Heine confesses that he too was among the sick and decrepit souls. In reality he was at no period so full of life and health, so harmoniously inspired and upborne by a great enthusiasm. He laughs a little at Goethe; he fails to see that the Phidian Zeus, at whose confined position he jests, was the greatest liberator of them all; but for the most part his mocking sarcasm is here silent. It was not until ten years later, when the subtle seeds of disease had begun to appear, and when, too, he had perhaps gained a clearer insight into the possibilities of life, that Heine realized that the practical reforming movements of his time were not those for which his early enthusiasm had been aroused. With the slow steps of that consuming disease, and after the revolution of 1848, he ceased to recognize as of old any common root for his various activities, or to insist on the fundamental importance of religion. Everything in the world became the sport of his intelligence. The brain still functioned brilliantly in the atrophied body; the swift lightning-like wit still struck unerringly; it spared not even himself. The “Confessions” are full of irony, covering all things with laughter that is half reverence, or with reverence that is more than half laughter--and woe to the reader who is not at every moment alert! In the romantic, satirical poem of “Atta Troll,” written at the commencement of the last period, this, his final altitude, is most completely revealed. It needs a little study to-day, even for a German, but it is well worth that study. The history of a dancing bear who escapes from servitude, “Atta Troll” is a protest against the radical party, with their narrow conceptions of progress, their tame ideal of _bourgeois_ equality, their little watchwords, their solemnity, their indignation at the human creatures who smile “even in their enthusiasm.” All these serious concerns of the tribunes of the people are bathed in soft laughter as we listen to the delicious child-like monotonous melody in which the old bear, surrounded by his family, mumbles or mutters of the future. “Atta Troll” is not, as many have thought, a sneer at the most sacred ideals of men. It is, rather, the assertion of those ideals against the individuals who would narrow them down to their own petty scope. There are certain mirrors, Heine said, so constructed that they would present even Apollo as a caricature. But we laugh at the caricature, not at the god. It is well to show, even at the cost of some misunderstanding, that above and beyond the little ideals of our immediate political progress, there is built a yet larger ideal city, of which also the human spirit claims citizenship. The defence of the inalienable rights of the spirit, Heine declares, had been the chief business of his life.