there is so much seriousness and probity, that it is there alone we can be completely acquainted with the character and the duties of every vocation. Nevertheless Schiller was admirable among them all, both with respect to his virtues and his talents. His Muse was Conscience: she needs no invocation, for we hear her voice at all times, when we have once listened to it. He loved poetry, the dramatic art, history, and literature in general, for its own sake. If he had determined never to publish his works, he would nevertheless have taken the same pains in writing them; and no consideration, drawn either from success, from the prevailing fashion, from prejudice, or from any thing, in short, that proceeds from others, could ever have prevailed on him to alter his writings; for his writings were himself: they expressed his soul; and he did not conceive the possibility of altering a single expression, if the internal sentiment which inspired it had undergone no change. Schiller, doubtless, was not exempt from self-love; for if it be necessary, in order to animate us to glory, it is likewise so to render us capable of any active exertion whatever; but nothing differs so much from another in its consequences as vanity and the love of fame: the one seeks successes by fraud, the other endeavors to command it openly; this feels inward uneasiness and lies cunningly in wait for public opinion; that trusts its own powers, and depends on natural causes alone for strength to subdue all opposition. In short, there is a sentiment even more pure than the love of glory, which is the love of truth : it is this love that renders literary men like the warlike preachers of a noble cause; and to them should henceforth be assigned the charge of keeping the sacred fire; for feeble women are no longer, as formerly, sufficient for its defence.

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities. Our idea of goodness is sometimes debased by associating it with that of weakness; but when it is united to the highest degree of knowledge and of energy, we comprehend in what sense the Bible has told us, that "God made man after his own image." Schiller did himself an injury, when he first entered into the world, by the wanderings of his imagination ;

but with the maturity of age, he recovered that sublime purity which gives birth to noble thought. With degrading sentiments he held no intercourse. He lived, he spoke, he acted, as if the wicked did not exist; and when he described them in his works, it was with more exaggeration and less depth a' observation than if he had really known them. The wicked presented themselves to his imagination as an obstacle in nature, as a physical scourge; and perhaps, in many respects, they have no intellectual being; the habit of vice has changed their souls into a perverted instinct.

Schiller was the best of friends, the best of fathers, the best of husbands; no quality was wanting to complete that gentle and peaceful character which was animated by the fire of genius alone; the love of liberty, respect for the female sex, enthusiasm for the fine arts, adoration of the Divinity, inspired his mind; and in the analysis of his works it would be easy to point out to what particular virtue we owe the various productions of his masterly pen. It has been said that genius is allsufficient. I believe it, where knowledge and skill preside; but when we seek to paint the storms of human nature, or fathom it in its unsearchable depths, the powers even of imagination fail; we must possess a soul that has felt the agitation of the tempest, but into which the Divine Spirit has descended to restore its serenity.'

1 "Of his noble sense of truth, both in speculation and in action; of his deep, genial insight into nature; and the living harmony in which he renders back what is highest and grandest in Nature, no reader of his works need be reminded. In whatever belongs to the pathetic, the heroic, the tragically elevating, Schiller is at home; a master; nay, perhaps the greatest of all late poets. To the assiduous student, moreover, much else that lay in Schiller, but was never worked into shape, will become partially visible: deep inexhaustible mines of thought and feeling; a whole world of gifts, the finest produce of which was but beginning to be realized. To his high-minded, unwearied efforts, what was impossible, had length of years been granted him! There is a tone in some of his later pieces, which here and there breathes of the very nighest region of art. Nor are the natural or accidental defects we have noticed in his genius, even as it stands, such as to exclude him from the rank of great Poets. Poets whom the whole world reckons great, have, more than once, exhibited the like. Milton, for example, shares most of them with him: like Schiller, he dwel's

I saw Schiller, for the first time, in the saloon of the Duke and Duchess of Weimar, in the presence of a society as enlightened as it was exalted. He read French very well, but he had never spoken it. I maintained, with some warmth, the superiority of our dramatic system over that of all others; he did not refuse to enter the lists with me, and without feeling any uneasiness from the difficulty and slowness with which he ex pressed himself in French, without dreading the opinion of his audience, which was all against him, his conviction of being right impelled him to speak. In order to refute him, I at first made use of French arms-vivacity and pleasantry; but in what Schiller said, I soon discovered so many ideas through the impediment of his words; I was so struck with that simplicity of character, which led a man of genius to engage himself thus in a contest where speech was wanting to express his

wit a full power, only in the high and earnest; in all other provinces ex hibiting a certain inaptitude, an elephantine unpliancy: he too has little Humor; his coarse invective has in it contemptuous emphasis enough, yet scarcely any graceful sport. Indeed, on the positive side also, these two worthies are not without a resemblance. Under far other circumstances, with less massiveness, and vehement strength of soul, there is in Schiller the same intensity; the same concentration, and towards similar objects, towards whatever is sublime in Nature and in Art, which sublimities, they both, each in his several way, worship with undivided heart. There is not in Schiller's nature the same rich complexity of rhythm, as in Milton's with its depth of linked sweetness; yet in Schiller, too, there is something of the same pure, swelling forer, some tone which, like Milton's, is deep, majestic, solemn.

