jurisprudence was not adopted; but still anxious of Appeals* (Appellations-Rath), and newly marto found a livelihood upon some basis more stable ried to Minna Stock, an enthusiastic admirer of than literature, he meditated a return to medi- Schiller.† cine; and encouraged, perhaps, by the attention Körner's house was placed on the banks of the and respect he received at Leipsic, he ventured Elbe, near Loschwitz. A summer-house in the now to demand the hand of Margaret Schwan. garden, surrounded by vineyards and pine-woods, After a preface at once modest and manly, he was soon surrendered to the poet, and became his thus opened himself to her father:-"My free favorite retreat. Here "Don Carlos" made effecand unconstrained access to your house, afforded tive, though not rapid progress. This tragedy, me the opportunity of intimate acquaintance with the first (as we have before observed) in which your amiable daughter; and the frank, kind treat- Schiller superadded the purer form, and the more ment with which both you and she honored me, refined delineations of poetry to the vigor and tempted my heart to entertain the bold wish of effect of the drama, put the seal upon his fame. becoming your son. My prospects have hitherto Hitherto, with all the admiration of the many, he been dim and vague; they begin now to alter in had not won to himself that more durable, that my favor. I will strive with more continuous vigor more enviable reputation, which is maintained and when the goal is clear. Do you decide whether I confirmed by the graver few. But judges, the can reach it, when the dearest wish of my heart most critical and refined, shared for "Don Carlos," supports my zeal. Yet two short years, and my in the closet, the enthusiasm it excited on the whole fortune will be determined. . . . The Duke stage. of Weimar was the first person to whom I disclosed myself; his anticipating goodness, and the declaration that he took an interest in my happiness, induced me to confess that that happiness depended on a union with your noble daughter. He expressed satisfaction at my choice. I have reason to hope he will do more, should it come to the point of completing my happiness by this union. I shall add nothing further. I know well that hundreds of others might offer your daughter a more splendid fate than I at this moment can promise her; but that any other heart can be more worthy of her, I venture to deny."*

A bookseller is generally the last person to choose, as his son-in-law, an author. He has seen too much of the vicissitudes of an author's life, and of the airy basis of an author's hopes in the future, to be flattered by the proposals of a suitor, who finds it easier to charm the world than to pay the butcher. He wrote to Schiller a refusal, implying that his daughter's character was not in unison with her wooer's. Till then a correspondence had been carried on between the young persons; this, Schiller properly and honorably now broke off, to Margaret's surprise, and apparently to her grief; for her father had not communicated to her Schiller's proposal - a discreet reserve which seems to prove that he did not reckon on her free acquiescence in his reply. The friendship between Schiller and Schwan, however, still continued, and the remembrance of Margaret never wholly faded from Schiller's heart. "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; for love with him was always earnest and solemn not the sensual and fickle boy, but the young divinity, who unites himself with the Psyche."

Perhaps to dissipate his disappointment by new change, Schiller yielded to the invitation of friends he had secured at Dresden, and at the end of the summer he repaired to that city, and made a home in the house of Körner, lately appointed Councilor

We have borrowed the translation of this extract from Carlyle's Life of Schiller-the Boston edition, 1833.

But while engaged in the completion of this drama, Schiller's prodigious activity had already extended the realm his genius was destined to subdue and overspread. Besides the sketch of a play-"The Misanthrope"-never finished, he conceived the idea of his romance, called "The Ghost Seer," and collected materials for the historical works he began to meditate. For history, indeed, his mind was already prepared by the earnest and thoughtful study of character, and of the philosophy of events, which had been brought to bear on "Don Carlos." And now this restless and ever-inquiring mind arrived at that stage in which, between the enthusiasm of youth and the wisdom of manhood, is so often placed the transition-interval of doubt. That intensity of religious faith and conviction which had characterized his boyhood, had, perhaps, been somewhat roughly shaken by the hard bigotry of his teachers at the Stuttgard academy; but there is evidence to show that it existed during the composition of "The Robbers." Amongst his earlier poems is one called " Letter from Julius to Raphael, from an unpublished Romance." This romance afterward took the shape and title of "Philosophical Letters between Julius and Raphael," of which only a fragment was printed, but in which the skepticism of the author is first apparent. There is no doubt that this work was remodeled and rewritten during Schiller's sojourn at Dresden, and no reason to suppose that in its earlier form it contained the matter for just offense subsequently admitted.

