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Duke William of Brunswick is reported to have said: I must order the Duke Adolphus, of Shleswic, to be hanged, if he should come to see me, lest the free-knights should hang me. It was difficult to elude the proceedings of the free knights, as they at all times contrived to steal at night, unknown and unseen, to the gates of castles, palaces and towns, and to affix the summons of the secret tribunal. When this had been done three times, and the accused did not appear; he was condemned by the secret ban, and summoned once more to submit to the exe. cution of the sentence, and in case of non-appearance, solemnly out-lawed, when the invisible bands of free-knights watched all his steps till they found an opportunity of taking away his life. When a free-knight thought himself too weak to seize and hang the culprit, he was bound to pursue him till he met with some of his colleagues, who assisted him in hanging him to a tree, near the high road, and not to a gibbet, to signify thereby that they exercised a free imperial judicature throughout the whole empire, independent of all territorial tribunals. If the devoted victim made resistance, so as to compel them to poignard him; they tied the dead body to a tree, fixing the dagger over his head, to show that he had not been murdered, but executed by a free-knight.

under contribution to their avarice. They vowed, on their admission, in the most solemn and awful manner, to judge with incorruptible impartiality, to regard no person, and even to be deaf to the feelings of the heart, in framing their decrees; but, on the contrary, they were swayed by selfishness, accessible to corruption, partial to their friends, and prosecuted their enemies with the most rancorous malice, and prostituted their function by rendering their authority subservient to the gratification of the most brutal lust. They were deaf to the lamentations of calumniated innocence, assassinated their relations to inherit their estates, and were more dreadful to the virtuous than the midnight ruffian. A free count frequently acted at once as witness and as judge; the spy, informer, witness, and judge, were, in many instances, united in the same person; in short, the abuses which disgraced the secret tribunals, rendered them a real curse to mankind. Towards the close of the 14th, and in the beginning of the 15th century, their power in Germany rose to a most alarming degree; and we may safely maintain that the German empire at that time contained more than an hundred thousand free-knights, who without either previous notice or trial executed every one who was condemned by the secret ban. Bavarians, Austrians, Franconians and Suabians, having a demand on any one whom they could not bring to justice before the regular courts of his country, applied to the Westphalian secret tribunal, where they obtained a summons, and in case of nonappearance, a sentence, which was immediately communicated to the whole fraternity of freeKnights, a step by which were put in motion those hundred thousand executioners bound by the most dreadful oath to spare neither father nor mother, nor to regard the sacred ties of friend-reply in the affirmative or negative; but when he ship and natrimonial love. If a free-knight met a friend condemned by the secret ban, and gave him only the slightest hint to save his life by flight, all the other free-knights were bound to The Emperor, or his delegate, could create hang him seven feet higher than any other cri- free-knights no where but on the red soil, i. e. in minal. The sentence being pronounced in the Westphaly, with the assistance of three or four serret ban, they were obliged to put it into imme-free-knights who acted as witnesses. In this diate execution, and not permitted to make the lea t'remonstrance, though they were perfectly convinced that the devoted victim was the best of men, and innocent of the crime alledged against him. This induced almost every man of rank and power to become a member of that dreadful association, in order to be more able to be on his guard. Every Prince had some freeknights amongst his counsellors, and the majority of the German nobility belonged to that secret order Even Princes; for instance, the Duke of Bavaria, and the Margrave of Brandenbourgh were members of the Secret Tribunal. The

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Their transactions were shrouded in the most profound concealinent; and the signal by which the initiated, or knowing ones, as they called themselves, recognized each other, never coul be discovered. Their secret proceedings were not permitted to be disclosed to the Emperor himself, although he was supreme master of the chair. Only when he asked, has N. N. been condemned? the free-knights were allowed to

enquired who had been condemned by the secret ban? they were not permitted to mention any

name.

