soon cemented an enduring friendship. Schiller determined to make Weimar his future residence. "You know the men," he writes, "of whom Germany is proud; a Herder, a Wieland, with their brethren; and one wall encloses me and them. What excellencies are in Weimar! In this city, at least in this territory, I mean to settle for life, and at length, once more, get a country." In October Schiller made an excursion Meiningen, to visit his sister, then just married to Reinwald. Here he met his old friend Madame von Wolzogen, and her son Wilhelm. With them he returned towards Weimar. They halted at Rudolstadt. This halt is a memorable passage in the life of our poet. He here met Charlotte von Lengefeld; and once more, not this time without result, his affections were enchained. Charlotte was highly prepossing, and her mind was enriched by true culture. According to her sister, who is the author of a charming biography of Schiller, "The expression of the purest goodness of heart animated her features; and her eye beamed only truth and innocence." On his departure from the home of the Lengefelas, Schiller had already conceived the idea of spending the next summer at Rudolstadt. Fortune favoured this attachment: that very winter Charlotte came to Weimar on a visit to a friend of her family, and Schiller had frequent opportunities of meeting her. He supplied her with his favourite authors; and she undertook to find him a lodging at Rudolstadt for the sunimer. On her departure this commission gave occasion for an interchange of letters. In this correspondence there breathes," says one of his biographers, "a noble, mild, discreet inclination, without a trace of passion;" and adds,-“Our love is generally the effigy ef the one we love. Schiller's present love wus the gold purified from the sensual passion which had mastered him at Dresden."

66

In May, in the following year, we find Schiller at Rudolstadt. He lodged in a small house in the village of Folkstädt, about half an hour's walk from the town. From his chamber window he overlooked the banks of the Saale, which flowed through the meadows under the shade of noble trees. High above towered the castle of Rudolstadt, and at the foot of the

hill which rose from the opposite bank, lay small villages and the houses of the peasantry. The hours here spent were perhaps the pleasantest in the somewhat turbulent course of Schiller's life. His sister, in speaking of them, says, "How welcome was it after some tedious visit, to see our genial friend approaching beneath the fair trees that skirt the banks of the Saale. A forest brook, that pours itself into that river, and was crossed by a little bridge, was the meeting place at which we awaited. When we beheld him in the twilight coming towards us, a serener, an ideal life entered within us; a lofty earnestness, and the graceful ease of a mind pure and candid, ever animated Schiller's conversation. One seemed, as one heard him talk, to wander as it were between the immutable Stars of Heaven, and yet amidst the flowers of earth.”

Schiller returned to Weimar in November, occupying himself with literary matters. The letters upon "Don Carlos,,' "The Artists," and the conclusion of the "Ghost Seer," are dated about this period. The publications of portions of the "Revolt of the Netherlands" in Wieland's "Mercury," now gave rise to the wish among many of his friends to have Schiller appointed to the Professorship of History in the University of Jena, a chair which was just then vacant by the departure of Eickhorn. To this desire, seconded by Voigt, the chaplain of the court, Goethe gave the weight of his influence. Schiller was accordingly called to the post. He went to Jena in 1789. His reception there was enthusiastic in the extreme. Four hundred students crowded the hall, and their applause filled the new and somewhat reluctant professor with confidence.

Schiller's wanderings were now over; and at last, after a severe probation, he could repose securely on that haven of man's rest and joy-domestic bliss. In the February following his settlement at Jena, he was united in marriage to Charlotte von Lengefeld. few months after this event, he writes to a friend as follows:

A

"Life is quite a different thing by the side of a beloved wife, than so forsaken and alone, even in summer. Beautiful, nature! I now for the first time fully enjoy it,-live in it. The