In these letters appears a crude and wavering conflict between Spinozism and Kantism. With Kant's great work on "Pure Reason," Schiller seems to have been first acquainted; but only by hearsay at Leipsic or Dresden between 1785-87. It was not till some years afterward-in 1791that he studied Kant at the fountain-head, and learned from him, if not a precisely orthodox Christianity, at least that ideal and spiritual Christianity, to which the great German has led so many, who would otherwise have been lost in the pathless wilds of infidelity. But now much that Schiller composed shows the doubt and con

Father to the poet, Theodore Körner.

2 Minna Stock was one of the young ladies who had honored Schiller with their miniatures.

flict of his mind - a state, to one so constitution- riety. Schiller was accordingly lured into an ally devout, of great anguish and despondency, intimacy which occasioned the most serious anxiety and to which, in his later writings, he has many to his friends.* It seems uncertain, whether solemn and pathetic allusions. In the "Philo- Julia, who appears to have followed her mother's sophical Letters" is to be found the illogical yet depraved counsels with something of reluctant brilliant fallacy of Pantheism, which bewildered, shame, returned the passion she had inspired. hopelessly, the far smaller and more erratic intel- There was that in Schiller to have won a worthier lect of Shelley, but which could not long delude affection, despite the unflattering portrait which the robust understanding of Schiller. In the Sophy Albrecht, in her coarse taste of actress, poems, which the reader will find translated and has drawn of the young poet. classed under the head of The Second Period, the conflict is visible, thongh subdued. It was in conformity with this state of mind, that Schiller, in whom the intellect was no less strong than the imagination, should turn to that positive and actual something which is found in the external history of man. Plans too large for one writer to accomplish hovered before his ambition-some history that might be to practical narrative what the vast conception of Herder suggested to the theory in which history should be told.

He meditated, and in part undertook, what, indeed, if ever accomplished suitably, would be one of the greatest records in the world-" A History of all the more remarkable Conspiracies and Revolutions of Modern Times." Meanwhile, his private life had at once its charms and its sorrows. The love of solitude still clung to him. He was seen in the morning, wandering along the banks of the Elbe, thoughtful and alone; or, like Byron at Venice, when the lightning flashed and the storm burst, tossed in his gondola upon the waves. He disliked, and sought to shun, miscellaneous, and especially what is called fashionable society; he carried his earnest mind, and his love of freedom, into all circles,-impatient of the talk that was frivolous, and the etiquette that was restrained. But he generally devoted some portion of the day to the interchange of mind with the congenial ;artists, men of letters, or even those who, simple and unaffected, interested his heart, if they could not appeal to his intellect.

Schiller, no doubt, at that time, and indeed from his entrance into youth, had lost the mere physical beauty which he seems to have possessed as a child, when his sister compared his countenance, shaded with locks of gold, "to an angel's head." He was tall, extremely thin, though muscular, and large of bone; his neck was long, (a noble defect, which is never without dignity,) and his dress was rude and neglected. His face was not handsome, perhaps, in the eyes of actresses, whose profession leads them to admire show and color in all things, but so noble a countenance has rarely been given to the sons of genius; true, the complexion was pale, the cheeks somewhat hollow, and the dark auburn hair, though rich and profuse, had a deep tinge of red, but the forehead was lofty and massive, somewhat receding toward the temples when regarded in profile (a peculiarity found in most men of characters brave and determined). His eyes, described variously as blue, brown, and dark gray, and probably shifting in color with the light,t were, though deep sunken, singularly brilliant and expressive; and his nose, if too large for perfect symmetry of feature, was finely formed. His personal appearance, in short, harmonized with his intellectual character; and, as in Goethe, the pre-eminent attribute both of outward form and mental accomplishment was beanty; so in Schilter, the pre-eminent attribute in both was nobleness. If, as one who remembered him well declares, the colossal bust of Dannecker alone shows him as he really was in life, no one who has ever seen that likeness will deny, that it is a countenance which strikingly arrests the admiration, and deeply engrosses the interest-a certain grandeur, both of outline and expression, dwarfs into effeminacy whatever portraits of more justly *Doering Madame Schwab. Madame von Wolzogen says, their color was undethem blue: one of his college friends dark gray. cided, between blue and light brown. His sister calls

