"What of him?" said I, anxiously.

"Poor fellow! he has seen his last battle-field. He fell across

me as we came out upon the road. I lifted him up in my arms and bore him along above fifty yards; but he was stone dead. Not a sigh, not a word escaped him; shot through the forehead." As he spoke, his lips trembled, and his voice sank to a mere whisper at the last words: "You remember what he said last night. Poor fellow! he was every inch a soldier."

Such was his epitaph.

I turned my head toward the scene of our late encounter. Some dismounted guns and broken wagons alone marked the spot; while far in the distance, the dust of the retreating columns showed the beaten enemy, as they hurried towards the frontiers of Spain.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

(1817-1878)

HE work of Mr. Lewes admirably illustrates the intellectual change which characterizes the nineteenth century.

He

was born in London April 18th, 1817, and died at the Priory, St. John's Wood, November 28th, 1878; so that the active period of his life covered those years when, consciously or unconsciously, many thinkers were being strongly affected by the influence of Auguste Comte, and when the investigations and teachings of Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and others were revolutionizing science and philosophy, and in a large degree theology also. Lewes reflected the spirit of the time in the most positive fashion. He was a careful student of philosophy, but rejected the metaphysical method. He was as ardent a seeker as any Gradgrind for "facts, sir! facts!" but the facts which he sought were those which seemed capable of use in a larger and more stable philosophy. He would perhaps have claimed that the house which is to endure must be built from the foundation up, and not from the chimney down. English in birth and fibre, much of his youth was spent in France and Germany, so that insular prejudices did not control him. Devoted to investigation and to philosophical speculation, he nevertheless inherited from his grandfather, who had been a prominent actor, a love of the drama and predilection for the stage which tempered the influence of his more abstruse studies and broadened his outlook upon life. He studied medicine, but did not pursue the profession, because he could not endure the sight of so much pain as he was called upon to witness. For a time he was an inmate of a notary's office, and again for a short period he tried commerce and trade in the employ of a Russian merchant. The attractions of literature were too great to be exceeded by any other, even by those of the stage, to which he was greatly drawn. He indeed appeared behind the footlights at various times, even so late as in 1850, when he sustained a part in a play of his own called 'The Noble Heart'; and he appears to have

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

been an actor of some ability. His Shylock was considered especially good.

As early as in his sixteenth year, Lewes had written a play for private performance. At nineteen he was discussing Spinoza as a member of a philosophical debating club. At about this time he planned a work in which philosophy should be treated from the physiological point of view; and thus began the undertaking which claimed his most earnest thought for the remainder of his life. His career in this respect may be divided into three periods. In the first, through his 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' published in 1845-6, he undertook to show the futility of metaphysics. In it he combined a history of philosophical theories with entertaining biographical sketches of those who propounded them; and thus clothed the dry bones, and gave living interest to what might otherwise have offered little to attract the ordinary reader. The work was afterward much modified and extended, and reissued as a 'History of Philosophy from Thales to Comte.' In his second period he became a careful investigator of biological phenomena, and subsequently published the results of his investigations in a number of interesting and popular works: 'Seaside Studies' (1858), Physiology of Common Life' (1859-60), 'Studies in Animal Life' (1862). In the third he combined, as it were, the results of the work of the two preceding periods, in the 'Problems of Life and Mind,' in four volumes (1874-1879); in which he sought to establish the principles of a rational psychology, and to lay the foundations for a creed. In this series may also be included his work on 'Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences' (1853); 'Aristotle: A Chapter from the History of the Sciences' (1864); and 'The Study of Psychology: Its Object, Scope, and Method' (1879). He was always deeply interested in the philosophy of Auguste Comte; but criticized Comte freely, and thereby, he says, lost his friendship.

