of cantonal vanity: "We are first here," they say, we Unterwaldeners. They have not charters or written laws to which they can appeal; but they have the traditionary rights of their fathers, and bold hearts, and strong arms to make them good. The rules by which they steer are not deduced from remote premises by a fine process of thought; they are the accumulated result of experience, transmitted from peasant sire to peasant son. There is something singularly pleasing in this exhibition of genuine humanity; of wisdom embodied in old adages and practical maxims of prudence; of magnanimity displayed in the quiet unpretending discharge of the humblest everyday duties. Truth is superior to fiction: we feel at home among these brave, good people; their fortune interests us more than that of all the brawling, vapid, sentimental heroes in creation. Yet to make them interest us was the very highest problem of art; it was to copy lowly nature, to give us a copy of it embellished and refined by the agency of genius, yet preserving the likeness in every lineament. The highest quality of art is to conceal itself: these peasants of Schiller's are what every one imagines he could imitate successfully; yet in the hands of any but a true and strong-minded poet, they dwindle into repulsive coarseness or mawkish insipidity. Among our own writers, who have tried such subjects, we remember none that has succeeded equally with Schiller. One potent but ill-fated genius has, in far different circumstances and with far other means, shown that he could have equalled him: the Cotter's Saturday Night of Burns is, in its own humble way, as quietly beautiful, as simplex munditiis,as the scenes of Tell. No other has even approached them; though some gifted persons have attempted it. Mr. Wordsworth is no ordinary man; nor are his pedlars, and leech-gatherers, and dalesmen without their attractions and their moral; but they sink into whining drivellers beside Rosselmann the Priest, Ulric the Smith, Hans of the Wall, and the other sturdy confederates of Rutli.

The skill with which the events are concatenated in this play corres

ponds to the truth of its delineation of character. The incidents of the Swiss Revolution, as detailed in Tschudi or Müller, are here faithfully preserved even to their minutest branches. The beauty of Schiller's descriptions all can relish; their fidelity is what surprizes every reader in Switzerland. Schiller never saw the scene of his play; but his diligence and quickness and intensity of conception supplied this defect. Mountain and mountaineer, conspiracy and action, are all brought before us in their true forms, all glowing in the mild sun-shine of the poet's fancy. The tyranny of Gessler, and the misery to which it had reduced the land; the exasperation, yet patient courage of the people; their characters, and those of their leaders, Fürst, Stauffacher, and Melchthal; their exertions and ultimate success, described as they are here, keep up a constant interest in the piece. It abounds in action as much as the Bride of Messina is defective in that point.

But the finest delineation is undoubtedly the character of Wilhelm Tell, the hero of the Swiss Revolt, and of the present drama. In Tell are combined all the attributes of a great man, without the help of education or of great occasions to develope them. His knowledge has been gathered chiefly from his own experience, and this is bounded by his native mountains: he has had no lessons or examples of splendid virtue, no wish or opportunity to earn renown: he has grown up to manhood a simple yeoman of the Alps, among simple yeomen; and has never aimed at being more. Yet we trace in him a deep, reflective, earnest spirit, thirsting for activity, yet bound in by the wholesome dictates of prudence; a heart benevolent, generous, unconscious alike of boasting or of fear. It is this salubrious air of rustic, unpretending honesty that forms the great beauty in Tell's character: all is native, all is genuine ; he does not declaim; he dislikes to talk of noble conduct; he exhibits it. He speaks little of his freedom, because he has always enjoyed it, and feels that he can always defend it. His reasons for destroying Gessler are not drawn from jurisconsults

