HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

xxxvi
3^nttotiuctton*
an account of the matter. Germany,
that vast mine of ideas, had no need to
import ideas, as such, from any foreign
country ; and if Heine had carried ideas,
as such, from France into Germany, he
would but have been carrying coals to
Newcastle. But that for which France,
far less meditative than Germany, is
eminent, is the prompt, ardent, and
practical application of an idea, when
she seizes it, in all departments of
human activity which admit it. And
that in which Germany most fails, and
by failing in which she appears so helpless
and impotent, is just the practical
application of her innumerable ideas.
" When Candide," says Heine himself,
" came to Eldorado, he saw in the streets
a number of boys who were playing
with gold-nuggets instead of marbles.
This degree of luxury made him imagine
that they must be the king's children,
and he was not a little astonished when
he found that in Eldorado gold-nuggets
are of no more value than marbles are
with us, and that the schoolboys play
with them. A similar thing happened
to a friend of mine, a foreigner, when he
came to Germany and first read German
books. He was perfectly astounded at
the wealth of ideas which he found in
them ; but he soon remarked that ideas
in Germany are as plentiful as goldnuggets
in Eldorado, and that those
writers whom he had taken for intellectual
princes, were in reality only com-