longer a hindrance but a friendly in- depths of passion, but in the philosofluence, they proceeded in an interest-phy of every-day life, Miss Edgeworth ing tour in Switzerland under the has had no superior. She has been guidance of Dumont, the intimate charged with too exclusive a pursuit friend of Bentham. Resuming her of utility; but this cannot be consid literary occupations on her arrival at ered a reproach, when we consider her home, she returned to her old province education and how necessary this comof instruction of the young in the mon-sense usefulness was to the peopublication of "Rosamond," a sequel ple about her, and what it accomplishto "Early Lessons," in 1822, followed ed for them. In this, she may have by "Harry and Lucy," in 1825. In the been somewhat limited, but there are meantime, she made occasional journeys enough other writers, of higher aims, to London, mingling as usual in the perhaps, to supply the deficiency. It best literary society, and in the sum is enough that her writings often supmer of 1823, paid a visit to Sir Walter ply what is wanting in theirs. The Scott, of which there are several in- world is not composed of one class of teresting notices in his Memoirs and people, and a good library is not made Correspondence. Scott returned this up of the works of a single author. visit on his journey in Ireland, two Her books, with all their limitations, years afterward, in 1825, when he cannot and ought not to be neglected. passed several days at Edgeworth It is the well deserved praise of their Town, delighted with the atmosphere author, in the words of her critic, Jef of respect, and the rural prosperity frey, to have "combined more solid with which Miss Edgeworth and the instruction with more universal enterfamily were surrounded. tainment, and given more practical lessons of wisdom with less tediousness and less pretension, than any other writer with whom we are acquainted."

The latest of Miss Edgeworth's largest works, "Helen," a novel, was published in 1834, when the author was sixty-seven, and, compared with the best of her kindred productions, the "Tales of Fashionable Life," exhibits no falling off in power or interest. One common purpose runs through all her productions of this class, and a like success attends them. They belong to a school of fiction of which the end and aim is the amelioration of daily life, the art of making people happy in society and in themselves. Other writers have taken a higher flight, some have more deeply sounded the

Her last literary publication was "Orlandino," a tale for children, published by Messrs. Chambers, in 1847. Two years later, with her faculties still unimpaired, in a cheerful old age, she was taken suddenly ill on the 22d of May, 1849, and expired within a few hours, attended by the step-mother whom she had welcomed to her father's house, and with whom she had lived happily through so many subsequent years.

J the associate taneous nature of JOH

OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIED. their writings. The more free, sponRICH SCHILLER, the associate taneous and sympathetic nature of in friendship and companion in fame Schiller has gained him an advantage of the poet Goethe, came into the with posterity over his contemporary. world ten years later than this his While the head is busy with the creagreat brother author of Germany, and tions of Goethe, the lyrics of Schiller left it some twenty-seven years earlier; have penetrated to the heart. United, but within these few years of contem- one is the complement of the other. porary public life he achieved a success They were of great mutual service to in literature, if not so broad or gen- each other while living; and even so eral in its extent, as lasting, and per- are they to the enlightened reader in haps more endeared to the heart of their collected works at this day. If the nation and the world than that of the hundreds of thousands of their his illustrious rival. The two had one countrymen in New York have worgreat characteristic in common. They thily given the preference to Schiller were alike distinguished by the eleva- in the erection of his monument in tion and fervor of their powers. Each the great park of the city; it is with had the greatest regard for literature equal justice that the sentiment of the as the highest development of the in- nation at home is represented by their dividual powers and the best instruc- loving union in the twin statue at tor of the race. There was some Weimar. divergence between them in the range and application of their faculties, and a greater in their moral disposition and habits. Goethe is the great modern representative to the world of the actual in art, as Schiller is of the ideal; but as neither of these qualities can be sustained in perfection without something of the other, we shall find them, to a certain degree, linked in

3

Friedrich Schiller was born at Marbach, a small town of the Duchy of Wurtemburg, on the banks of the Neckar, on the 10th of November, 1759.

His parents belonged to the middle class of German life. His father, Johann Caspar Schiller, was the son of a baker, had been educated as a physician and attained the position of surgeon in a Bavarian regi

ment. After his marriage to Elizabeth Dorothea Kodweiss, of humble parentage similar to his own, he entered the military service of the Duke of Wurtemburg as ensign and adjutant, and it was while he was absent from home engaged in these duties that his son was born. In 1763, at the peace of Paris, he was thrown out of his military employments with the nominal rank of captain; but was still engaged by the duke in his service as a layerout of ornamental gardens and plantations in the pleasure grounds at Ludwigsburg and elsewhere. He is described as a person of exemplary integrity, of some acquaintance with literature, having published a work growing out of his experience as a horticulturist, on the "Management of Forests," and of the most earnest piety.

The mother is said to have united with her amiable and solid domestic qualities, some cultivation of the understanding and a natural perception of the beauties of literature, delighting her children in their early years with fairy tales, and as they grew older, reciting to them verses from Klopstock and other of the new poets of the time. She was also a good musician and had talent of some kind in writing poetry. As his father's duties carried him from place to place, Friedrich's early education was somewhat desultory. At the age of six, when his father was sent to Lorch as recruiting officer, he receives his first regular instruction from the clergyman of the parish, Philip Moser, whose name his pupil afterwards gave to the priest in his dramatic composition, "The Robbers." He learned Latin during his

three years passed at this place, and was doubtless well instructed in relig ious matters, for we find him already thinking of the church as his future calling, for which, indeed, his parents intended him.

The removal of his father, in 1768, to Ludwigsburg, introduced the boy to the public school at that place, where he was subjected to a more rigorous course of academical studies with a view to the clerical profession. In four successive years he passed with credit the examinations required in such candidates, before the school commissioners at Stuttgard. He was too young to be distinguished as a student, and being naturally of an imaginative temperament, we are not surprised to learn, was much affected by the brilliant spectacles of the Ludwigsburg theatre. Something of the poet's melancholy seems already to have been impressed upon his disposition. At the age of eleven he would leave the active sports of his school-fellows for retirement with a companion to the neighboring plantations, to indulge in complaints of present hardships, and dreams of the future. later he passed under new and stronger restraints, in another system of instruction, these feelings became greatly aggravated. It was the humor of his father's patron at this time, the Grand Duke of Wurtemburg, to establish at Stuttgard a species of national academy, in which military discipline was the controlling element. As the school was chiefly to be supplied with scholars from the sons of officers and soldiers of the army, the duke requested the elder Schiller to

When three years