and writers on morality, but from the everlasting instincts of nature: the Austrian Vogt must die; because if not, the wife and children of Tell will be destroyed by him. The scene, where this peaceful but indomitable archer sits waiting for Gessler in the hollow way among the rocks of Küssnacht, presents him in a striking light. Former scenes had shown us Tell under many amiable and attractive aspects; we knew that he was tender as well as brave, that he loved to haunt the mountain tops, and inhale in silent dreams the influence of their wild and magnificent beauty: we had seen him the most manly and warm-hearted of fathers and husbands; intrepid, modest, and decisive in the midst of peril, and venturing his life to bring help to the oppressed. But here his mind is exalted into stern solemnity; its principles of action come before us with greater clearness in this its fiery contest. The name of murder strikes a damp across his frank and fearless spirit; while the recollection of his children and their mother proclaims emphatically that there is no remedy. Gessler must perish: Tell swore it darkly in his secret soul, when the monster forced him to aim at the head of his boy; and he will keep his oath. His thoughts wander to and fro, but his volition is unalterable; the free and peaceful mountaineer is to become a shedder of blood: woe to them that have made him so! Travellers come along the pass: the unconcern of their every-day exist ence is strongly contrasted with the dark and fateful resolution of Tell. The wife of Armgart, an injured peasant, is waiting with her children to implore the Landvogt for the liberty of her husband, whom he keeps unjustly and unmercifully prisoner. Gessler appears, conversing with his follower on the insolence of these unsubmissive peasants; he spurns the woman's prayer; she intreats with more desperate fervour, at last declaring that, unless he liberate the father of her children, she will die beneath the hoofs of his horse, for a death by woe and famine is more terrible than this. The Vogt again refuses with imprecations, calling on his retinue to take these wretches from his way, lest in his rage he crush them;

he threatens fiercely that he will suppress complaining, he will subdue the pride of freedom, he will bend this stiff-necked people, he willwhen the arrow of Tell smites him to the heart; the impious menace dies upon his tongue, and his spirit passes forth, " prepared or not, to stand before its Judge."

The death of Gessler, which forms the leading object of the plot, happens at the end of the fourth act: the fifth, occupied with representing the expulsion of his satellites, and the final triumph and liberation of the Swiss, though diversified with occurrences and spectacles, moves on with inferior animation. A certain want of unity is, indeed, distinctly felt throughout all the piece; the incidents do not point one way; there is no connection, or a very slight one, between the enterprize of Tell and that of the men of Rutli. This is the principal, or rather sole, deficiency of the present work; a deficiency inseparable from the faithful display of the historical event, and far more than compensated by the deeper interest and the wider range of action and delineation, which a strict adherence to the facts allows. By the present mode of management, Alpine life in all its length and breadth is placed before us; from the feudal halls of Attinghausen, to Ruodi the Fisher of the Lucern Lake, and Armgart

The poor wild-hay-man of the Rigiberg, Whose trade is, on the brow of the abyss, To mow the common grass from craggy And nooks to which the cattle dare not

shelves

climb.

We stand as if in presence of the Swiss, beholding the achievement of their freedom in its minutest circumstances, with all its simplicity and unaffected greatness. The light of the poet's genius is upon the Four Forest Cantons, at the opening of the fourteenth century: the whole time and scene shine as with the brightness, the truth, and more than the beauty of reality.

The tragedy of Tell wants unity of interest and of action; but in spite of this, it may justly claim the high dignity of ranking with the very best of Schiller's plays. Less comprehen

sive and ambitious than Wallenstein, less ethereal than the Jungfrau, it has a look of nature and substantial truth, which neither of its rivals can boast of. The feelings it inculcates and appeals to are those of universal human nature, and presented in their purest, most unpretending form. There is no high-wrought sentiment, no poetic love. Tell loves his wife as honest men love their wives; and the episode of Bertha and Rudenz, though beautiful, is very brief and without effect on the result. It is delightful and salutary to the heart to wander among the scenes of Tell: all is lovely, yet all is real. Physical and moral grandeur are united; yet both are the unadorned grandeur of nature: there are the lakes and green vallies beside us, the Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, and their sister peaks, with their avalanches and their palaces of ice, all glowing in the southern sun; and dwelling among them are a race of manly husbandmen, heroic without ceasing to be homely, poetical without ceasing to be ge

nuine.

We have dwelt the longer on this play, not only on account of its peculiar fascinations, but also-as it is our last! Schiller's faculties had never been more brilliant than at present strong in mature age, in rare and varied accomplishments, he was now reaping the full fruit of his studious vigils; the rapidity with which he wrote such noble poems at once betokened the exuberant riches of his mind, and the prompt command which he enjoyed of them. Still all that he had done seemed but a fraction of his appointed task: a bold imagination was carrying him forward into distant untouched fields of thought and poetry, where triumphs yet more glorious were to be gained. Schemes of new writings, new kinds of writing, were budding in his fancy; he was yet, as he had ever been, surrounded by a multitude of projects, and full of ardour to labour in fulfilling them. But Schiller's labours and triumphs were drawing to a close. The invisible Messenger was already near, which overtakes alike the busy and the idle, which arrests man in the midst of his pleasures or his occupations, and changeth his countenance and sendeth him away.

