Even Heinrich Heine, the poet, the cynic, who carried more power of sarcasm and irony than any man of his generation, was so moved by the book that he seems to have returned to the reading of the Bible, and to Christ the Consoler, in the hour when night and death were falling. "Astonishing! That after I have whirled about all my life, over all the dance floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all the orgies of the intellect, and paid my addresses to all possible systems, without satisfaction, like Messalina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands--on that of the Bible. I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer. What a humiliation! With all my sense I have come no farther than the poor ignorant negro who has just learned to spell. Poor Tom indeed seems to have seen deeper things in the holy book than I, but I, who used to make citations from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does!" Praise can go no farther than this, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has shown how the love of God can support a slave, under the lash, in the hour when he is flogged to death, and fill his heart with pity while he cries, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" It was this that conquered the intellect of the scholar, and broke his heart, and flooded his eyes with tears. Perhaps the most striking testimony to the influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" grew out of a suggestion of Lord Shaftesbury's that the women of England and Europe send their signatures to a testimonial to be presented to Mrs. Stowe, for, when this testimonial came in, it filled twenty-six thick folio volumes, solidly bound in morocco, and it held the names of 562,448 women, representing every rank, from the throne of England to the wives of the humblest artisans in Wales or the peasants in Italy. The message of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is so simple that he who runs may read. It was not written for literary critics, for scholars or for college graduates. George Eliot wrote her "Romola" with the historian and the philosopher and the editor of reviews ever in mind. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for farmers, factory men, merchants and clerks, the miscellaneous mass that make up the millions, to rouse them to the wrongs of slavery.