world again clothes itself around me in poetic forms; old feelings are again awakening in my breast. What a life I am leading here! I look with a glad mind around me; my heart finds a perennial contentment without it; my spirit so fine, so refreshing a nourishmeut. My existence is settled in harmonious composure; not strained and impassioned, but peaceful and clear. I look to my future destiny with a cheerful heart; now when standing at the wished-for goal, I wonder with myself how it all has happened, so far beyond my expectations. Fate has conquered the difficulties for me; it has, I may say, forced me to the mark. From the future I expect everything. A few years, and I shall live in the full enjoyment of my spirit; nay, I think my very youth will be renewed; an inward poetic life will give it me again." Some while ere this, in the house of the Lengefeld's, Schiller, for the first time, had met Göethe. With Schiller's early writings Göethe had little sympathy. The "Robbers" he hated, because, as he said, the very paradoxes, moral and dramatic, from which he was struggling to get liberated, had been laid hold of by a powerful but immature genius, and poured in a boundless vehement flood over the whole land. What exasperated him still more was, that his most intimate friends, those to whom he looked for thorough and unwavering sympathy with his own artistic completeness, seemed in danger of the contagion. "Had it been possible," he wrote, "I would have abandoned the study of creative art, and the practice of poetry entirely; for where was the prospect of surpassing those performances of genial worth and wild form, in the qualities which recommend them?" From this cause, as he thus himself acknowledges, he kept aloof from Schiller. "It happened about this time that Moritz returned from Italy, and staid with me awhile, during which he violently cofirmed himself and me in these persuasions. I avoided Schiller, who was now in Weimar, in my neighbourhood. The appearance of "Don Carlos" was not calculated to approximate us; the attempt of our common friends I resisted; and thus we continued to go on our way apart." Nevertheless, as we have seen, the two

antagonistic poets at last met beneath one roof, although, as was not to be wondered at, there was no lavish expenditure of cordiality between them.

Soon after this interview Schiller thus writes:-"On the whole, this personal meeting has not at all diminished the idea, great as it was, which I had previously formed of Göethe; but I doubt whether we shall ever come into any close communication with each other. Much that still interests me has already had its epoch with him. His whole nature is from its very origin, otherwise constructed than mine; his world is not my world; our modes of conceiving things appear to be essentially different. From such a combination, no secure, substantial intimacy can result. Time will try." By degrees, however, as the true character of each unfolded itself to the other, this feeling of mutual antipathy wore away; and there did ensue, after all, a secure, substantial intimacy between them. They ultimately came to pass much of their time in each others' company, and to co-operate cordially in many literary undertakings; the very contrast of their mental tendencies giving their intercourse a peculiar charm. They soon became necessary to each others' intellectual life; and their friendship, once firmly established, was only interrupted by Schiller's death.

The parallel between these two distinguished men has long formed a tournay ground for all German scholars to break lances on. "Whether is Schiller or Goethe the greater poet?" is a question which has been oftener asked or answered than any other in connection with German literature. It is true that no proper comparison can be instituted between them; their difference being one of kind, and not of degree; and all measurement of the one by the standard of the other being therefore a manifest injustice to both. Nevertheless, the true relationship between these Titans of literature, whose lives were thrown together in one sphere of activity, will always remain an interesting problem for the studious. Perhaps the best solution of it hitherto given to the world, is that by Gervinus, in his “ History of German Literature.*

The finest gold has its alloy; and Schiller's newly acquired domestic happiness came to him not without its drawbacks. A fell enemy soon disturbed the welcome repose into which his life had been led. Bodily disease had taken root in a constitution never strong, but which had been rendered weaker by the absence of that prudent carefulnes which should have restrained our poet within the limits which nature prescribes, as the proper bounds of all human activity. A disorder in the chest took violent hold of him; and though he recovered from its immediate effects, the ever-vital seeds of disease were left behind, he never afterwards wholly recovered his strength. Indeed at this period, a report of his death was spread abroad throughout Germany. . . . In Denmark, a circle of the poet's friends had resolved to repair to Hellebeck-there, surrounded by the enchanting beauties of the scenery, to hold a court to his honour, and to chant the Hymn to Joy, when the report reached Copenhagen, and changed their joyous festivities in honour of the living poet to a mournful solemnity in celebration of his death. The friends, among whom were the poet Baggesen, the Count Ernest von Schimmelmann, the Prince Christian von Holstein Augustenberg, and his princess, met, as was arranged, on the sea shore, opposite the high rocks of Sweden. Two additional stanzas, in honour of the supposed death, were chanted; musical instruments added to the harmony; an intense feeling of solemnity pervaded the whole assembly; and as the song ceased, all eyes were bathed in tears. Such was the sympathy even amongst the high-born and illustrious of a foreign nation for our worthy poet.

