who can be named with him. In the pathetic scenes he resembles Shakspeare; his dialogues are full of thought; he is no dealer in splendid nothings, nor does he seek to dip his thoughts in the obsolete hues of antiquity; in the plot and distribution of time, he avails himself of the liberties of the romantic drama, while in many things else he resembles the stern, statue-like drama of the classic era. Some of the characters might be studied in the presence of the antique statues, for their heroic dignity and perfect individuality of representation. He does not tell us what was, but, sculptor-like, he shows us what is. He neither hides his hero under the dazzling splendor of a coat armorial, nor overwhelms the distinct beauty of his thoughts in the flowers of embellished language; and yet the poetry is rich and glowing, and there is a picturesque splendor in its imagery, and a luxuriance of fancy, such as few have equalled.

""Wallenstein" has been translated into English by one of the master-spirits of our age of poetry, whose own deep and sad philosophy,-whose own views of metaphysics, made him a poet worthy to be the Python of oracles in another tongue. Not having, however, Mr. Coleridge's beautiful version at hand, we will endeavor, with all humbleness of spirit, to illustrate our meaning by substituting our own translation of some of those splendid passages with which the play abounds. The following selections are full of lofty sentiments, and may suffice to show-what we have said, that the muse of Schiller has all the serene dignity and austere composure of an antique statue :

"MAX.

Ye call a spirit in the hour of need; And when it rises, then ye shake and shudder!

With you th' uncommon and sublime must be

Done calmly, as a thing of course. But in
The field all is rapidity. The personal
Must influence-man's own eye behold.
The leader

With every boon of nature must be gifted,
Then let him live in their free exercise-
The oracle within-the living spirit-
Not musty books, and old forgotten forms-
Not mould'ring parchments-must he call
to council.

Precious invaluable weights are they, With which oppress'd mankind have overhung

The tyrannizing will of their oppressors: For arbitrary power was ever terrible. The way of order, though it lead through windings,

Is still the best. Right forward goes the Straight cleaves the cannon-ball its murlightningd'rous way

Quick by the nearest course it gains its goal,

Destructive in its path and in its purpose. My son! the peaceful track which men frequent,

The path where blessings most are scatter'd, follows

The river's course, the valley's gentle bendings,

Encompasses the corn-field and the vineyard,

Revering property's appointed bounds,

And leading slow but surely to the mark."

tion of his life melt away in dreamy contemplation, was more to be lamented than wondered at, considering the constitution of poor human nature, and the subjection in which it is held by the existing institutions of society. Schiller had been bred up, too, in a school where contemplation is suffered, if not trained, to take place of action; and where the chief study seems to be directed to the discovery of what ought to be leaving what may be, and what is, as matters of comparative indifference. Accordingly, he soon began to evince considerable delight in the metaphysical and the obscure; and not being plain enough for the public, his the crowd, though not at all in the reputation suffered for a season with opinion of those who can appreciate the true beauties of imagination. In the third period, however, the poet gained the superiority; and “Maria Stuart," "William Tell," &c., were the results of this victory: but an untimely death snatched away this great man in the midst of his career, before he had gained the height which he would certainly have attained if fate had granted him longer life.

In his lyrical poetry Schiller gives too much way to rhetorical artifices, and his minor poems, particularly his songs, are deficient in that simplicity which is so peculiar to Goethe's productions of this kind-they are more fit for declamation than for singing; nevertheless, they are all the true expressions of his noble and elevated mind, and this continues, and will always continue to make them popular with the young, particularly those of the fair sex. It would be very difficult, indeed, to find a young man or a young lady in Germany, who is not the most decided admirer of Schiller, and does not prefer his works to those of all other poets, whatever they may have written. And, in fact, to read and enter into the spirit of this poet, is to be living in a world "not made with hands, immortal, above the heavens." To the young, it is to feel that they will for ever remain young; and to those who have ceased to be so, it is to become so again. It is to drink the wine of human existence without the lees; to inhale the perpetual breath of spring and summer in our native place; to wander hither and thither on the banks of the sweet stream of life, as it

goes leaping, and singing, and sparkling along among the pleasant hills, before it has yet reached the flat plain through which it is to keep and stagnate along the rest of its dull, dreary course;-it is to be carried back, as in a dream, "to that imperial palace whence we came," and whence we have wandered like children from their home.