In 1854, upon uniting his fortunes with those of George Eliot, he made a visit to Germany; and at Weimar he completed his 'Life of Goethe,'-next to the 'History of Philosophy,' probably the best known of his works. He had previously (1849) published a 'Life of Maximilian Robespierre.' His early love for the drama, in addition to the work previously cited, recorded itself in 'The Spanish Drama: Lope de Vega and Calderon' (1847), and in 'On Actors and the Art of Acting' (1875). He was also the author of two novels, - 'Ranthorpe' (written in 1842 but not published until 1847), and 'Rose, Blanche, and Violet' (1848). He was not at his best, however, in fiction.

Mr. Lewes wrote extensively for the reviews, and upon a great variety of topics. His style is, as Leslie Stephen well says, "bright, clear, and independent." His views were positive, and he did not

mince his words. Though the biographer of Goethe, whom he esteemed very highly, he was not fond of the German literary style; and he admired Lessing in part, it is said, because he was "the least German of all Germans." Von Schlegel he called a philosophical impostor, and Cousin he thought a charlatan. He was the first editor of the Leader, and subsequently of the Fortnightly; and as an editor he was successful, but he disliked the drudgery. In the Fortnightly he introduced the custom of signed reviews. He was an important member of a literary circle which included, among others, Carlyle, Thackeray, and J. S. Mill.

THE

GOETHE AND SCHILLER

The

HERE are few nobler spectacles than the friendship of two great men; and the history of literature presents nothing comparable to the friendship of Goethe and Schiller. friendship of Montaigne and Étienne de la Boétie was perhaps more passionate and entire: but it was the union of two kindred natures, which from the first moment discovered their affinity; not the union of two rivals, incessantly contrasted by partisans, and originally disposed to hold aloof from each other. Rivals Goethe and Schiller were and are; natures in many respects directly antagonistic; chiefs of opposing camps, and brought into brotherly union only by what was highest in their natures and their aims.

To look on these great rivals was to see at once their profound dissimilarity. Goethe's beautiful head had the calm victorious grandeur of the Greek ideal; Schiller's the earnest beauty of a Christian looking towards the future. The massive brow and large-pupiled eyes,-like those given by Raphael to the infant Christ, in the matchless Madonna di San Sisto; the strong and well-proportioned features, lined indeed by thought and suffering, which have troubled but not vanquished the strong man; a certain healthy vigor in the brown skin,- make Goethe a striking contrast to Schiller, with his eager eyes, narrow brow, tense and intense; his irregular features, worn by thought and suffering and weakened by sickness. The one looks, the other looks out. Both are majestic; but one has the majesty of repose, the other of conflict. Goethe's frame is massive, imposing: he seems much taller than he is. Schiller's frame is disproportioned; he

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seems less than he is. Goethe holds himself stiffly erect; the long-necked Schiller "walks like a camel." Goethe's chest is like the torso of the Theseus; Schiller's is bent, and has lost a lung.

A similar difference is traceable in details. "An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison," Goethe said to Eckermann. "I called on him one day; and as I did not find him at home, I seated myself at his writing-table to note down various matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe this wretched and to me unusual state, until I discovered that a dreadful odor issued from a drawer near me. When I opened it, I found to my astonishment that it was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the window and inhaled the fresh air, by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and told me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live or work without it."

As another and not unimportant detail, characterizing the healthy and unhealthy practice of literature, it may be added that Goethe wrote in the freshness of morning, entirely free from stimulus; Schiller worked in the feverish hours of night, stimulating his languid brain with coffee and champagne.

In comparing one to a Greek ideal, the other to a Christian ideal, it has already been implied that one was the representative of realism, the other of idealism. Goethe has himself indicated the capital distinction between them: Schiller was animated with the idea of freedom; Goethe, on the contrary, was animated with the idea of nature. This distinction runs through their works: Schiller always pining for something greater than nature, wishing to make men demigods; Goethe always striving to let nature have free development, and produce the highest forms of humanity. The fall of man was to Schiller the happiest of all events, because thereby men fell away from pure instinct into conscious freedom; with this sense of freedom came the possibility of morality. To Goethe this seemed paying a price for morality which was higher than morality was worth; he preferred the ideal of a condition wherein morality was unnecessary. Much as he might prize a good police, he prized still more a society in which a police would never be needed.