In 1804, having been at Berlin witnessing the exhibition of his Wilhelm Tell, he was seized, while returning, with a paroxysm of that malady, which for many years had never wholly left him. The attack was fierce and violent; it brought him to the verge of the grave: but he escaped once more; was considered out of danger, and again resumed his poetical employments. Besides various translations from the French and Italian, he had sketched a tragedy on the history of Perkin Warbeck, and finished two acts of one on that of a kindred but more fortunate impostor, Dimitri of Russia. His mind, it would appear, was also frequently engaged with more solemn and sublime ideas. The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he seems to have found no permanent contentment in any of its provinces. Many of his later poems indicate an incessant and increasing longing for some solution of the mystery of life: at times it is a gloomy resignation to the want and the despair of any. His ardent spirit could not satisfy itself with things seen, though gilded with all the glories of intellect and imagination; it soared away in search of other lands, looking with unutterable desire for some surer and brighter home beyond the horizon of this world. Death he had no reason to regard as probably a near event; but we easily perceive that the awful secrets connected with it had long been familiar to his contemplation. The veil, which hid them from his eyes, was now shortly, when he looked not for it, to be rent asunder!

The spring of 1805, which Schiller had anticipated with no ordinary hopes of enjoyment and activity, came on in its course, cold, bleak, and stormy; and along with it his sickness returned. The help of physicians was vain; the unwearied services of trembling affection were vain: his disorder kept increasing; on the 9th of May it reached a crisis. Early in the morning of that day, he grew insensible, and by degrees delirious. Among his expres sions the word Lichtenberg was frequently noticed; a word of no import; indicating, as some thought, the writer of that name, whose works

he had been reading lately; according to others, the castle of Leuchtenberg, which, a few days before his sickness, he had been proposing to visit. Yet his friends were spared the farther pain of seeing him depart thus miserably: the fiery canopy of physical suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties, was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in its wonted serenity once again before it passed away for ever. After noon his delirium abated; about four o'clock he fell into a soft sleep, from which he ere long awoke in full possession of his senses. Restored to consciousness in that hour, when the soul is cut off from human help, and man must front the King of Terrors on his own strength, Schiller did not faint or fail in this his last and sharpest trial. Feeling that his end was come, he addressed himself to meet this stern and sudden call as became him; not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor of his life. Of his friends and family he took a touching but a tranquil farewell: he ordered that his funeral should be private, without pomp or parade. Some one inquiring how he felt, he said: "Calmer and calmer;" simple but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About six he sank again into a sleep; which deepened and deepened till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled with the clods of the valley.

The news of Schiller's death fell cold on many a heart: not in Germany alone, but over Europe, it was regarded as a public loss, by all who understood its meaning. In Weimar especially, the scene of his noblest efforts, the abode of his chosen friends, the sensation it produced was deep and universal. The public places of amusement were shut; all ranks made haste to testify their

feelings, to honour themselves and the deceased by tributes to his memory. It was Friday when Schiller died: his funeral was meant to be on Sunday; but the state of his remains made it necessary to proceed before. Doering thus describes the ceremony:

According to his own directions, the bier was to be borne by private burghers of the city; but several young artists and students, out of reverence for the deceased, took it from them. It was between midnight and one in the morning when they approached the church-yard. The overclouded heaven threatened rain. But as the bier was set down beside the grave, the clouds suddenly split asunder, and the threw her first rays on the coffin of the demoon, coming forth in peaceful clearness, parted. They lowered him into the grave; and the moon again retired behind her clouds. A fierce tempest of wind began to howl, as if it were reminding the bystanders of their great, irreparable loss. At this moment few could have applied without emotion the poct's own words:

Alas! the ruddy morning tinges A silent, cold sepulchral stone; And evening throws her crimson fringes But round his slumber dark and lone. So lived and so died Friedrich Schiller; a man on whose history other men will long dwell with a mingled feeling of reverence and love. Our humble record of his life and writings is drawing to an end: yet we still linger, loth to part with a spirit so dear to us. From the scanty and too much neglected field of his biography, a few slight facts and indications may still be gleaned; slight but distinctive of him as an individual, and not to be despised in a penury so great and so unmerited.