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they likewise resembled the free-masons; and if we consider every tribunal as a lodge, and the supreme master of the chair, as the grand-master of all Westphalian lodges, this comparison is rendered still more striking. The real significa, tion of the term red soil, and the reason why it was applied to Westphaly, has not yet been traced out. The King Wenzesláus, had created free-knights out of Westphaly, and when the Emperor, Ruprecht, asked how they were treated by the regular free-knights, he received the answer, they are hanged without mercy.

The Emperor alone, and no other German

Prince, could grant a safe conduct to a person who was outlawed by the secret ban, which was a privilege which Charles the Great had reserved to himself in the Saxon capitulars. The free knights, however, maintained, it was more becoming the Emperor not to grant such letters of protection at all, as he was more interested in strengthening than in weakening the power of the secret tribunals: and in this they were right, as the free counts defended the imperial authority against the encroachments of territorial jurisdiction. The Emperor Sigismund took a certain Conrad of Langen, who was out-lawed by the

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AN ESSAY ON THE EFFECTS OF A WELL-REGULATED THEATRE.

BY F. SCHILLER.

SULZER observes, in his Theory of the Fine Arts and Sciences, that an universal and irresistible inclination to novel and extraordinary scenes, a desire of feeling ourselves in a state of mental commotion, has given rise to dramatic exhibitions. Being exhausted by a too strenuous exertion of the mental faculties, enfeebled by the sameness and pressure of his professional occupations, and satiated by sensuality, man could not but feel a vacancy in his soul totally repugnant to the unremitting impulse to activity inherent in human nature. Our nature, equally incapable of enduring for any length of time a state of mere animal existence, as of continuing the exertions of the higher faculties without intermission, panted after an intermediate state, uniting these two opposite extremes, relaxing the mind from a too intense bent of its powers, and facilitating the alternate transition from one state to the other. This advantage is invariably produced by a susceptibility of the impressions of beauty. But as a wise legislator should exert himself, above all things, to select from two effects that which is most efficacious, he will not be satisfied with having only disarmed the inelinations of his people, but, if possible, render them instrumental to the accomplishment of poble designs, and endeavour to convert them into sources of happiness. Actuated by these motives, legislators gave the preference to the stage, which opens a spacious field to a mind eager for exertion, affords nourishment to all the faculties of the soul, without overstraining any one of them, and unites the refinement of the understanding and the heart with the most innoeent kind of amusement.

The person who first observed that religion is the strongest pillar of the state, and that it alone renders the laws effectual, has by this ass rtion, perhaps without intending or being sensible of it, defended the stage in the strongest manner. That very insufficiency and instability of positive laws, which render religion indispensably neces sary for the state, determines also the whole inAluence the stage can produce. The laws confine themselves merely to negative duties, whereas religion extends its precepts to real actions. The laws counteract only those effects that dissolve the social bonds by which mankind is united, whilst religion prescribes such actions as render these bonds stronger. The laws decide only upon the visible effects of the will; deeds alone are subject to their exertion, whilst religion extends its jurisdiction to the inmost recesses of the heart, pursuing the thoughts of man to their primary

sources.

The laws are pliant, and as changeable as the humours and passions of man, whereas the bonds of religion are strong and eternal. Suppose that religion actually did exercise this powerful sway over every human heart, will and can it complete the entire refinement of man? Religion (which I distinguish here between its political and divine part) religion, in the aggregate, operates chiefly upon the sensual part of the people; but its efficacy would be los, were we to purify it entirely from whatever strikes the senses. And what else is it that renders the stage efficacious? Religion ceases to operate upon the majority of the human race, if we divest it of its awful pic ures and problems, of heaven and hell, which operate alone by the influence they exercise over the imagination. What addition of

strength must religion and the laws acquire by a close alliance with the stage, where all is intuition, where vice and virtue, happiness and misery, folly and wisdom, are represented to man in a variety of comprehensive and faithful pictures; where providence unfolds its riddles, and solves the mysterious knots of fate before our eyes; where the human heart, stretched on the rack of passion, confesses its inmost emotions; where all masks are stript off, every gloss is wiped away, and incorruptible truth is awfully sitting in judg-gustus, great as a god, offers his hand to the per

mercy on the stage; and numerous virtues, of which the legislature is silent, are recommended from the stage. In this it faithfully follows the directions of wisdom and religion. It derives its. principles and examples from this pure source, and enrobes rigorous duty with a charming and enticing garment. How noble are the sentiments, resolutions, and passions, with which it swells our soul, how heavenly the ideas which it exhibits for imitation. When the benevolent Au

ment.