His martial lyrics especially have much passionate energy, united to regularity and classic elegance; a concise vigor, a glowing rapidity of words, and such liquid harmony of versification as make them more than a match for all kindred compositions, save the "Bruce's Address" of Burns, and the "Donuil Dhu" of Scott. They have, likewise, a tenderness which softens the rigors of war, and calls upon us, amid the earthquake voice of victory, to sympathize with the fortunes of the vanquished and the fallen. With all his love for luxurious adornment, he can sometimes lay it all aside, and be as simple and chaste as the purest touches of pathos, and the most tender breathings of sentiment require; while there is always to be discovered, throughout, a vigorous and healthful perception of truth and beauty, and their opposites, as they really exist in nature. From all which it is evident that Schiller saw things through a brightening and embellishing medium, only because he desired and chose so to see them. Probably it arose from those two opposite dispositions so happily blended together, that in this poet there was none of that dreamy and diseased melancholy which infects the writings of some of his most popular contemporaries, and which in a great degree counteracts the purifying and ennobling effects which might otherwise result from their perusal and study. His most honorable qualities-those which bestowed a high dignity on him, both as man and as poet-are the nobility of his mind, the purity of his virtue, his hatred against vice and injustice, and his warm love of liberty.

Schiller himself would probably have been the first to confess, that nature had not gifted him with the power of originating grand and lofty conceptions-as she had his great contemporary,Goethe, but she has, perhaps, more than compensated him for this in other respects. If she has not lifted him to the rank of a conqueror and a king in her domi

nions, she has, perhaps, done better for him, by placing him among the number of her favorites and bosom friends-by initiating him into her most hidden mysteries, and making him acquainted with her secret thoughts-by condescending to lead him by the hand through all her private haunts, and point out to him the objects of her minutest cares-by peeping with him into those secluded nooks and dim recesses which she hides from prouder eyes, and into which they would disdain to look; but where lie all the brightest gems, and all the sweetest flowers which she uses to deck her every-day robe, (which is also her most becoming one,) and where she gathers the materials for all those little homemade cates on which she delights to feed her humble-hearted worshippers. In short, she has gifted him with that better than Ithuriel's spear, whose touch reveals the beauty which exists in everything.

We have already observed that Schiller's poetical enthusiasm was of a more purely ideal character than any that ever belonged to so rich and lofty a mind as that with which he was gifted: so much so, indeed, that it amounted to nothing short of fanaticism; and it threatened at one time to annul, as fanaticism always does, (at least as it respects others,) all the real practical value of the powers and acquirements to which it was linkedfor they could not lie idle, but must be working either for good or evil. In this respect he strongly resembled Shelley, who never could be made to see any beauty but in the ideal forms that were perpetually thronging through his imagination-no truth but in the abstraction of his own mindno value or virtue but in that which was not. With the world in which we live, the forms and objects that are about us, and the actual things that nature and custom together have made us, he had no real concern or sympathy whatever. Poetry with him was formed of the mere images of a shadowy world, floating in the mind of the poet, and by him breathed forth in volumes of misty vapor-like the human breath received into a dense atmosphere, which only becomes visible from the extraneous matter that is mingled with it, and which disappears in the same moment that it appears.

There is this great difference, how ever, between these two poetical idealists. Shelley's works are of so purely abstracted a character, that notwithstanding the splendid poetry interspersed throughout them, they never can become popular, because they must for ever remain unintelligible to the great majority of even poetical readers. They seem intended to shadow forth certain portions of a peculiar system of ethical philosophy, which the writer had adopted; and to develope some of the means by which that system might be brought to bear on nature and society, and some of the ends that would result in consequence. But all this is done in so abstruse, and at the same time so desultory a manner, that with out a running commentary on the text as it proceeds, it must be impossible for the general reader to make out the drift of it. On the contrary, Schiller's mind was so purely and exclusively a poetical one, and it was so rich in all the collateral aids by which poetry is brought out and made tangible to others, that, as it respects his readers, the poetry of his writings is everything, and the philosophy of them absolutely nothing. The latter was only used as a medium of diffusing the poetry, or a means of making it palatable with a nation, who he knew would not be satisfied with merely admiring the beauty of the outward covering, but are too apt to look upon poetry as only the garb in which metaphysical speculations, and other matters considered of infinitely more importance than poetry, should be dressed.

