ciation of his religious principles, a cry of fury was heard from all parts of the hall. Some jested, asking him when he had seen God, and what was his form; others derided his credulity; the most moderate addressed him with expressions of contempt. From ridicule they proceeded to outrage; they insulted his age, they charged him with dotage and superstition; threatened to expel him from an assembly of which he had made himself unworthy; and there were some, who carried the madness so far, as to challenge him to a duel, in order to prove, at the point of the sword, that there was no God. He vainly attempted to make himself heard in the tumult; they would not hear him, and the ideologist Cabanis, the only one we shall name, in a transport of rage, cried out, "I swear there is no God, and I demand that his name never again be pronounced within these walls." Bernardin de St Pierre would hear no more. He ceased to defend his report, and turning to this last opponent, said to him calmly, "your master Mirabeau would have blushed at the words you have uttered." Saying this, he retired without waiting for a reply, and the assembly continued to debate, not if there were a God, but if they would allow his name to be heard in their halls.

'Meantime M. de St Pierre had entered the library. Dismayed at a scene without a parallel in the history of human societies, he felt that he ought to make a last effort, and hastened to commit to paper a few ideas, which should touch the minds of his auditors. This memoir was the work of inspiration; there are but a few words erased in the draft of it before us, and it was never copied. It is an affecting compound of sweetness and strength, and a model of the most lofty eloquence. He prays, he consoles, he seeks to reconcile—this was his only reply to the insults with which he had been loaded. He would not wrong himself by trying to prove that there was a God. He disdained to appeal to the works of nature; they would not be comprehended by men corrupted by the vices of society. But he sought to make them blush, by recalling to them the ephemeral laws of this period. He opposed to the deliberate Atheism of his colleagues the involuntary assent of the representatives of the people, men covered with crimes, who yet dared not deny the God, whose vengeance awaited them. He carried this terrible

argument so far, as to invoke that name, which no being can pronounce without a shudder- Robespierre- whose auspices the class of morals was claiming. Thus spake the just! And God granted that these lines, inspired by the love of man, should be superior to any thing that the author, who had produced so many eloquent works, had hitherto written, that posterity might behold in his finest page the record of his noblest action.'

St Pierre attaches great importance himself to certain theories of his own in natural philosophy, particularly one, which refers the movement of the tides to the dissolution of ice at the poles. This object occupied his mind more and more as he advanced in life; but his views on the subject have not been sanctioned by the approbation of good judges, and it would be superfluous, even if we had room, to discuss them here. His business after all was more with the optic naiads, to borrow an expression from the friend of Gray, than with the nymphs of the ocean. The tides, whose principles of motion he had studied with success, were those, which swell the heart and gush from the eye.

9*

LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SCHILLER.*

[North American Review, April, 1823.]

THERE are few works in the English language more interesting than Johnson's Lives of the Poets; and in general a well written account of a great poet is nearly as delightful to read as his works. Good poetry is so rare and exquisite a product of the mind, that the few favored mortals, who are capable of affording it, have been in all ages and nations (as is well observed by the celebrated writer just mentioned) invested by public opinion with some of the attributes we commonly connect with the notion of divinity; and the accounts of their lives and writings have been always studied with an interest. resembling that, with which we read the history of the incarnation and miracles of superior beings. Good biography, as it is nearly as agreeable, is also perhaps quite as rare, as good poetry; and many a bard, after bestowing immortality upon crowds of patriots and heroes, has fallen short of his own fame with after ages, for want of a life. As the glory of the brave perishes, unless embalmed with the tears immortal' of some divine poet; so the memory of the poet himself, who 'saved others' names, but left his own unsung,' if it is not seasonably

6

*Friedrich von Schiller's Leben, aus theils gedruckten, theils ungedruckten Nachrichten, nebst gedrängter Uebersicht seiner poetischen Werke. Herausgegeben von Heinrich Doering. -The Life of Frederic von Schiller; compiled in part from materials before unpublished; with a concise review of his poems. By Henry Doering. Weimar, 1822.

bottled up in spirit by some careful biographer, fades and dies away; and finally two or three thousand years after, there comes along a great German critic, and flatly denies in the face of his works, that any such person ever existed. Hence we have always looked upon it as a singular dispensation of Providence in favor of the fraternity of the British poets, that a writer, so well qualified in almost every respect as Dr Johnson, should have been raised up and strengthened to undertake the task of doing them justice en masse; securing them all from forgetfulness, and displaying them together, like a fine collection of pictures adorned with the golden framing of his own rich and sonorous prose, for the lasting admiration and delight of posterity. If bards and biographers, as may well be presumed, associate together in the flowery fields of Elysium, where we are told all good writers are admitted, it is easy to conceive that the shade of the learned Doctor must enjoy-to use a diplomatic phrase - the most distinguished consideration with the whole company of British poets, whose lives he has recorded. Unfortu nately, few biographers can be advantageously compared with this great writer; and we regret to say, that the author now under review is far from forming an exception to this remark. It must be allowed, however, that his work, if it has no great merit, is nevertheless respectable in its way, makes but slight pretensions, has few glaring faults, and especially is brief, the best possible quality in an indifferent book. It consists of a plain recital of the principal facts in the life of Schiller, accompanied with critical remarks on his poems; the latter division of the work being rather inferior in value to the former. As the facts mentioned in the narrative are not perhaps very generally known to the public, we shall offer, in the present article, a summary of the most important, inter

spersed with such observations as may be supplied by Mr Doering, or naturally suggested by the subject.

Frederic Schiller was born at Marbach, a little town in Würtemberg, on the tenth of November 1759. His father, John Caspar, was bred a surgeon, and served in that capacity with a regiment of Bavarian hussars in the war of the Austrian succession. At the close of this war he returned to Würtemberg, and was there placed as adjutant and ensign in the Prince Louis regiment. With these characters he made the campaigns of the seven years' war, relieving at times the sufferings of his comrades by surgical aid, and occasionally supplying their spiritual wants by a sermon or a psalm. He seems indeed to have been a person of versatile, if not preeminent genius. After the peace of 1763, he retired from the army with the rank of captain, and was employed by the duke of Würtemberg to superintend one of his estates. In this charge he acquitted himself with great success; and he even acquired such skill in agriculture, that he afterwards published a book upon the subject, which obtained the honors of a second edition. The mother of Schiller was the daughter of a baker of Kodweis, and is represented as a person of a kind and affectionate character, and of some poetical taste.

Schiller was not remarked at school as a promising boy. His genius seems to have been first excited by the opportunity of frequenting the theatre, which presented itself to him when he was about eight years old, and he then made some attempts at poetry, and began already to plan tragedies. He continued, however, several years longer at the public school of Ludwigsburg, employed in classical and scientific studies, but without obtaining much distinction in either. His inclination at this period of life was for the profession of divinity, and the wishes