"It was as a dramatic author that Schiller distinguished himself to the world: yet often we feel as if chance rather than a natural tendency had led him into this province; as if his talent were essentially, in a certain style, lyrical, perhaps even epic, rather than dramatic. He dwelt within himself, and could not without effort, and then only within a certain range, body forth other forms of being. Nay, much of what is called his poetry seems to us oratorical rather than poetical; his first bias might have led him to be a speaker, rather than a singer. Nevertheless, a pure fire dwelt deep in his soul; and only in Poetry, of one or the other sort, could this find utterance. The rest of his nature, at the same time, has a certain prosaic rigor; so that not without strenuous and complex endeavors, long persisted in, could its poetic quality evolve itself. Quite pure, and as the allsovereign element, it perhaps never did evolve itself; and among such complex endeavors, a small accident might influence large portions in its 'ourse.”—( Carlyle's Essays, 8vo edition, p. 238.)-Ed,

thoughts; I found him so modest and so indifferent as to what concerned his own success, so proud and so animated in the defence of what appeared to him to be truth, that I vowed to him, from that moment, a friendship replete with admiration. Attacked, while yet young, by a hopeless disease, the sufferings of his last moments were softened by the attention of his children, and of a wife who deserved his affection by a thousand endearing qualities. Madame von Wolzogen, a friend worthy of comprehending him, asked him, a few hours before his death, how he felt? 'Still more and more easy," was his reply; and, indeed, had he not reason to place his trust in that God whose dominion on earth he had endeavored to promote? Was he not approaching the abode of the just? Is he not at this moment in the society of those who resemble him? and has he not already rejoined the friends who are awaiting us?

CHAPTER IX.

OF STYLE, AND OF VERSIFICATION IN THE GERMAN

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE.

IN learning the prosody of a language, we enter more intimately into the spirit of the nation by which it is spoken, than by any other possible manner of study. Thence it follows that it is amusing to pronounce foreign words: we listen to ourselves as if another were speaking; but nothing is so delicate, nothing so difficult to seize, as accent. We learn the most complicated airs of music a thousand times more readily than the pronounciation of a single syllable. A long succession of years, or the first impressions of childhood, can alone render us capable of imitating this pronunciation, which comprehends whatever is most subtle and undefinable in the imagination, and in national character.

The Germanic dialects have for their original a motherCongue, of which they all partake. This common source re

news and multiplies expressions in a mode always conformable to the genius of the people. The nations of Latin origin enrich themselves, as we may say, only externally; they must have recourse to dead languages, to petrified treasures, for the extension of their empire. It is therefore natural that innovations in words shouli be less pleasing to them, than to those nations which emit shoots from an ever-living stock. But the French writers require an animation and coloring of their style, by the boldest measures that a natural sentiment can suggest, while the Germans, on the contrary, gain by restricting themselves. Among them, reserve cannot destroy originality; they run no risk of losing it but by the very excess of abundance.

:

The air we breathe has much influence on the sounds we articulate the diversity of soil and climate produces very different modes of pronouncing the same language. As we approach the sea-coast, we find the words become softer; the climate there is more temperate; perhaps also the habitual sight of this image of infinity inclines to revery, and gives to pronunciation more of effeminacy and indolence; but when we ascend towards the mountains, the accent becomes stronger, and we might say that the inhabitants of these elevated regions wish to make themselves heard by the rest of the world, from the height of their natural rostra. We find in the Germanic dialects the traces of the different influences I have now had occasion to point out.

The German is in itself a language as primitive, and almost as intricate in structure, as the Greek.' Those who have made

1 The subject of comparative philology is suggested, a subject that specially reminds us of German erudition. We can here only refer tc those who have devoted themselves to the study of this noble branch of learning, and thus guide the student to sources whence he can obtain all the information he may desire. The leading article in the New Englander for August, 1858 (by Mr. Dwight), contains a clearly written summary of the History of Modern Philology, from which we take the following:

"Behold, now, the most important of the different names that we have mentioned, grouped in classes according to their merit.

"1. Bopp, Grimm, Pott, Diefenbach, Benary, Schleicher, Curtius, Kuhr Diez, Mommsen, and Aufrecht.

"2. Eichhoff, Ahrens, Giese, Hoefer, Heyse, Benfey, Donaldson.