von Wolzogen, Hoffmeister,

Shy and silent in the crowd, he was eloquent with those familiar to him, and his conversation was yet more charming from his simple kindliness, than from the stores which it displayed: this was the bright side of his private life,-the reverse of the medal is only darkly shadowed out. Before his visit to Dresden, Schiller had formed an acquaintance with a young woman named Sophy Albrecht, intended for the stage; he had taken a strong interest in her professional career, and he met her again at Dresden, as one of the most celebrated actresses of the day. He visited at her house on familiar terms, and there, one evening, we have any record. Goethe was, perhaps, the handsomest poet of whom With a beauty of face not inferior after the play was over, he saw a young, blue-eyed to that of Milton or Byron, he had advantages of stature stranger, who made upon him an impression denied to either, and that air of majestic dignity which equally deep and sudden. This girl was the eldest is beauty in itself. We remember being very much struck daughter of a Saxon widow, who lived upon a Goethe, taken when each was about the same age, viz., with a comparison between two portraits of Byron and small pension, and whose husband had been an twenty-one. There was a strong likeness between the officer in the army. He afterward encountered two, though Goethe's features, not less symmetrical, were the fair Julia-(such was the young lady's name,) larger and more manly; but the contrast in the expresat the "Redoute," and ventured to accost her. sion was startling. The German lady who showed us the The mother was, by all accounts, an artful and portraits, observed with truth, "What dejection, and disabandoned person, who did not scruple to put to content with the world is already stamped on Lord profit the beauty of her daughter. She saw, in Byron's face! What calm, yet sanguine energy-what hopeful self-confidence in Goethe's!" The several exthe admiration of so distinguished a poet, the pression in either countenance seemed almost like means of widening Julia's already lucrative noto-prophecy of either fate.

proportioned beauty may be placed beside it. But the actress, describing Schiller at this time, could see only, as was natural to such an observer, the gray, threadbare frock-the general disdain of the toilette-the awkwardness given by pride and re-intuitive knowledge of the world, this remarkable serve to the movements of the tall figure-the indulgence of Spanish snuff-and the stoop of the "ever-thoughtful head." ... Whether or not the fair Julia regarded Schiller with the same eyes as the actress, is a matter, however, of very little importance :—not so the love felt by Schiller, since it not only gave rise to some of his poems, but colored many immortal pages in the "Ghost-seer." His friends did their best to dispel his infatuation, and tear him from a connection which they considered disgraceful to his name, ruinous to his means, and injurious to his prospects; finally, they succeeded in their appeals. He appears, indeed, to have become aware of the treachery* practiced on him; and, after many a struggle between reason and passion, at last he tore himself away. He had long meditated a journey to Weimar-land was the most cordial to Schiller. Herder theu to Germany what Athens, in the time of Pericles, was to Greece; he now accepted a cordial invitation from a friend of his, Madamet von Kalb; and, in the month of July, 1787, he arrived at the little Court, brightened by a constellation of art and genius, before which the wealth and splendor of every capital in Europe was, at that day, but as foil and tinsel.

CHAPTER VIII.

