No. 19. EDINBURGH, SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1845. CHAPTERS ON THE VICES. AVARICE. THERE is little use in trying to settle the question what tice is most extensively practised and most productive of evil. Alas! there are many thriving so alarmingly that it is hard to say to which we should assign in point of strength and mischievous influence the unenviable superiority. There can be no question, however, that the love of money,' which is declared by the highest authority to be the root of all evil,' is sadly prevalent and awfully injurious. Into whatever department of the great social economy we look, we see this mean and hateful passion working banefully. All men, as the author of Mammon has well remarked, are bewailing its power and prevalence: The legislator complains that governments are getting to be little better than political establishments to furnish facilities for the accumulation of wealth. The philanthropist complains that generous motives are lost sight of in the prevailing desire for gain, so that he who evinces a disposition to disinterested benevolence is either distrusted as a hypocrite or derided as a fool. The moralist complains that 'commerce has kindled in the nation a universal thirst for wealth, and that money receives all the honours which are the proper right of knowledge and virtue.' The candidate for worldly advancement and honour protests against the arrangement which makes promotion a matter of purchase, thus disparaging and discouraging all worth save that of wealth. The poet laments that the world is too much for us;' that all things are sold;' that every thing is made a marketable commodity and labelled with its price.' The student of mental and moral philosophy complains that his favourite sciences are falling into decay, while the physical are engrossing every day more respect and attention; that the worship of the beautiful and good is giving place to a calculation of the profitable; that every work which can be made of use to immediate profit-every work which falls in with the desire of acquiring wealth suddenly is sure of an appropriate circulation; that we have been led to 'estimate the worth of all pursuits and attainments by their marketable value.' Yes, Mammon has other assailants besides the divine. Still, however, his votaries, or as we should rather call them his slaves, are countless; and among these there are not a few who do not so much as suspect that they are held in bondage. He has so many, and these so shrewd and sensible pleas to urge: a decent independence, amplified means of doing good, provision against future contingencies, giving one's children a fair start in life-these and the like are so necessary, so PRICE 1d. proper, and so becoming, that, were we all father-confessors, we should find, like St Francis de Sales, that none would come to us to confess the sin of covetousness. The battle for wealth is, we believe, one of the sorest and most fatiguing which mortals fight. The toils of the roughest campaign, the hardships of flood and field, are light in comparison with those of the man who has set his heart not on empires but on gold-whose thoughts and projects by night and by day have all one aim, the acquisition of money. An indomitable perseverance must have fallen to his lot, or his spirit would sink in the struggle. What a round of schemings! what hosts of speculations! what distracting risks! what tear and wear of brain in calculating the chances in his favour! what feverish disquietude! what racking cares! what twinges of conscience, too! There are, it is to be hoped, comparatively few professional misers-few whose every thought and energy are given to money-making-who deny themselves every enjoyment and hoot at every scheme of benevolence-who realize the picture of the poet: deed. 'Ill-guided wretch! Thou might'st have seen him at the midnight hour, Illustrious fool! nay, most inhuman wretch! These libels on humanity are, we would hope, few inBut we have plenty of such characters in miniature. We have men in abundance, who, were they unfortunate enough to live twice or thrice longer than others, would be exhibitions of the miserly passion, quite as pitiable as the Dancers, the Elweses, and such like. The demon has been generated into a multitude of little demons; the burrowing worm has been cut in pieces, but each piece has become a burrower in turn. It has been as with the giant in the fable, whose head was chopped off, but a host grew in its room; or as the dragon-tooth that was buried in the earth, but an army arose as its harvest! Now these persons do not need to be told to what privations and sickening cares they are subjected. They confound two things, which every well-regulated mind keeps quite distinct-wealth and its uses. They forget that money is an instrument, not an object—a means, not an end-a scaffolding, not a building. They fall in love with the key which opens the palace-door; they sit down 'Whether we advert to the losses and sufferings of Lot, the stoning of Achan, the leprosy of Gehazi, or the fate of Judas, the secret of their punishment is explained when the Almighty declares-'For the iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him.' And what do we behold in every such infliction but an earnest of its coming doom-the scintillations of that wrath, the flashes of that distant fire, which is kindled already to consume it?' ' There is a meanness, moreover, about this vice which must strike every thoughtful mind. The Scriptures call the covetous man an idolater. And assuredly there is no meaner idolatry. One can pardon, in certain moods of mind, the man who worships the sun in the heavens with his burning glories; or those incarnations of mental power and energy, Shakspeare, Milton, or Napoleon; but the man who bends his soul at Mammon's shrine looks a being of a quite other order-he lacks the poetry of other idolaters. And then, what a train of evils flow from this vice. It poisons the peace of families; it works the rain of empires. In almost every land it frames and defends laws which equally outrage mercy and justice. It opposes itself to every benevolent enterprise. It impedes the progress of truth, and liberty, and love. It dries up the most delicious sympathies that play in the breast of man, and makes him, in a thousand ways, the wronger and oppressor of his fellow. Against the inroads of a vice thus dangerous, thus annoying, thus prolific of evil, every man who would consult his own happiness and the welfare of society should beware. Speaking of avarice, the venerable Howe says:—'It is a soul-wasting monster, that is fed and sustained at a dearer rate, and with more costly sacrifices and