No sooner was the report contradicted, than the mourners hastened to express their admiration of Schiller, by conferring upon him benefits of a more tangible nature. He received from the Count von Schimmelmann, and the Prince von Augustenberg, a letter, written in the terms of the utmost delicacy, requesting his acceptance of an annual gift, for three years, of a thousand dollars. This communication also contained an invitation to Denmark:-"For we are not the only ones here," they write, "who know and love you; and if, after the restoration of

your health, you desire to enter the service of our state, it would be easy for us to gratify such an inclination. Yet," they continue," think us not so selfish as to make such a change in your residence a condition; we leave our suggestion to your free choice; we desire to preserve to humanity its instructor, and to this desire every other consideratiou is subordinate." Nothing but Schiller's increasing illhealth, and the declaration of his physicians, that the visit to so northern a climate would be fatal, could have prevented him from at once responding to such an invitation. In a letter to Baggesen, the gratitude with which this offer had filled him is expressed in manly terms. From it too we gain some glimpses into Schiller's views respecting the vocation which he had chosen for his own, which show how unwilling he was to have it degraded

not in his own case merely, but in any-into the mere brain-drudgery of the bread-scholar.

"From the cradle of my intellect till now, have I struggled with fate; and since I knew how to prize intellectual liberty, I have been condemned to want it.

A rash step, ten years since, divided me from any other practical livelihood but that of a writer. I had given myself to this calling, before I had made proof of its demands, or surveyed its difficulties. The necessity for pursuing it befell me before I was fitted for it by knowledge and intellectual maturity. That I felt this-that I did not bound my ideal of an ideal of an author's duty to those narrow

limits within which I was confined-I recognise as a favour of Heaven... As unripe and far below that ideal which lived within me, I beheld all which I gave to the world." With feeling and with modesty Schiller proceeded to enlarge upon the conflict between the circumstances and his aspirations. ... to touch upon the melancholy with which he was saddened by the contemplation of the great masterpieces of art, ripened only to their perfection by that happy leisure denied to him. "What had I not given," he exclaims, 'for two or three years; that free from all the toils of an author, I could render myself only to the study, the cultivation of my conception,-the ripening of my ideal.' He proceeds to observe that, in the German literary world, a

man could not unite the labour for Subsistence with compliance with the demands of lofty art; that. for ten years, he had struggled to unite both; and, that to make the union only in some measure possible, had cost him his health... In a moment, when life began to display its whole valuewhen I was about to knit a gentle bond between the reason and the phantasy -when I girded myself to a new enterprise in the service of art, death drew near. The danger indeed passed away; but I waked only to an altered life, to renew, with slackened strength and diminished hopes, my war with fate. So the letter received from Denmark found me! I attain at last the intellectual liberty, so long and so eagerly desired. . . . I win leisure, and through leisure, I may perhaps recover my lost health; if not, at least for the future, the trouble of my mind will not give nourishment to disease. If my lot does not permit me to confer beneficence in the same manner as my benefactors, at least, I will seek it, where alone it is in my power; and make that seed which they scatter unfold itself in me, to a fairer blossom for humanity. And he did so."

In the intervals of sickness he devoted the leisure which was now accorded him to the study of Kant. To what extent the system of the philosopher of Königsberg moulded his thoughts, and influenced his later writings, is a question we cannot here enter into. He appears to have appropriated his fundamental doctrines; the lofty spiritualism and ethic grandeur of the transcendental philosophy seems to have found a deep response in his inmost heart; and from that period, we are told, "a catholic, all-mild, all-comprehensive religion surrounds his writings as with a lucid atmosphere, and his craving for the serene ideal life loses itself in the Christian's heaven."

In the month of June, 1792, Schiller, accompanied by his wife, went to Dresden, on a visit to Korner. In the course of this journey they met Schiller's mother and his youngest sister, Nannette, whom he had not seen for many years. He determined, if his health and circumstances allowed, to return the following year to his Suabian home. In the summer following the Schillers made an excursion to the poet's fatherland, where they

were warmly welcomed. At Heidelberg, not unmoved, Schiler saw once more the object of his early passion, Margaret Schwan. "Like all noble and manly natures," says Madame Von Wolzogen, "Schiller ever retained an affectionate remembrance of the woman who had inspired him with tender emotion. These recollections moved him always, but he rarely spoke of them." The wanderer was reunited to his long-separated family in August, 1793. Schiller visited Ludwigsburg, and resided for a time in the immediate neighbourhood of his father's house; and it was here that he first became a father.