her son, Karl August. She had been left a widow at the age of nineteen, and fulfilled the duties of Regent during the minority of the young Prince. To considerable talents for public business, and woman added a strong affection for art; and blended a thorough enjoyment of society,-in its best union of aristocracy, elegance, and talent,with a keen thirst for knowledge. She acquired some acquaintance with the learned languages from Wieland, and translated Propertius. The circle of eminent men that she drew around her was attracted no less by her manners than her information and her abilities. But Schiller's genius, as yet made manifest, was not very congenial to a taste half French and half classical; and the duchess-mother does not seem to have been aware that in the rude strength of the young Suabian lay that which was not to borrow classicality, but to make a land's language classical.* Of all the literary men then at Weimar, the amiable Wiewelcomed him, "but without warmth." Not till a much later period does the Duke himself appear to have taken any very vivid interest in his great visitor. The style of conversation, though intellectual and refined, was not that which Schiller was likely to enjoy--it was too critical, and perhaps too courtly--" more was babbled than was thought." But nothing is more beneficial to a man of genius, yet young, than to frequent society in which he is not over-estimated;--nothing more injurious than to be the sole oracle of his circle. From that period we date a purer and more dignified taste in Schiller-the tone of good society henceforth entered into his writings, and improved his manners: without weakening the one, it brought ease; without marring the simplicity of the other, it served to soften and make

Society at Weimar-Character of the Duchess Amelia-
The von Lengefelds-Schiller in the retirement of
Rudolstadt-First meeting with Goethe-Study of
Greek-Death of Madame von Wolzogen-Schiller ac-
cepts the professorship of history at Jena-Life at that
University-Courtship of Charlotte von Lengefeld-social.
Schiller's marriage.

At the end of October, Schiller made an excursion to Meiningen, on a visit to his eldest sister, who had lately married Reinwald. Madame von Wolzogen was also at Meiningen; at her house he found his old college friend, Wilhelm; and with this companion he returned toward Weimar. They took the journey on horseback, and proposed by the way to visit some relations of M. von Wolzogen--a memorable visit; for now Schiller approached that bright period of his life when his wanderings and apprenticeship of mind and heart were alike to cease-when his genius settled into art-when his affections were concentred in a home.

GOETHE was absent from Weimar,-in 1787. "those fair Ausonian climates" - the influence of which so powerfully affected his plastic genius, and served to give to his after-creations that severe and statue-like repose which has, with all the beauty, something of the coldness and the terror of Medusa :-Goethe was absent; but at Weimar were Herder, Wieland, Böttiger, and other eminent men. Schiller was not disappointed in the charm of the place. "I think here," he writes, "at least, in the territory of Weimar to end my days-and at last, once more, to find a country." And yet Schiller was not at first fully appreciated at the court to which he was admit- At Rudolstadt, on the banks of "the soft windted. The Augustan character which Weimar ing Saale," in a valley bounded by blue mountains had obtained originated in the tastes and the and sloping woodlands, lived a Madame von talents of Amelia, mother to the reigning Duke. Lengefeld, with two daughters; the elder, CaroHer especial favorite was the polished and grace-line, married to M. von Beulwitz, Hofrath of Ruful Wieland, whom she had appointed tutor to

dolstadt, to whom (more distinguished by the name she acquired in a second marriage, von Wolzogen) we are indebted for a delightful, though somewhat high-flown biography of Schiller; and the younger, Charlotte, unmarried, and then in her twenty-first year. The father had died when the children had severally arrived at the ages of

Schiller attributes to the good offices of Goethe (despite his absence) the access to the Duchess Amelia.