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The jurisdiction of the stage begins where the dominion of the civil law terminates. When justice is blinded by the charms of gold, and riots in the pay of vice, when the crimes of those that are in power laugh at its impotence, and fear of man fetters the arm of the magistrates, then the stage takes up the sword and balance of justice, and drags vice before its dread tribunal. The || spacious regions of fancy and history, the times past and future, are obedient to its nod. Daring criminals, long mouldered in dust, are now summoned by the omnipotent voice of poetry, and repeat an ignominious life for the awful instruction of posterity. Wretches, once the terror of their cotemporaries, pass before our eyes, impotent like the phantoms produced by a magic mirror, and we curse their memory with a voluptuous horror. Though morality should be taught no longer, religion lose all credit, and the power of the law be dissolved, yet man would continue to be seized with awful dread on seeing Medea stagger down the steps of her palace, and be agitated with powerful emotions when the murder of her children is accomplished. A salutary tremor will seize the beholder, and he will rejoice at having preserved his conscience pure, when Lady Macbeth, a dreadful night walker, washes her hands, and calls in vain for all the perfumes of Arabia to dispel the odious scent of murder? It is no exaggeration if we maintain that these pictures, exhibited on the stage, finally incorporate themselves with the morals of the multitude, and in individual cases influence their sentiments. The impressions, pro. duced by such exhibitions, are indelible, and the slightest touch is sufficient to resuscitate, as it were, the whole terrifying picture in the heart of

man.

Certain as it is that intuitive representation operates more powerfully than dead letters and cold recitation, it is equally certain that the stage produces a more powerful and lasting effect than all systems of morality and the

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fidious Cinna, who imagines to read the sentence of death on his lips, and utters the generous request, Cinna, let us be friends!" who among the spectators would in that moment not be inclined to shake his mortal enemy kindly by the hand, in order to resemble the great Roman ?→ When Francis Sickingen, going to chastise an oppressive prince, and to defend the rights of a fellow-man, on the road chances to look round, and descries the smoke of his burning castle, where he left his wife and child unprotected, and proceeds on his road, in order to be faithful to his word, how great must man appear in such a moment, and how contemptible the dread of invincible fate!

Useful as the stage proves itself by representing virtue in the most amiable manner, it produces effects no less salutary by exhibiting the deformity of vice in its dreadful mirror. When the helpless and childish Lear, in a nocturnal tempest, knocks in vain at the house of his daughters, scattering his white locks into the air, and tells the furious elements how unnatural his reign had been; when he at last vents his furious pangs in the dreadful words, "I gave you all I had to give!" how abominable then must ingratitude appear to us, and how solemnly do we vow to love and to revere our parents!

But the effects which the stage can produce extend still farther. It is active for our improvement, when religion and the law deem it beneath their dignity to bestow their fostering care upon human sentiments. Social happiness is as much annoyed by folly as by crimes and vices. Experience teaches us, that in the texture of human affairs the greatest weights are frequently suspended by the smallest and most tender threads, and that we, on tr.cing human actions to their primary sources, must smile ten times, before we are once struck with horror. The more I advance in years, the smaller grows my catalogue of villains, whilst my register of fools grows more complete and numerous. If all the mortal transactions of one sex arise from one source, if all the enormous extremes of vice, which ever have branded individuals, are only altered forms, only higher degrees of one quality, which we at last

unanimously behold with a smile of pity, why should nature not have led the other sex the same road? I know but one secret of preserving man from depravity, and that is this to guard his heart against weakness.

