And so he steps to the mountain's brow,

And gazes the pool upon,

Backward the foaming waters now,

From the dark Charybdis come rushing on;
And with sound like the distant thunder's roar,
Upward they leap to the air once more.

And it boils and it bubbles, and hisses and seethes,
As when water with fire doth vie;

Trands heaven a vapoury column breathes,
And wave on wave rolls eternally;

Exhausted never, and ceasing not,

As though a new sea by the old was begot."

The youth returns in safety from his first atpt; but the king tempts him down once e by offer of greater reward, even the hand of his fair daughter.

"It shoots through his soul like the flashing of light, And valeur beams from his eye;

When binhing he sees that maiden bright
The pale to the earth sinking helplessly;
That beauteous prize must bis efforts crown,-
"For life or for death, then,' he plunges down.

"Bastave been known to move, and trees to speak; Angars, and understood relations, have

nag-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret at man of blood."

the ballad a flight of cranes, passing over the testre just when the people's hearts have been

d by the woe-denouncing song of the Furies, are the two "secret men of blood," who have tried Ibycus the minstrel, to betray their

Der Kampf mit dem Drachen (the Fit with the Dragon), is a chivalrous story of Art of Rhodes, one of the famous "Order of Jean" Above all the lyric poems towers the a Lied von der Glocke (Song of the Bell), ich the various events of human lifear, marriage, burial, war and peace, confamation and festivity-are all associated with end of the iron monitor, that from its of vantage in the belfry tower seems to ey the motley throng of life below. *THE BRIDE OF MESSINA;" "WILLIAM TELL." In his next tragedy, The Bride of Messina, the poet made an experiment, by introducing the

chorus in the old Greek fashion, but with a difference; for in Schiller's drama there are two choruses, a first and a second, who discuss and illustrate the action of the play. But though the sound of a number of male voices speaking in unison has a fine effect, the device is scarcely suitable to modern drama, and interrupts the story, whose interest flags before the end is reached. Even Spenser could not, in England, revive the age of romantic and allegorical poetry; and Schiller failed when he endeavoured to reanimate the dead dramatic form of ancient days.

The year 1803 brought a new task to Schiller, and one which he fulfilled with complete success. Goethe had made a tour in Switzerland; and while wandering on the beautiful shores of the Lake of Lucerne, or climbing the mountains by which it is surrounded, had often regretted that Schiller was not with him,-for such a landscape would have rejoiced the poet's heart. Then, amid the scenes rendered famous by the struggle of the Swiss for freedom, the idea struck him that the story of that struggle would be an excellent subject for dramatic treatment. He felt also that Schiller was the man to do justice to the theme; but Schiller was at Weimar, a consumptive, weak-chested man, entirely unable to climb Swiss mountains, or even to breathe the keen air of those snow-clad heights. Therefore did Goethe carefully store up in his capacious memory every scene of interest, and every incident and natural feature that could be turned to account in the alembic of his friend's imagination. And when he returned, he painted to Schiller, in words such as he only had at command, the beauties of that wonderful mountain land. And the imagination of the poet took fire; and he sat down, animated by the exhortation and encouragement of Goethe, to give the world the history of the revolt of the Swiss; to show how the little community of herdsmen and hunters did battle against the chivalry of Austria for freedom; and how, at that famous meeting on the Rütli, they determined that if the Empire denied them justice, they would, among their mountains, fight for their freedom to the last.

William Tell is the last great dramatic work Schiller lived to complete; and it is worthy to close the great series of his historic tragedies. An air of sturdy, truth pervades the work throughout. There is nothing bombastic from beginning to end; no frothy sentiment, no vapouring of stage heroes. The persons represented are plain, downright countrymen-shepherds and farm

66

labourers and smiths. But they are "Cives Romani" in the best sense of the term-men who know their privileges, and are determined to uphold them manfully. One of the finest touches of nature is the threatened quarrel among the confederates themselves on the "Rütli," and the interposition of the "Landamman," or president, to quiet the excited wealsmen. The character of William Tell himself is admirably conceived and carried out. He is a plain, strong, courageous man, full of energy and helpfulness, but the last person in the world to be a professional agitator. He even keeps aloof, at first, from the resistance meditated by his friends. They will tire of themselves," he says of the oppressors, "if they see that the country remains quiet." But when Gessler puts the life of the brave huntsman's child in jeopardy, it is wounding Achilles in the heel. Tell then has but one idea of the duty incumbent on him. If he does not kill Gessler, that ruthless man will kill his wife and children. It is the true portraiture of a strong, simple nature. It requires much to rouse him to resistance; but once roused, nothing will turn him aside. In this, the last dramatic work Schiller lived to complete, the idea is, like that in The Robbers, the vindication of liberty and human rights against tyranny; but between the two pieces there lies the whole of a singularly rich literary life, and all that continual study and striving had given to enrich the mind of a great man. The idea of liberty in The Robbers is the expression of a blind outcry against existing institutions, because of their imperfection and inconsistency; in William Tell, the liberty advocated is that which keeps strictly within the bounds of order-reforming, not overturning; "broadening down, from precedent to precedent," and uniting individual freedom of action with the subordination necessary for the happiness of all.