It may with justice be said, how ever, that true poetry and true philosophy, however sincere a love they may bear towards each other, cannot express themselves intelligibly in one and the same language, still less through the medium of each other; and when they are seeking for admirers and followers, they do well not to go hand in hand-for we are never in a mood to love them both at the same time and yet the presence of both will always so distract and divide our attention, that it will be not worth

possessing by either. Whatever intrinsic value there may be in Shelley's doctrines,-and of this we do not pretend to judge, because we are not quite sure that we thoroughly understand them, he soon found that poetry was not the proper medium through which to develope and enforce them. Whereas Schiller had accomplished all the practical good that can possibly be done in the world through the medium of poetry, and he only wasted the powers of his rich and resplendentmind on what eventually proved only a torment to himself, and to others, an empty speculation. There was also one point relative to Shelley's personal character and opinions that is worth mentioning here, because it affords a curious example of inconsistency either in feeling or in reasoning; for it must be from one or other of these sources that he derived the different articles of his philosophical creed. He had a faith in the abstract existence of every conceivable moral beauty and virtue under heaven: for no other reason that any one can divine, but that he could nowhere find any of these things in perfection in actual life; and he disbe lieved and denied the existence of a supreme and controlling Deity, for the very same reason! He had a firm faith in every good thing, except that identical one which alone requires faith.*

We have said that Schiller's genius was not so excursive and comprehensive as that of Goethe. But over all subjects that came within the sphere of its operation it exercised more absolute control. It pierced into their essences with an eye made doubly keen by universal kindness and love; and was perpetually discovering in them, and bringing forth to the sight of others, what never can be found but through the desire of finding it, and what perhaps, in some instances, only exists through that; but which does not, therefore, the less really exist for all the purposes of instruction and delight. Schiller wrote as if he believed Nature to be more poetical in herself than all the devices of man could make her; and was, therefore, content to be her

interpreter, where others sought to be her teacher and guide. And perhaps it is true that more is to be learned by silently listening to her voice, and earnestly watching her slightest motions, than even by walking hand in hand with her, taking part with her in talk, and occasionally disputing a point with her: for if the latter teaches us to cavil cleverly or dispute successfully, the former does still better for us, in making us kind, humble, tolerant, susceptible, and sincere.

Another of Schiller's characteristics is, the extreme directness and simplicity of the means he takes to arrive at his poetical ends. Indeed, there is no doubt that he carried this to a faulty extent. He saw everything so clearly and so vividly himself, that he thought nothing more was needed to make others see in the same manner, than to place it before them in the same aspect in which it may happen to have presented itself to him. But he was mistaken in this opinion, or rather feeling -for such it is. If this were true, there would have been no need for him to write at all. He is not a poet, unless he makes obvious to others, things which they could never have seen without his intervention,-not without the intervention of a poet, but of him, individually. A writer may see and point out poetry to others, without being himself a poet. Strictly speaking, a poet is such only in so far as he has created that which would, and, in fact, could, never have existed, but for him. This may at first seem inconsistent with what we have said above, as to Schiller's characteristic power of detecting and making known the poetry that exists in nature, and his being satisfied to serve as her interpreter; but we do not think it is so. There may be twenty different translations of a sentence; and, though the actual dry meaning may be the same in all, the feelings and associations excited and called forth by each will be different from those of all the others. It is the same in interpreting the language of nature. Every one who is a poet will interpret her differently, not only from all other men, but from all other poets; and, in so doing, will create images and sensations which would not in any other case have existed. Perhaps this may be taken as one of the criterions of genius. Without

this power, a man may occasionally write what will be poetry to others, but he is not a poet.

There are many German critics who do not hesitate to pronounce Schiller a much more pleasing poet than his great contemporary, Goethe; but we suppose his most enthusiastic admirers will not demand for him the title of the greatest. He is the only German poet, however, who is deserving of being placed side by side on the same lofty pedestal with the author of Faust. It is true, that the poetry of Schiller does not bear us away with it, from the world in which we live, and "the thing we are," and place us among the sounds and images and fancies of other spheres. But, if it cannot make us see "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt," or snatch the “prisoned soul" from its fleshly dungeon," and lap it in elysium;" it can revive the visions of our fancy, and cast a halo of radiance round the forms our memory has consecrated. It can bring back the days of our childhood, and help us to carry forward those days into after life, by clothing the whole moral and visible world in a mantle of impossible beauty, or causing it to burst upon us again in all the freshness of a new creation. It can restore "the glory to the grass, the splendor to the flower." It can breathe into us that lofty and ideal purity of thought and principle, which, if it makes us yearn after and adore what may be, never seeks to make us despise what actually is. It can do these, and a thousand other things, which the imagination of a great poet, acting on and acted upon by that of his readers, can. It comes to us in our homes on the face of the earth, and makes us content with them-it meets us with a smile, and, what is better, makes us meet others with a smile-it shows us what is good and beautiful, and teaches us to love that goodness and beauty wherever we find them. In short, if Schiller has not that transcendant genius which can lift us from the realities of daily life into the very sky of poetry, he can at least make us see the reflections of that sky in the waters of our own earth, and hear the echoes of its music in the song of our own birds, and fancy we feel its airs in the breezes that come about us in our own bowers.

In speaking of Schiller we find it