Schiller's age was forty-five years and a few months, when he died.* Sickness had long wasted his form, which at no time could boast of faultless symmetry. He was tall and strongly boned; but unmuscular and lean: his body, it might be perceived, was wasting under the energy of a spirit too keen for it. His face was pale, the cheeks and temples rather hollow, the chin somewhat deep and slightly projecting, the nose irregu

larly aquiline, his hair inclined to auburn. Withal his countenance was attractive and had a certain manly beauty. The lips were curved together in a line, expressing delicate and honest sensibility; a silent enthusiasm, impetuosity not unchecked by melancholy, gleamed in his softly kindled eyes and pale cheeks, and the brow was high and thoughtful. To judge from his portrait, Schiller's face expressed well the features of his mind it is mildness tempering strength; fiery ardour shining through the clouds of suffering and disappointment, deep but patiently endured. Pale was its proper tint; the cheeks and temples were best hollow. There are few faces that affect us more than Schiller's: it is at once meek, tender, unpretending, and heroic.

In his dress and manner, as in all things, he was plain and unaffected. Among strangers, something shy and retiring might occasionally be observed in him: in his own family, or among his select friends, he was kind-hearted, free, and gay as a little child. In public, his external appearance had nothing in it to strike or attract. Of an unpresuming aspect, wearing plain apparel, his looks as he walked were constantly bent on the ground; so that frequently, as we are told," he failed to notice the salutation of a passing acquaintance; but if he heard it, he would catch hastily at his hat and give his cordial Guten Tag!" Modesty, simplicity, a total want of all parade or affectation were conspicuous in him. These are the usual concomitants of true greatness, and serve to mitigate its splendour. Common things he did as a common man. His conduct in such matters was uncalculated, spontaneous; and therefore natural and pleasing.

Concerning his mental character, the greater part of what we had to say has been already said in speaking of his works. The most cursory perusal of these will satisfy us that he had a mind of the highest order; grand by nature, and cultivated by the assiduous study of a life time.

It is not the predominating force of any one faculty that impresses us in Schiller; but the general force of all. Every page of his writings bears

the stamp of internal vigour-new truths, new aspects of known truth, bold thought, happy imagery, lofty emotion. Schiller would have been no common man, though he had altogether wanted the qualities peculiar to poets. His intellect is clear, deep, and comprehensive: its deductions, frequently elicited from numerous and distant premises, are presented under a magnificent aspect

in the shape of theorems embracing an immense multitude of minor propositions. Yet it seems powerful and vast, rather than quick or keen; for Schiller is not notable for wit, though his fancy is ever prompt with its metaphors, illustrations, comparisons, to decorate and point the perceptions of his reason. The earnestness of his temper farther disqualified him for this: his tendency was rather to adore the grand and the lofty, than to despise the little and the mean. Perhaps his greatest faculty was a half poetical, half philosophical imagination; a faculty teeming with magnificence and brilliancy; now adorning, or aiding to erect, a stately pyramid of scientific speculation; now brooding over the abysses of thought and feeling, till thoughts and feelings, else unutterable, were embodied in expressive forms, and palaces and landscapes glowing in ethereal beauty rose like exhalations from the bosom of the deep.

Combined and partly of kindred with these intellectual faculties, was that vehemence of temperament which is necessary for their full developement. Schiller's heart was at once fiery and tender: impetuous, soft, affectionate, his enthusiasm clothed the universe with grandeur, and sent his spirit forth to explore its secrets and mingle warmly in its interests. Thus poetry in Schiller was not one but many gifts. It was not the "lean and flashy song" of an ear apt for harmony, combined with a maudlin sensibility, or a mere animal ferocity of passion, and an imagination creative chiefly because unbridled; it is, what true poetry is always, the quintessence of general mental riches, the purified result of strong thought and conception, and of refined as well as powerful emotion. In his writings, we behold him a moralist, a philosopher, a man