tal soul wins our homage, not alone because it is the right, but because it is the beautiful.

Thus let us conclude our development of the thought of Schiller. Let the love for beauty grow under every stimulus which it is in our power to apply. It is the glory of the world, it is the crown of the angels, it is the radiance of Paradise. The instinct in us which makes us thrill at any spectacle of beauty,this same instinct, refined, fastening itself upon the "Beauty of Holiness," lifts us towards Heaven!

I call to mind the shadowed, quiet streets of Weimar. In one of them stands the modest house where Schiller lived and wrought when he was at his best, a centre building running up into a sharp gable, with lower wings on each side. There, as he dreamed beneath that humble roof, passed before his spirit the brooding, stupendous Wallenstein; and Max and Thekla, now aglow with the purest love, now crazed by the darkest despair. Again it was a vision of chivalric pomp which he saw, and in the midst of them a purity and faith superhuman, the voices of celestial visitors, then the roar of flames about the form of the fairest of martyrs, bodied forth in the "Maid of Orleans." spiritual sense he heard Mary of Scotland plead with her rival for her liberty; then, while the splendor of a queen glowed about her, heard the dull stroke of the headsman's axe. Anon sounded through his soul the sweet choruses of the Bride of Messina," and even while he sat oppressed by the overshadow

which he With his

ing death, he built, in imagination, the towering Alpine landscape,— crag, lake, waterfall, unperishing snow crowning solemn pine-forests, and among them a manful race, shouting songs of freedom. Only a little way off is the house of Göthe, larger, but still plain, fronting the quiet square. We can think of that so memorable friendship as they walked side by side, the one full of power and beauty, with eye and brow so radiant with genius, in form a Greek god; the other already marked with disease, the chest hollow, the cheek hectic,-but with countenance stamped not less than the other with the divine gift. Or if we have difficulty in making them real to us, there, on the spot that knew them, they stand in imperishable bronze, the same garb, the characteristic attitude, the eyes uplifted as if they saw in the clouds spiritual worlds aglow with beauty.

From the memorial, where they stand together upon one pedestal, let us go to their sepulchre. It is the crypt of the mausoleum of the grand dukes. As you descend into the proud tomb, at the foot of the staircase lie side by side, in coffins of oak, the poets who in life were friends. It is the proudest distinction of the ducal house of Weimar that it protected them in life; now in death, not divided from one another, their ashes rest in the same tomb with those of their patrons. On the lids of both coffins, the day of my visit, were wreaths of fresh flowers; on that of Göthe the wreaths were few, on that of Schiller the flowers were piled high. It was sixty-five years since that midnight of tempest when

Schiller was laid to rest; the coffin-lid had bloomed perpetually, and now the fragrance and verdure are forever renewed. What is the mysterious springtide which, even there, in the abyss of the sepulchre, perennially calls such beauty and freshness into being? It is the love of the German heart: it clings to him because it feels its kinship with him; it recognizes him as preeminently its type and spokesman, representing its ideals, its loves, its longings. If Göthe was the greater artist, he had not the popular heart. About the memory of Schiller has the love of the Germans folded itself as about no other. He lived in desperate times, when his land was in despair. His aspirations after freedom received a check in the French Revolution, whose beginnings he had hailed with enthusiastic hope. Shrinking in terror from its excesses, he grew cautious, but did not lose his republican spirit. In a certain way he has been not only the teacher of his race, but its savior. Said the speaker at the centenary of Schiller's birthday, in 1859: "He was a seer, a prophet. A century has passed since his birth, and we revere him as one of the first among the spiritual heroes of humanity. A hundred years may roll away, another and yet another, still from century to century his name shall be celebrated, and at last there shall come a festival when men will say, 'See! there was a truth in his ideal anticipations of freedom and civilization.'"'1

1 Friedrich Vischer, quoted by Gostwick and Harrison.

CHAPTER XV.

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.1

Now that we have passed Göthe and Schiller, it becomes somewhat difficult to decide what line to follow in the history that remains. When the two great poets appear upon the scene, the glorious period of German literature, which in them reached its greatest brilliancy, was in its morning. Schiller died in 1805, Göthe in 1832. Before the first of these dates was reached the German nation had exhibited an immense expansion and increase of intensity in its intellectual life, which is yet to be perceived. Departments of intellectual activity in which the Germans had hitherto done little or no more than other races became filled with workers of genius, through whom the glory of their land reached the highest pitch; so that other civilized nations have been forced to acknowledge them in this age, in many ways, the leaders of the world. With Kant begins the series of philosophers, peers in profound power of the greatest names of the earth. To this period belong the tireless scholars who have plunged to such depths of erudition, the range of whose vision is so immense, yet who sweep the field with glance so minute. To this period belongs the army of scientific investigators, the Humboldts 1 See Appendix, note C.

wandering the world over, making known the phenomena of earth, sea, sky, in remote corners, in caverns, upon mountain-peaks; the bright minds who in garden and laboratory, in mine and observatory, with microscope, telescope, spectroscope, with compass and line, have weighed, fathomed, measured the universe of matter. With all this intellectual life literature is concerned. If the term is understood comprehensively, the record of all this scholarship, of this accomplishment, physical and metaphysical, must find a place. It must be remembered however that it is simply at what the Germans call "Die Schöne Literatur" (belles-lettres, polite literature) that we have time to glance. Vague enough are the boundaries of the field, shading off everywhere by imperceptible degrees into the other fields that have been indicated. Preserving the limits as well as we can, we must push forward.

The important writers, the consideration of whom is now finished, - Lessing, Klopstock, Wieland, Herder, Göthe, Schiller,have been called the six heroes of modern German poetry. Each became the centre of a group of followers and imitators ; each of these groups is numerous, and contains names with which the thorough student must make himself familiar. It would be a departure from the plan of this book, however, to consider them all here. We are restricted to the study of the polite literature, and even in that department we must limit ourselves. Like Switzerland in some past

1 Vilmar.