attention to history; and the first fruits of his studies in that direction are seen in his History of the Revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. The work was never completed; but even as a fragment it contains many valuable passages and very picturesque descriptions of characters and events. It was eclipsed, however, by the far more valuable and complete History of the Thirty Years' War. Here he had a splendid subject a theme that belonged not to one people and country, but to Europe and to humanity. If we compare the animated and picturesque narrative of the poet with the dreary tirades of the Dryasdusts who preceded him, we shall appreciate the lesson he gave his countrymen and foreigners in the manner of writing history. The characters of the chief actors in the great drama are pourtrayed with much felicity, especially those of the great rivals Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the latter of whom he represents as the bright heroic central figure of the picture, the knight without fear and without reproach,-carrying on the combat for the freedom of religious faith,-never swerving from his high purpose, from the time when his stern, determined, disciplined pikemen were disembarked on the island in the Baltic, till that fatal day of dear-bought victory when his corpse was discovered, amid heaps of the common dead, on the plain of Lützen, close by the rocky fragment that has ever since been known as the "Stone of the Swede." The philosophy may here and there be too speculative and cloudy; and it has been objected that the poet-historian makes too complete a contrast between Wallenstein and the Swedish king, painting the characters rather with dramatic force than with historic accuracy. But in spite of sundry drawbacks the History of the Thirty Years' War is a noble work; and would be valued at a higher rate, had its glories not been eclipsed by those of a far loftier production"the greatest dramatic work," Carlyle rightly says, "of the seventeenth century," the noble trilogy Wallenstein. WALLENSTEIN; THE CAMP; THE PICCOLO MINI; WALLENSTEIN'S DEATH. This may be considered as the greatest work of the poet's life. It occupied him at intervals during seven years, and was first produced at Weimar, in 1799. The subject is well worthy of Schiller's genius. During the thirty years' war, Albert Wallenstein, a Bohemian noble, was cmployed by the Emperor Ferdinand II. against the Protestant armies. Wallenstein, a man of great wealth and of considerable reputation as a soldier, brought together for Ferdinand an army of more than forty thousand men, and was brilliantly successful against the Emperor's enemies. But on the complaint of the German princes, whose territories were plundered ruthlessly by his men, he was dismissed. reluctantly enough, by the Emperor; and lived for some time in ostentatious retirement in his palace at Prague. But a new danger arose. Gustavus Adolphus landed in Germany; and after Tilly, the imperial general, had been twice worsted, and at length mortally wounded, it became necessary to recall Wallenstein at all hazards. That ambitious man would return to the Emperor's service only on condition that the whole management of the war was put into his hands as generalissimo, and he excited the suspicion of the court by negotiations, and secret accommodations with the Saxons and Swedes. His design, probably, was to force the Emperor to a peace, and to claim the sovereignty of Bohemia for himself. After the death of Gustavus, at Lützen, Wallenstein's conduct became still more equivocal. He was evidently allowing loopholes of escape to an enemy he might now have vanquished with ease; and at last found himself in a position of com. plete antagonism to the Emperor. Trusting in his boundless influence over his own troops, he conceived the treacherous design of leading over the army to the enemy. But his plots were countermined. He was outlawed; and an order went forth that he should be seized and delivered up to the Emperor, dead or alive. At the frontier town of Egra, in Bohemia, while he was waiting the arrival of the Swedish forces whom he was to join, Wallenstein was assassinated by certain of his own officers, in February, 1634. The greater number of his men had already deserted him. Of the rest, some regiments were disbanded, and some were allowed to swear fealty afresh to the Emperor. This is the foundation of the dramatic work of Schiller. In the first part, entitled Wallenstein's Camp, we are introduced to the soldiers of the great adventurer. We learn what kind of men these are whom Wallenstein heads, and how comparatively easy it is to lead astray from their fealty men who care so much for their chief and so little for their nominal master, the Emperor, who is to them a mere abstraction. For this is not a national army, but a mob of men of all nations-Italians, Germans, Walloons from Flanders, Bohemians, Scots, Irishmen,-all who are ready to fight for fray and plunder. There are differences in the various corps. Some, ake the arquebusiers of Tiefenbach, are inclined to be loyal to the Emperor; but the majority are ready to do anything for Wallenstein, whose tate, to them, represents fortune and plunder victory. In the prologue Schiller explains the necessity of regarding this first part as a ki of key to the comprehension of the rest. We see here unlimited power in the hands of a bd unscrupulous man, smarting under the sense of injury:- "I was his might that led his heart astray, His camp alone explains to us his crime." In the second part, The Piccolomini, the plot topes itself naturally and skilfully. The peterals and Wallenstein are here introduced; and