LAST WORKS; ILLNESS AND DEATH.

It was in February, 1804, that William Tell was played for the first time at Weimar. Madame de Staël, full of enthusiasm, and glowing with ideas of practicable and impracticable freedom, was present, and joined in the general chorus of gratulation at its success. "She had a real ideahunger," said Schiller quaintly, when the lively Frenchwoman questioned and cross-questioned the good-natured poet respecting his works, with her continual "Quel en est le but?" ("What's the intention of it?") as each in turn became the subject of discussion.

But meanwhile his state of health grew more and more alarming. An ashen hue had gradually fallen over the thoughtful face; constant weak. ness, only to be overcome by the greatest resolution, tormented him from day to day; and he was himself deeply impressed with the idea that for him the night was quickly coming, in which no man can work. "True human wisdom," he once said, "consists simply in seizing every moment with a man's whole strength, and using it as if it were the only one, the last one, to be granted to him. It is better to do a thing with good-will too quickly, than to remain unemployed." Thus, with failing hand and aching head, immediately after Tell had added another to the list of his triumphs, he began a new dramatic task, the tragedy of Demetrius, destined to show, in a few unfinished scenes, what power yet remained in that glorious mind when the body was worn out. Demetrius, the hero of the tragedy, was an impostor, who gave himself out as the son of a Russian czar, Ivan Wasilovitch. Those hours in which the dying poet felt too much depressed to attempt original writing he devoted to translating the Phædra. The king of Prussia wished to attract him to the University of Berlin, and advantageous offers were made to him. But these he declined; strong local attachment held him fast to Weimar, and presentiments also that the end was near.

It came somewhat suddenly at last. A feverish cold, that would have been of little consequence in a man of ordinary health, was sufficient to exhaust his remnant strength. To the last he was the mild, gentle, self-forgetful, affectionate man he had always been; entirely resigned to the Higher Will, yet acknowledging the sweetness of life; gazing with eyes brightened with hope upon the setting sun, when at his request the curtain had been drawn aside, that the last evening rays might fall upon his brow. The most perfect peace shone in the dead face when all was over and he had sunk to rest, gently as a wearied child. "I think I shall sleep well to-night, if it be God's will," he had said, shortly before he died, to the watchers round his bed.

Only forty-five years, passed in a struggle first against adverse circumstances, and afterwards against ill-health,-and in that space a work achieved of which a veteran might be proud for its beautiful completeness. Wealth and worldly honours far greater than any he gained might have been his; but he had chosen the better part, and had given to humanity a treasure that time cannot take away. H. W. D.

tempt and dislike of the other powers of Europe. But this is incorrect, though Lord Macaulay's powerful and picturesque essay on Frederick the Great has spread the opinion widely throughout England. Elector Frederick knew perfectly well what he was about, when he laboured for years to remove the jealous objections of Austria to his assuming the royal title, and converting the Marquisate of Brandenburg, with its appur. tenances, into the kingdom of Prussia. He was carrying out the idea of his father, the Great Elector, in endeavouring to obtain a new and improved position for the territory he governed, as a great Protestant power in North Germany, to hold the balance against Catholic Austria. At first the foundation of the Prussian kingdom was certainly looked upon as proceeding from

most advantage in the sunshine of success, his qualities appeared at their best amid defeat, danger, and misfortune. His was the courage that "mounteth with occasion ;" and however dark the night of peril and sorrow might be, it never caused the iron heart of the undaunted king to quail, even for a moment. Whatever his faults may have been, he was a great reality in a period of shams; a staunch worker and watcher for the interests of his people at a time when the sovereigns of Europe generally were sunk in sloth and carelessness and vice.

The Emperor Sigismund of Germany, the monarch who summoned the great Church Council of Constance for the extirpation of the Hussite heresy in 1414, bestowed the Marquisate of Brandenburg upon Frederick von Buren, Burgrave of Nüremberg, of the noble race of Hohenzollern. Nearly two centuries, and a half later, when the Peace of Westphalia put an end to the terrible Thirty Years' War, Frederick William, called the Great Elector, increased his territory by the addition of Magdeburg; and in 1700 his son Frederick became the first King of Prussia.

When Frederick, afterwards called the Great, was born, on the 24th of January, 1712, his grandfather, King Frederick I., was still seated on the new throne of the Prussian Monarchy. The new throne it may be called advisedly; for Prussia had only been elevated to the position of a kingdom for about twelve years. Indeed, there had been many who said the conversion of the Marquisate of Brandenburg into the kingdom of Prussia was simply a piece of ostentation that could have no effect but to draw upon the new monarchy the mingled con

new kingdom could hold its own among the monarchies, and the question was whether it might not become as dangerous a foe as it would certainly be a valuable ally.