The stage is highly capable of performing great part of this momentous task. It presents the mirror of truth to the numerous classes of fools, and with salutary ridicule lashes folly under whatever form it may appear. It effects in such instances, by means of satire, what in others it performs by exciting tender emotions or terror. If we were to attempt to estimate the respective value of tragedy and comedy by the measure of the effects which they produce, experience would perhaps adjudge the preference to the latter. Ridicule and contempt wound the pride of man more severely than indignation tortures his conscience. Our cowardice flies from the dread of horrors, but this very cowardice betrays us to the stings of satire. The laws and our conscience preserve us frequently from crimes and vices, whilst the perception of our follies requires a more refined sense, which we can sharpen no where more effectually than at the theatre. We may, without much reluctance, empower a friend to attack our morals and our heart, but we find it more difficult to forgive him a single laugh at our expence. Our transgressions admit of an observer and censor, but our follies scarcely can bear a witness. The stage alone is permitted freely to lash our weakness, because it spares our peevishness, and dees not desire to know the guilty fool. We see in its mirror, without blushing, our follies drop their mask, and in general are thankful for the gentle reprimand.

other respects. Though it should not be capable of either destroying or even diminishing the sum of vices, must we not confess that it makes us acquainted with them? We must live with these slaves of vice, and associate with these fools, We must either shun or counteract them; undermine their influence, or fall under it. The stage renders them incapable of taking us by surprize. We are prepared against their designs. The stage has betrayed to us the secret of detecting and disarming them. It has stript off the deceitful mask that concealed the hypocrite, and laid open the net with which cunning and cabal encom passed us. It dragged deception and falsehood out of their crooked labyrinths, and exposed their countenance to the light. Though the dreadful remorse of the unfortunate Mrs. Haller, in Kotzebue's Stranger, should not deter one voluptuary from his criminal pursuits, and the pic. ture of the baneful effects of seduction should not be capable of quenching his guilty flames, will it not enable unsuspecting innocence to see through the artful web of seduction, and teach it to tremble at the vows and the homage of the vile seducer?

The stage does, however, direct our attention not to man and human characters alone, it also renders us attentive to the fate of man, and teaches us the great art of enduring its blows with firmness.

Accident and design act an equally important part in the vicissitudes of our life; we direct the course of the latter, but must implicitly submit to the former. We have reason to be satisfied with the advantage, if unavoidable fatalities do not surprise us unprepared; if our courage and how-prudence have exerted themselves already on si milar occasions, and our heart has attained a

The effects produced by the stage do not, ever, terminate here. The theatre is in a higher degree than any other public institution a school of practical wisdom, a guide through civil life, an unerring key to the most secret recesses of the human soul. I will not deny that infatuation and callousness of conscience frequently destroy its best effects; that these barriers to truth enable numerous vices to stand undaunted before its mirror, and that thousands of generous sentiments, recommended from the stage, make no impression upon the icy heart of the spectator; and I am inclined to believe that Moliere's Harpagon may not have reformed one usurer; that the suicide Beverley has reclaimed but a few of his brethren from the dreadful vice of gambling; and that the representation of Charles Moor will not contribute much to render the high roads safer: but though we should admit this to be the case in most instances, or even be so unjust to maintain that the stage contributes nothing at all to restrain the progress of vice, we cannot deny that its salutary influence is very great in many

sufficient degree of firmness to endure the sudden blow inflicted by adverse fate. The s'age presents to our view a variegated scene of human sufferings. It involves us artfully in foreign distresses, and rewards us for momentary pangs with voluptuous tears and a most valuable acquisition of courage and experience. We follow on the stage the deserted Ariadne through the re-echoing Naxos, descend with her through the horrid tower of Ugolino, attend her to the dreadful scaffold, and await with her in anxious dread the arrival of the awful hour of death. Here we hear surprised nature unobjectionably confirm what the secret palpitations of our soul prognosticated. The betrayed favourite of his Queen is deserted by her favour in the dungeons of the tower; the agonized Francis Moor is abandoned, at the point of death, by his faithless sophistry. Eternity re stores the deceased to the world, to reveal secrets which no living mortal can know, and the se. cure villain is driven from his last horrid retreat,

because the grave evomits a dreadful witness against him.

