John Bull, and indulged far too much in generalisations; he who forms a judgment on such lines may easily fall into error.

'John Bull's cast of countenance,' he said once, 'is as sharply and deeply cut as a Greek coin. Wherever you come across it, whether in London or Calcutta, whether in the person of master or servant, it is unmistakable. Wherever

he goes he seems like an unwieldy fact, very honest but cold and absolutely repellent. One cannot but remark that, wherever he may be and in whatever company, John Bull always considers himself to be the principal figure. And, wherever he may be, it is noticeable that his own comfort, his own immediate, personal comfort, is the main object of all his desires and activities.'

Heine even went so far as to say that John Bull's friendship was not worth the trouble of winning, since he was so egotistical that an Englishman's most exquisite banquet could not give nearly so much pleasure as a Bedouin's handful of dates in the desert. But he adds: 'Although John Bull is the coldest of friends, he is the safest neighbour and the most straightforward and generous of enemies. While he guards his own castle like a Pasha, he never attempts to force his way into a stranger's home.' He was capable, moreover, of the highest expressions of esteem when referring to England's greatest men, such as his friends in Westminster Abbey.' He was a student of law at the University of Göttingen when the news reached him of the death of Byron at Missolonghi. Byron, who had

won the esteem of Goethe also, was the more appreciated by Heine since the latter felt that they were akin. 'In many ways,' he writes, we must have been alike. . . . I have always felt at my ease with Byron, as with an absolutely sympathetic companion'; and he adds: 'I can never feel at my ease with Shakespeare; I am only too conscious that I am not his equal; he is the all-powerful minister and I am a mere underling, and I feel as though he might turn me out of office at any moment.'

To the day of his death Heine felt it as a weight upon his conscience that he had so often misjudged the English. But what will a satirist not say, even at the expense of truth, when he is bent on being witty? In face of the friendship laid at his feet by Milnes and Lady Duff Gordon, Heine felt that he must cast from him the armour of satire and do penance. But he was not to be permitted to carry out his intention of journeying to England and making his peace with the English; for soon after this his sufferings were at an end.

Lady Duff Gordon's daughter, Janet, was born on

Feb. 24, 1842; Mr Rs, therefore, has entered upon her eighty-first year. The most distinguished men of their day in England had peeped into her nursery; Macaulay and Kingslake had rocked her cradle; she had been fondled by Dickens and Hallam; she had sat on Thackeray's knee while the great novelist drew many a picture for her amusement. It was a company of noble minds that gathered round the table in the house of her parents the Duff Gordons at Esher, and in that of her grandparents the Austins Austins at Weybridge. The English immortals were almost as much at their ease here as in their own homes. The author of 'Vanity Fair' was particular about his dinners; he knew that in these houses he would meet pleasant guests, such as the dramatist Tom Taylor and the caricaturist Doyle. But he felt less certain as to the quality of the roast mutton, and so he made sure of the latter by means of the following verse addressed to his hostess :

'A nice leg of mutton, my Lucie,

I pray thee have ready for me;

Have it smoking and tender and juicy,
For no better meat can there be.'

Little Janet did not regard all her visitors so favourably as she did her merry friend Thackeray. Carlyle, for instance, was not so welcome. The only visitor I cordially disliked,' she has said of the great thinker, who was, besides, very cantankerous. One day he was discussing German literature with Lady Duff Gordon, who knew a great deal on the subject; but the sage of Chelsea was still better informed. At last he exclaimed: 'You're just a windbag, Lucie, you're just a windbag!' The little girl overheard this and reproved the philosopher with the words: 'Papa always says men should be polite to ladies.' When Janet was a girl of sixteen she was riding one day in Rotten Row with the philosopher whom, as a child, she had lectured on 'manners.' His wide-brimmed soft felt hat fell off, and a workman picked it up and ran after horse and rider with it. He doubtless expected a reward, but the philosopher merely remarked, drily: 'Thank you, my man. You will be able to say that you have picked up Thomas Carlyle's hat.'

Janet was a wilful child, and had dictated her decrees to many a law-giver from both the Houses of Parliament who frequented her parents' house. When she was eighteen she excelled all other girls in Esher in her power of taming horses; when she was nineteen she tamed the heart of Mr Ross, whom she followed overseas to the land of Mizraim. The friends of her mother and grandmother remained her friends also. She was in active correspondence with such men as Sir Henry Layard, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, and Ferdinand de Lesseps. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who died at a great age towards the close of the century, had continued with the grandchild the sympathetic relations he had enjoyed with the mother and grandmother. He once wrote to Mrs Ross, who was always, for him, la petite nièce: 'When I came to Weybridge for the first time in 1849 I was received by a charming little girl who took me out into the garden to show me the pretty flowers which she had grown herself. "All my own," she said to me with pride.' Years afterwards, as chatelaine of Poggio Gherardo, la petite nièce might have said 'all my own with still greater pride when escorting her guests through the beautiful house and the wonderful collection of orchids which were her husband's pride and joy, and which have now been sacrificed to the war.

Poggio Gherardo is still the Buen-Retiro of that highly-cultured English woman in her old age, who, following in the steps of her grandmother and mother, has herself made her mark in the literature of her country. How greatly the aged authoress is to be envied, living as she does in so wonderful and stimulating an environment! You need only to step on to the balcony of the house, and a world of ancient historical glory and a landscape of magnificent beauty lie before your eyes. On the right are the mountains of Carrara, on the left the Apennines of Vallombrosa; the horizon stretches out for many a mile. And in the foreground Florence is smiling in her spring-time beauty.

SIGMUND MÜNZ.

Art. 5.-CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.

It may be thought presumptuous for any one who is not a trained lawyer to discuss the meaning of crime and its relation to punishment. The pleas that are often advanced in favour of the remission of penalty, when a prisoner has been convicted, seem to indicate, however, that there is some confusion in the public mind between crime and vice, or crime and sin, which ought to be cleared up. This is not specially the business of a lawyer, for it comes equally within the province of a minister of religion or a student of ethics. And it is only from their point of view that I attempt to handle the matter.

If the only moral standard were the law of the State, then, indeed, there would be no distinction between vice and crime. Few philosophers, however, have gone so far as this, except perhaps Hobbes, who taught that virtue was the characteristic of actions in accordance with the law of the civil magistrate. He did not recognise sin, as such, for (despite his chapters on a Christian Commonwealth) his philosophy has no real place for divine law; and he did not regard conscience as having any independent moral authority. On the other hand, Locke distinguished carefully sin, which is an offence against the law of God; crime, which is an offence against civil law; and vice, which he defined as an offence against the 'law of opinion or reputation,' i.e. the law of society.* Locke's view of moral relations commends itself nowadays to few peoplc, and I am not concerned either to expound or to defend it. But his threefold distinction of sin, vice, and crime affords a suitable starting-point for this discussion. To be sure, many human actions are sinful, vicious, and criminal at the same time; and to those of us who regard the law of conscience as reflecting the law of God, vice (that is, action which conscience disapproves) is and must be sinful. That sin or vice is not always criminal, and that a criminal is not always a vicious person, whether we think of vice as a violation of the dictates of conscience, or only as conduct which society disapproves, are, however, propositions of high importance, and not always borne in mind.