Terzky, the evil counsellors, who play pra their lord's ambition, and incite him to treason, for their own purposes; Octavio l'icco , the old cold-hearted courtier, who keeps up the outward appearance of friendship to his ader, while he is planning his destruction, and the bolder of the decree of outlawry that is to ara Wallenstein; and Max Piccolomini, his son, the impersonation of honesty and heroism-the can who admires and respects Wallenstein from xttom of his heart, and who, when informed trms father of the general's intended treachery, 1x refuses to believe it possible, and then dears that he will seek an explanation with the S himself, and will never consent to wear mask, and show a face of friendship while iring at the secret plots of court intrigue and treachery. Thy way is crooked; it is not my way," he to his father, when that wily politician on his help against Wallenstein, who been his patron and his friend. He exclaims gantly, *My way must be straight on. True with the tougue, Fuse with the heart, I may not, cannot be ; For can I suffer that a man should trust meAs a friend trust me-and then lull my conscience With such low pleas as these, 'I asked him not; did it all at his own hazard, and Xy mouth has never lied to him."" Octavio piteously pleads the hardships of seeing katsome labours and state policy" rendered by his son; but to Max truth and honour and gher than all else, and must first be Here also the character of the chief who wields mighty a power is drawn with consummate He is not essentially a man of action, though his ambition is great, and he feels that ould eat his heart in the bitterness of enformed retirement, if for the second time he were tamised from the kingly position to which the fortunes of war and the necessities of the state had raised him. Like Macbeth, he "would not play false, and yet would wrongly win." He has not the strength to say to the temptation that besets him, "Avaunt! What have I to do with thee?" He is at last compelled to go forward in the bad path, because he lets the time go by in which he might choose the good. At one time he is almost determined to give up the treasonous enterprise. 'When he thinks of that kingly Bourbon, "the great constable, the subject of Francis the First, who sold himself to the enemies of his country, and fought against the fatherland he should have protected, bearing the banner of Charles of Germany, he thinks how even a warrior's death became dishonour to the man who made himself his country's foe, and left but the name of a giant traitor behind him. But then the magnitude of the stake for which he fights comes before his mind. In what respect is the action he meditates worse than the deed committed by that mighty Cæsar, whose fame has gone forth over all the earth? Did not the great Julius lead against Rome those legions that Rome had entrusted to him for her protection? "Give me his fortune; I will bear the rest," says the proud leader, conscious of the power he wields in the unquestioning attachment of the wild hordes who follow him as Highland clansmen follow their chief. A mystic, dreamy superstition, too, strengthens the hold established on him by his own ambition and the insidious promptings of evil-minded followers. He is a believer in astrology, and believes that "Friedland's star" will shine brightest in the blackest night. This is especially seen when Terzky and Illo, the low-minded, unscrupulous traitors, who tempt him to wrong for their own purposes, are urging him to an overt act of treason against the emperor, and bitterly deprecating the hesitation that is causing him, they think, to miss the opportunity of striking a decisive blow. The passage forms part of the eleventh scene of the first act in the Piccolomini. "Wal. The time is not yet come. Ter. So you say always, But when will it be time? Wal. Thou speakest as thou understand'st. How oft Mole-eyed, thou may'st but burrow in the carth [He walks across the chamber, then returns, and, The heavenly constellations make not merely Of sowing and harvest. Human action, That is the seed too of contingencies, In hopes to reconcile the powers of fate. Whence it behoves us to seek out the seed-time, And trace with searching eye the heavenly houses, His resolution is at length taken: he will do this dark deed of treachery, that, like Macbeth's crime, "Shall, to all his days and nights to come, Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom." He can say with Cæsar, "Jacta est alea," the die is cast. His In the third part of the trilogy, The Death of Wallenstein, the end of the tragic history is reached. Around the guilty man, who in his falling seems "a pillar of state, majestic still in ruin," the net of retribution is closing. steps are dogged by the avenging Nemesis, while he deems that all is going well; the steel is being sharpened that is to put an end at once to his enterprise and his life. The friends whom he has trusted forsake him treacherously, and swell the ranks of his foes; but Max Piccolomini has still maintained his honour. He has boldly and plainly told the great leader that this is an evil thing that Wallenstein purposes doing. If his chief will openly and honestly renounce the Emperor's service, Max will go with him, and still follow him through evil and through good report. But he can take no part in an enterprise of treason; and though his heart is torn by the consciousness that in renouncing Wallenstein he is destroying his own hopes of happiness, by parting from Thekla, the daughter of his chief, whom he loves with all the chivalrous devotion of his noble soul, he goes forth at the head of his regiment of cuirassiers to find a worthy death