Before Joseph II. conquered the dreadful hydra of pions hatred, did the stage already plant humanity and meckness in our heart; the horrid pictures which able dramatists drew of pagan priestly fury, taught us to avoid religious hatred, and this dreadful mirror enabled Christianity to wipe off the spo s with which it was stained.— The errors of education might, by means of the stage, be attacked with equal success; but unfor. tunately not one of our great dramatists has as yet attempted to treat upon this important theme. Though there is nothing, by its consequences so important for the general welfare of a nation as

Besides the information which the stage gives us of the fate of man, it teaches us also to be just to the unfortunate, and to judge him with indulgent bumanity. We are made acquainted with the whole extent of his necessities before|| we are permitted to sit in judgment upon him. Humanity and tolerance begin to predominate in our age; their cheering rays have forced their way into the courts of justice, and even farther into the hearts of princes. How ample a share has the stage had in this beneficent change, by rendering man better acquainted with his bre-education, yet it is totally abandoned to the prethren, and unfolding the secret springs which determine human actions!

A certain eminent class of men has more reason to be grateful to the stage than the rest.Here the great and powerful hear what they never or rarely hear-truth; and behold what they never or rarely see-man in his natural form.

Thus extensive is the influence of the stage upon moral refinement; but its merits, in illuminating the human mind are no less important and obvious; and it is in this higher region where a great genius and zealous patriot turns it to the best advantage. He casts a scrutinizing look at the whole human race, compares nations with nations, centuries with centuries, and observes how slavishly the great mass of the people bend their neck beneath the yoke of prejudice and opinion, which continually counteract their happiness-observes that the purer rays of truth enlighten only a few solitary individuals, who purchase the small gain, perhaps, at the expence of a whole life. By what means can a wise legislator make a whole nation partake of the salutary light emanating from these purer rays of truth?

The stage is the common channel by which the light of truth emanates from the more enlightened part of a nation, and diffuses its gentle rays through the whole state. Notions more correct, principles more refined, and purer sentiments, flow from her through all the veins of the great bulk of the nation; the mephitic mist of barbarism, the Egyptian darkness of superstition disappears, the night gives way to conquering light. I beg leave to select only two from the numerous excellent fruits of the better stage: How universally has religious tolerance been diffused within these few last years. Before Lessing's Nathan the Jew, and Voltaire's Saladin, the Saracen put us to the blush, and preached the divine doctrine that pious submission to the will of God does not depend on our opinions of the nature of the Supreme Ruler of the world.

judices, the indolence, and the thoughtlessness of every individual. The stage alone would be capable of exhibiting to public view the numerous unfortunate victims of neglected education; here our fathers might learn to renounce perverse maxims, and our mothers to love rationally. False notions lead the heart of the best pedagogues astray, which renders the consequences the more pernicious, if they beast of unnatural methods, and systematically ruin the tender plant in academies and pedagogic hot houses. The present predominant custom of instructing children in every thing but in what tends to render them practical Christians and useful subjects, deserves, more than any other fashionable folly of the age, to be lashed by the scourge of satire.

The stage might also be rendered instrumental in correcting the ideas of a nation relative to government and the superior powers. The legislative power might here speak to the subject by the medium of others, defend itself against his complaints, before they could grow loud, and bribe the mistrust of the multitude without appearing to have any share in the attempt.

I cannot omit to animadvert here on the great influence which a well-regulated theatre might exercise over the spirit of a whole nation. By the national spirit of a people, I mean the similarity and harmony of its opinions and inclinations relative to subjects concerning which auother nation entertains different notions and sentiments. The stage alone has it in its power to effect this harmony in a superior degree, as it pervades the whole territory of human knowledge, exhausts all situations in life, and lays open the most hidden recesses of the human heart, and. as it is resorted to by all ranks and classes, and has the earliest access to the understanding and the heart. If in all our dramatic pieces, one leading feature did prevail, if our poets agreed among themselves, and would form a close union for this purpose, if rigorous discrimination guided them in their labours, if they would resolve to

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