Having now brought on our narrative to the culminating point of Schiller's life-history-the period at which he obtained the goal of his youth's ardent hope-we must glance rapidly over many passages of interest, and draw near the final close. Those passages are interesting to us more, perhaps, from their own nature than from their forming part of our poet's biography. Schiller's scholarship in the universal school was longer than that of most men; and, indeed, individually, he may be said never to have seen the horizon of his endeavour and of his hope. But to us, who know not the secrets of his inner life, his history henceforth is clothed in a tranquil uniformity. It is not now progress, but rather repose. Schiller's literary labours were continued with interruption. The "Horen," a monthly journal, was commenced, and in this undertaking were associated with his the greatest names of Germany, Goethe, Herder, Jacobi, Matthison, &c. In the "Musen almanach," of which he was appointed chief editor, appeared some of his finest thoughts, either in poetry or prose; and meanwhile "Wallenstein" was progressing. In the midst of these occupations he had the misfortune to lose, both in the same year, his father and youngest sister. Some time after, too, his mother also died. "Ah, dear sister," he wrote, "so both the beloved parents are gone from us, and the oldest bond that fastened us to life is rent! O let us, we three, (including his other sister,) alone surviving of our father's house, let us cling yet closer to each other; forget not that thou hast a loving brother I remember vividly the

days of our youth, when we were all in all to each other. From that early existence our fate has divided us; but attachment, confidence, remain unchanged unchangable." About this time (1797) he purchased a garden, a little to the south-west of Jena, on the banks of the beloved Saale. The site commanded a beautiful prospect of the valley and the pine-covered sides of the neighbouring mountains.

"There, deck'd he the fair garden watchtower; whence

Listening he loved the voice of stars to hear,

Which to the no less ever-living sense Made music, mystic, yet through mystery clear."

Here he wrote and studied during the summon months of 1797 and 1798. In the following year "Wallenstein" was brought out. The highest critics spoke and wrote warmly in its praise. 66 This work," said Tieck, "at once rich and profound, is a monument for all times, of which Germany may be proud; and a national feeling-a native sentiment is reflected from this pure mirror, yielding us a higher sense of what we are, and what we were;" and Goethe, long after its publication, compared it to a wine which wins the taste in proportion to its age."

The following years were signalised by the publication of "Marie Stuart," "The Maid of Orleans," and "Wilhelm Tell, the two latter works in which the poet's highest characteristics are clothed in the noblest forms. Besides these, and sundry minor compositions, Schiller also executed several translations from the French and Italian. But, according to his biographer, his mind was long and earnestly engaged at this period with the most solemn of ideas. "The universe of human thought he had now explored and enjoyed; but he 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

seems to

*Goethe. Prologue to the "Lay of the Bell."

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."

At length, in the spring of 1805, after many warnings, Schiller was stricken with his final illness. It was not long after its commencement that it became palpable that his death was near. In vain physicians; in vain the anxious offices of affection; in vain the ardent desire of still prolonged activity-nothing could stay the progress of the disease; no human power arrest the fatal blow. The attack commenced he wished to converse with his sister on the 28th of April. On the 7th of May on the subject of his unfinished traShe begged gedy of "Demetrius."

him not to disturb himself with such "True,"

thoughts, but to keep quiet. he answered with pathos, "now when understand myself, it is better that I no one understands me, and I no more should be silent." Before this, on the subject of his probable decease, he had said, "Death can be no evil, for it is

universal." On the 9th his disorder

reached a crisis; he grew insensible, and even delirious. This, however, "The fiery happily did not continue. canopy of physical suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties, was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in in its wonted serenity, once again before it passed away for ever. Restored soul is cut off from human help, and to consciousness, in that hour when the 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 it as became him; not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the quiet unpretending manliness which his friends and family he took a touchhad marked the tenor of his life. Of ing 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