thirteen and ten. Till that time they had been | Wolzogen an affection that then seemed hopeless, brought up in close retirement. But a situation and was only nursed in secret. But as the two at the court of Weimar being destined for Char- friends rode to Weimar, there was no doubt much lotte when she should arrive at a fitting age, Ma- in Wolzogen's conversation that found an echo in dame von Lengefeld deemed it advisable to re- Schiller's breast. An impression more deep, and move for a short time into Switzerland, as afford- yet more calm, than woman had hitherto made ing better facilities for the kind of education ne- upon him, recalled to the poet, amidst the discessary for a girl intended to mix in the society tractions of Weimar and the labor of his occupaof a brilliant and polished court. Three years tions, the image of the soft and pensive Charlotte. before the date on which we now enter, the two Fortune smiled upon the dawn of this affection. sisters, who were related to the Wolzogens, had Charlotte came to Weimar that very winter, on a seen Schiller for the first time at Mannheim, and visit to Madame von Stein, a friend of her family, been favorably struck by his appearance. They and Schiller met her in the society of the place, were then on their return from Switzerland; and but not frequently. Still he contrived to apthe marriage of the elder daughter to M. von proach her, as nearly as his delicacy and the conBeulwitz, served to settle their residence at Ru-sciousness of his precarious worldly circumstances dolstadt. Charlotte was highly prepossessing would allow to his pride. He supplied her occaboth in form and face. To borrow the description sionally with his favorite authors; she undertook of her sister, "the expression of the purest good- the commission to find him a lodging at Rudolness of heart animated her features; and her eye stadt for a summer. Occasion was thus found for beamed only truth and innocence." She had a the interchange of notes. On his part the cortalent for landscape-drawing, and wrote poetry respondence was frank, but respectful; it prowith grace and feeling. But above all, she had claimed friendship and esteem--it did not betray sympathy with whatever, in others, was noble in more. "There breathes in these letters," says an character or elevated in genius ;-her temper was eloquent biographer, "a noble, mild, discreet insweet, and her disposition affectionate, faithful, clination, without a trace of passion;"--and here and sincere. the writer we quote adds finely, “Our love is genAt that time, however, Charlotte von Lenge-erally the effigy of the one we love. Schiller's feld was suffering under the melancholy which present love was the gold, purified from_the_sensucceeds to the first fair illusions of life. Her sual passion, which had mastered him at Dresden." early affections had been given to one from whom It seems probable, however, that in neither was fate had divided her. Her lover was in the army, the memory of the previous love yet effaced and and his duties called him to a distant part of the this, while it served to invest their feeling for globe. Whether there were other obstacles, be- each other with a certain tranquillity, allowed sides those of the young man's precarious profes- them both more sensibly to perceive the remarksion, does not appear clear; but the family were able congeniality between their minds, tastes, and opposed to the connection, and Charlotte von tempers. Thus, as it were, the soul began to love, Lengefeld obeyed their wishes in struggling before the heart was thoroughly moved. Schilagainst the inclination she had formed. ler's fame, and his somewhat graver years, permitted him to assume with his young friend a certain tone of warning and advice. That court life, to which she seemed then destined, was opposed to all his ideas of true dignity and pure happiness. And, in the lines closing the second division of his poems, he expresses, in verse, the ideas often repeated in his correspondence.*

Nothing could be more solitary and remote than the little valley in which the Lengefelds dwelt. No high-road intersected it: a stranger was a phenomenon. The appearance of two horsemen along the straggling street, one dark November evening, sufficed to create curiosity and interest. One of the riders, as he presented himself to the Lengefelds, playfully concealed his face in his In the midst of May, the following year, we mantle, but the ladies recognized their cousin, find Schiller settled in the valley of Rudol- 1788. Wilhelm von Wolzogen. The other was unknown stadt. He lodged in a house, half-an-hour's or unremembered, till his companion announced walk from the town,† and his chamber overlooked the already famous name of Schiller. The simple the banks of the Saale, flowing through meadows, and shy Suabian, usually distant with and under the shade of venerable trees. There, strangers, found himself at home at once on the opposite side of the river rose a hill, clothed in the family circle he had entered. The conver- with woods, at the foot of which lay tranquil vilsation fell on his recent publication, "The Philo- lages;-there, high above the landscape, towered sophical Letters," and on his earlier poems. The earnest Schiller wished the Lengefelds to become acquainted with his "Carlos." A single evening sufficed to form an intimacy. On his departure, Schiller had already conceived the project of spending the next summer at Rudolstadt.

1787.

the castle of Rudolstadt. A small monument, crowned with a bronze copy of Dannecker's bust of Schiller, yet commemorates his sojourn in this happy valley, recalling Goethe's lovely words

"The place that a good man has trod, remains hallowed to all time."

It is thus, that the elder sister speaks of those

It so chanced that Wilhelm von Wolzogen had, from the early period of his student life at Stuttgard, cherished a romantic attachment to his fair cousin, Caroline von Lengefeld-now Madame von Beulwitz. Her marriage was not hap-bum," page 237. py, and her health was delicate and infirm. Perhaps these circumstances served to confirm in

See "Lines to a Female Friend, written in her Al-
In the village of Volkstadt.
Hoffmeister.