in the battle-field, while the guilty leader perishes ignobly by the hand of the assassin. Few pas. sages, even in Schiller's dramatic writings, are more beautifully pathetic than the lines in which the great, noble, guilty Wallenstein, at the moment when he awaits the triumph of his enterprise, thinks mournfully of the gallant young Piccolomini, the tidings of whose heroic death has just reached him : : "He the more fortunate! yea, he hath finished! Far off is he, above desire and fear; No more submitted to the change and chance Of the unsteady planets. O'tis well With him! But who knows what the coming hour, The whole is a splendid dramatic epic of human greatness, and weakness of love and heroism, of crime and retribution. DOMESTIC LIFE; SCHILLER AND HIS MOTHER AND SISTERS. It is pleasant to notice how the poet, occupied with work into which he threw his whole soul, yet had time for affectionate correspondence with his old mother and his three sisters; and how he maintained an active and tender solicitude for all that concerned their happiness. The eldest of the sisters, Christophine, two years older than the poet, and the constant friend and companion of his younger days, was married to Reinwald, the court librarian at Meiningen. She lived to the age of ninety, the last thirty years of her long life being spent in widowhood; and indeed, during her husband's life, her career was one of endurance and hardship in many respects. For Reinwald was a gloomy, bitter-spirited, disappointed man. Hardly treated by fortune, and without the elasticity of mind that enables many to meet the fickle goddess's frowns with a cheerful laugh; a scholar, and a ripe and good one, he had toiled on for years and years at clerkship drudgery, waiting for promotion, which coming at length, was after a short time arbitrarily withdrawn. His health gave way under the strain; and for years the devoted wife was the best of nurses and companions to the poor scholar, who, with the position of sub-librarian and a munificent salary of £15 a year, had to do the work for a senior librarian, whose office was anerare. Il luck attended him in worldly tatters to the last. A most learned translation s the Anglo-Saxon poem "Heliand" (Heiland, nor,, with glossary, "from a transcript of the Citta library copy in England," occupied him for years; but no publisher would undertake the printing at his own risk. Poor Reinwald sent his MS to the Munich library; and his labours were after years much appreciated by a bookworm, inding poor Reinwald's learned work, used deceased librarian's brains in an edition pubed for his own glorification. Christophine's Itters show her to have been a thoroughly good, re, helpful woman; and poor morose Reinad, captions to others, had a deep affection for antiring and contented wife. Luise, the ed sister, had a far more cheerful fate. She ad, at the age of thirty-three, an excellent yan named Frankh, and had the happiness freeving her old mother in the quiet parsonage ever-Sulzbach, and of ministering to the last ng days of that good, affectionate soul. Pr motion, too, in a modest way, came to Parson Pankh, in the shape of a better living, at Möckit: where he died, in 1834, his wife surviving La for about two years. When she died, in Amber, 1836, she had completed her seven year. Nannette, the youngest of the ly, was only five years old at the time er brother's memorable flight from Stutt She seems to have been the darling of handy, and to have had some share of brother's genius. She was cut off suddenly a ter nineteenth year, by a malignant fever, to the great grief of her family, and especially of her -- father, who survived her only a few months. inning little presents to his sisters, in cordial mpathy with their joys and sorrows, and true herly affection towards them, Schiller never Thy dear husband's promotion to Möckri" he writes to Luise, "of which I heard a ago through our sister" (meaning Chris***ae), "has rejoiced us greatly, not only for mprovement it makes in your position, but ase it is such an honourable testimony to my brother-in-law's merits. May you be very try in these new relations, and may you long them. We, too, shall by this be a few earer to you; and in a future journey to Faia, which we are meditating every year, may get over to you more easily." Never was simple, single-hearted man than Friedrich . Not a grief nor a care of his good hardkg sisters in which he did not sympathize; and very pleasant it was to see how with ready affection he rejoices in everything that can affect them favourably, trying, amid his own hard work and failing health, to throw a ray of cheerfulness over the dark places of their lives. INCREASED FAME AND PROSPERITY; "MARY STUART." Schiller's outward circumstances were such as completely to satisfy him. For wealth he cared nothing, for never was there a man of simpler habits; but he desired to see the future subsistence of his children secured; and in this he succeeded, and was content. His salary at Jena was several times increased, and with reason, as advantageous offers were made to him from the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin; and the Duke of Weimar, who behaved like a prince to him, and, unsolicited, bestowed upon him a title of nobility in 1802, though, in truth, the name of Schiller required no prefix to render it illustrious. The one drawback to this modest prosperity was the unsatisfactory state of his health, which no care perhaps could have permanently re-established, but which certainly suffered from the poet's unremitting industry. Dramatic composition now occupied him more than ever. In conjunction with his friend Goethe, he entertained a