dear native land. For after boxing and cock-fighting there is no sight so delightful to a Briton as the agony of a poor devil who has stolen a sheep or imitated a signature, and who is exhibited for an hour before the façade of the Old Bailey with a rope round his neck before he is hurled into eternity. It is no exaggeration to say that sheep-stealing and forgery in that abominably cruel country are punished not less severely than the most revolting crimes, such as parricide and incest. I myself happening to come that way by mere chance, saw a man hung in London for stealing a sheep, and from that time forth lost all relish for roast mutton—the fat always put me in mind of the white cap of the poor sinner.[1] With him was hanged an Irishman, who had imitated the writing of a rich banker, and I think I can still see the naive deathly agony of poor Paddy, who before the assizes could not understand why he was so severely punished
- ↑ Heine appears to be oblivious here to the fact that within his own lifetime criminals were publicly broken on the wheel in Germany. His sympathy for the Irishman who swindled "a rich banker" is but natural, if we may believe what is told in his Lives, that he himself, when in England, having been intrusted by his uncle with a letter of credit, on the express condition that he should only use a part of it, drew the whole. When his uncle found fault with him for this, the nephew asked him, with an audacious insolence that staggered the great banker, "My dear uncle, did you really expect not to have to pay for the honour of bearing my name?"—Translator.