FREDERICK WILLIAM I.; SPARTAN RULE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Only a year after his grandson's birth, the old magnificent, splendour-loving King Frederick died; and his son, Frederick William I., came to the throne. A very remarkable personage was this rough, thorough-going, hard-working monarch; and a notable contrast did he present, in his military uniform and with his garrison manners, to the scented, bedizened, brilliant fribbles who fluttered in most European courts. "Thou wouldst find me such a plain king," says bluff Harry V. to fair Princess Catherine of France, "that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown; " and the description would apply equally to this King of Prussia Hard-working he was, and vigilant, and honestly bent on promoting the welfare of the people under his sway; but frightfully despotic and peremptory, unable to bear even the shadow of contradiction, and subject to fits of anger, during which he spoke and acted like a madman. Under his father, Berlin had been called the German Athens; under him, it might more properly be termed the German Sparta. His character had many of those traits which form what in England is termed "John Bull-ism," a hearty contempt for "outlandish" and "newfangled" notions and modes of expression-a disposition to look backward rather than forward, to maintain the old, and turn with sus

in from the new. He looked with honest

on the extravagance of the courts of tim, whose selfish splendour was paid for the poverty and misery of millions; but in I wish to bring up his family in a simple down* German-citizen fashion, he fell into the poste extreme; and the hard;discipline in the aral Family, and the coarse fare put before the atant princes and princesses became a subject der an I ridicule among the envoys of the i courts at Berlin.

That Frederick William loved the Crown

, his son, and was anxious about his ation, is undoubted; but never was the ress of mental and physical training made rksome to an unhappy pupil, than in the of the young Prussian prince. Everything sented to the eager, inquiring mind of by in the dryest and most pedantic of forms; * portions of the Catechism and numerous

learnt as punishment tasks for juvenile gave him a distaste for religious ineraton generally. French teachers gave him AA for the writers of France; while of the erature of his own country, which certainly at teme was in a most degraded condition, he arely any notion. One part of his educatinhala powerful influence on his later career, eping in him military talent and the military fame. A notion of making A formidable by the possession of a great

army, was one of the most practical <Frenck William's ideas. He had a standing aiment of sixty thousand troops, "sixty and good reasons against foreign encroach-" "." be used, with grim'humour, to call them— the Crown Prince was, at an early age, a to a juvenile corps, and made to go -"at the grades and fulfil the duties of

major, and lieutenant-colonel of cadets. Fung prince did his duty cheerfully and * and to this early initiation into the of the military art may be attributed not "ed the distinction Frederick afterwards e as a soldier.

1 CROWS PRINCE A CONTRAST TO HIS FATHER; MISUNDERSTANDINGS.

ring horse may [be spurred into rea: and by trying to achieve too much, the el the cheerful submission of his son On and bitter opposition. The young

apreciative mind had been awakened aizirat n of the French classic literature of pud He loved the poetry of Racine and

Corneille, and appreciated the wit of Molière; afterwards all his admiration was enlisted for that most dangerous of literary or moral guides, the great scoffer, Voltaire. The king's mind, on the other hand, was uncultivated, and his enjoyments were coarse. He hunted with the perseverance of a Squire Western, and solaced himself of an evening with the company of the members of his "Tobacco College," a beer-drinking, pipesmoking symposium, to which the chief officers and counsellors belonged, and at whose meetings practical jokes of the coarsest nature were played off upon visitors. The king insisted that his son should be a member of this delectable society; and the youth occasionally gave vent to expressions of scorn and disgust at the proceedings. There was naturally no lack of "smiling pickthanks and base newsmongers" to report such outbursts to the king, who, already possessed with an uneasy feeling that his son was intellectually his superior, began to look upon the prince with suspicion and dislike. The continual hunting parties at the country palace of Wusterhausen were as little to the prince's taste as the coarse humours of the tobacco college; and his military duties became at last a burden to him, when the king insisted upon his continually wearing a tight uniform, and wearied him out with a long course of tedious and oft-repeated manoeuvres. The estrangement thus begun, quickly became serious. The father looked upon his son as a degenerate, lounging, flute-playing, supercilious coxcomb; while the son hardly concealed his contempt for the coarseness of the boorish father, who was embittering his life with absurd restrictions and commands.

Political circumstances now rendered the state of matters worse than before, by setting the heads of the royal house at variance. The queen was a daughter of George I. of England, and greatly wished to see the completion of a double marriage, the preliminaries for which had been negotiated with England, and which was to unite the Crown Prince to a daughter of George II., while his eldest sister, Wilhelmina, was to become consort of Frederick Prince of Wales. But causes of discontent, not unconnected with the vagaries of the Prussian king's recruiting officers, had arisen between the two crowns; and Austria, anxious to prevent an alliance between Prussia and England, had sent one of her most astute diplomatists, Count Seckendorf, to keep the king's anger alive against "his brother the play-actor," as he scornfully dubbed George of England. The queen, very injudiciously, enlisted her children on her side