scheme for remodelling many of the German plays, and thus establishing a "German theatre." He was obliged to quit Jena, first in the winter, and then permanently, for the air was too keen for his weak lungs. He established himself finally at Weimar; but wherever he might be, or whatever might be his state of health, he seemed always conscious, by a kind of prescience, that for him the night was coming quickly, in which no man can work; and though his friends begged him to spare himself, he would not rest from his labours, measuring life, indeed, not by length of years, but by achievement of results. He generally worked at night, walking up and down in his room during the winter-time, and in his little garden during the summer, and writing down his thoughts at his desk, when he had formed them into verse. Frequently he continued his labour until four or five in the morning. That these midnight vigils further shattered his already weakened health, there is no doubt. The next tragedy he produced after Wallenstein was Mary Stuart. It is better known in England than any of his works, on account, probably, of the nature of the subject; but it does not offer a fair standard by which to judge of the author's powers. The object of Schiller was to show, in the person of the unhappy Queen of Scots, a spirit chastened and subdued by affliction. A prisoner, surrounded by bitter enemies, she has learned to repent of her crimes; and resentment seems dead in her, and, indeed, all passion, but a weary longing for freedom, for deliverance from her captivity. That deliverance comes at last, but it is through the portals of the grave; by the time the unfortunate Mary Stuart prepares herself, with heroic dignity, for that last dark journey, we have learned to pardon, to pity, to admire her. Elizabeth is represented as the exact contrast of her Scottish rival. She is cold, selfish, and utterly heartless; not at all the hot-headed, lion-hearted, clever shrew who, on the news of the approach of the Spanish Armada, posted down to Tilbury, and roused her troops to fierce enthusiasm by declaring that she had come to live and die among her faithful people, and that she thought foul scorn" that Spain, or Parma, or any prince in Europe should dare to invade the borders of her realm. Schiller's Elizabeth is certainly not our "Good Queen Bess;" nor is the court he depicts anything at all resembling that concourse of "gorgeous dames, and statesmen old, in bearded majesty," that surrounded the throne of the greatest of the Tudors. Schiller has evolved" the sixteenth century English court life, as his compatriot did the camel, "out of his inner consciousness." "THE MAID OF ORLEANS;" BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS. Of far higher merit and greater interest is the tragedy with which the next year, 1801, is associated in Schiller's career. In the story of the Maid of Orleans the poet found a subject especially suited to his genius, romantic and poetical in its nature, and belonging to a period of history sufficiently remote to be treated in the chivalric style, with a large intermingling of fiction. Schiller has softened the harsher features of that miserable period of pillage, robbery, and murder. He has thrown a new halo round the head of the enthusiastic girl of Domremi, who believed so firmly in her mission, and perished so mournfully after saving a nation that was not worthy of her. The surrounding characters, Dunois the gallant soldier, the stern veteran Talbot, the profligate Isabella of Bavaria, and the gentle Agnes Sorel, are far more vividly delineated than the characters in Mary Stuart. The feelings intended to be awakened for the heroine, admiration and pity, are realized in the highest degree; and though opinions may vary as to the judiciousness of altering the catastrophe-for Schiller represents the heroine as dying on the field of battle, instead of on the scaffold at Rouen-the work, taken as a whole, is a triumph of art. In Germany it was received with a shout of welcome; and it is told how, when the play was first represented at Leipsic, the spectators formed two long lines outside the theatre, after the performance, between which lines the poet walked like a king passing through a crowd of his subjects, every head being un. covered as he went along-while mothers held their little children aloft, and pointed out to them, in the pale, mild-faced stranger, the man whose genius conferred lustre on his country for all time. Among the poetical works produced by Schiller up to this time, mention must not be omitted of the splendid series of ballads, which, appealing directly to the people, sank deep into the heart of Germany. Some of these are popular versions of classical subjects, like "Die Bürgschaft" (the suretyship), in which the story of Damon and Pythias is told with much graphic power. The idea of haste, as exemplified on the continual reference to the course of the sun, on the home ward journey of the respited criminal, hastening back to save the friend who has suretied him, is finely indicated; and the manner in which the interest is worked up to a climax is beyond all praise. Hardly less popular is Der Taucher (the Diver), founded on the story of an Italian of Sicily, who lost his life by overdaring in exhibiting his skill to a noble. A few verses of this poem, in the metre of the original, will give an idea of Schiller's treatment of the subject: THE DIVER. "Be he knight, be he squire, who is here will dare To dive in the depths below? A golden goblet I hurl through the air,- Thus spake the monarch; and forth flung he, But still the warriors silent stand, Steps proudly forth from the wavering band, |