repasts, than can be paralleled by either sacred or other history; that hath made more desolation in the souls of men than ever was made in those towas and cities where idols were served with only human sacrifices, or monstrous creatures satiated only with such food; or where the lives and safety of the majority were to be purchased by the constant tribute of the blood of not a few; that hath devoured more, and preyed more cruelly upon human lives, than Moloch or Minotaur !' FOREIGN AUTHORS. FREDERICK SCHILLER. Avarice, besides being a troublesome vice, is a very dangerous one. Suppose its victim successful in his pursuit of riches, to what serious perils is he exposed? Among these the fostering of pride is perhaps the most prominent. We are all mutually dependent. But the very rich man, at least if avaricious, is exceedingly apt to forget this. He finds that he has got something into his possession that has a power resembling that of the fabled philosopher's stone. It can turn all it touches into gold. He finds that money answereth all things;' that it can procure him admission into almost every circle, and make him favourably regarded when in it; that it can convert the rake into a paragon of worth; with marvellous ease blot twenty or thirty years from the calendar of time; smooth the furrowed brow of age, and plant roses on the faded cheek. He finds his wants not merely supplied but anticipated. He finds that every man is ready to serve him; that many (most disinterested persons!) are even willing to let their own business alone to attend to his. Now, it is not in poor human nature to resist this intoxicating influence. A man, or a few men, in an age, may rise superior to it; but to expect this of mankind generally, or even very extensively, is quite idle. The man will grow proud, and who knows not that pride is fatal to our peace? And worse than all-for there is a close alliance betwixt the two-contempt for his fellow-perament, his mild and loving disposition, and his early men may eventually grow into a jealousy of the Divine superiority-all those humbling truths, on the reception of which his eternal welfare depends, he will be prone to spurn. The great Teacher of mankind made few statements stronger or more emphatic than this: 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' There is indeed no vice against which the inspired writers caution us in more solemn and startling terms than that which we are denouncing. 'Take heed and beware of covetousness,' is a warning which the messengers of heaven again and again reiterate. And the sacred volume teems with examples of the dangers and sad consequences of this vice. FREDERICK SCHILLER was born at Marbach, on the 10th of November, 1759. His father was in the service of the Duke of Wirtemberg, and from him he seems to have derived that unwearying activity of mind which distinguished him even amidst sickness and pain. To his mother he probably owed his earnest, enthusiastic tem taste for poetry. In face and form, too, he closely resembled her. When only seven years old, he determined to be a preacher. Often he would mount a chair, and deliver extemporaneous harangues on religious subjects: and any inattention on the part of his audience never failed to be visited with the severest censures, ex cathedra. Once, while residing at Ludwigsburg, our young pret along with a friend, proposed to lay out the sum of four kreutzers, their whole pocket-money, in the purchase of a dish of curds and cream, at the neighbouring village of Harteneck; but, after a tiresome walk, they were disappointed in the object of their search. What they missed with a bunch of grapes into the bargain; and Schiller, at Harteneck, however, they found at Neckarweihingen, exhilarated by this purple cheer,' climbing a hill from which both villages were visible, pronounced a poetical 6 malediction on the curdless land, and bestowed his blessing on the hamlet in which such luxuries had been obtained for four kreutzers. At Ludwigsburg he began to attend the theatre, and though the performances seem to have been mainly melodramatic, they made a deep impression on his mind. Plans of tragedies began to float across his brain; and he would shut himself up in his room and rehearse long scenes, in which paper-puppets were the performers. But the bent of his mind continued earnestly religious; and the first of his poems was composed the day before his confirmation. It is not extant; but it appears to have expressed the awe and solemnity with which he contemplated the sacred service in which he was about to be engaged. In the Ludwigsburg academy, he made considerable progress in his knowledge of the Latin tongue. He finished his Latin course in 1772, and prepared to enter upon the nine years' study requisite to qualify him for the church. The Duke of Wirtemberg, however, had lately established an educational institution near Stuttgard, for which he was anxious to obtain recruits among young men of talent; and by his influential advice Schiller reluctantly entered the academy as a student of law. In this establishment military discipline reigned supreme. The students were placed under captains and majors; they were arranged in classes of fifty, according to their stature; they marched to dinner and to bed; ate, drank, prayed, studied, amused themselves, at the word of command; wore uniforms, stiff collars, long queues of false hair, and other strange attire, which looked sufficiently comic upon the gaunt figure of Schiller. In short, a mechanical uniformity of thought and action seemed to be the perfection aimed at by the duke, a wellmeaning but short-sighted military pedant. The study of law was distasteful to Schiller: he made no progress in it; and at last he was allowed to exchange it for that of medicine.-Rousseau, Voltaire, and other writers of the same class whose works he had read in secret, had launched his mind into a career of dark and brooding speculation, and the search into the structure of the human frame seemed to him calculated to throw light on the mysteries of mind. He chose for his public thesis, 'The connexion of the animal nature of man with the spiritual;' a theme which he treated in a gloomy and material spirit, yet not without originality, imagination, and vigour of expression. The state of Schiller's mind at this period was comfortless in the highest degree: restraint, scepticism, an irksome present, and an uncertain future, seem to have reduced his sensitive spirit at times almost to madness and despair; and to have inspired him with that indignation against established forms which characterizes his earliest plays. One source of consolation, however, remained open to him; and in poetical creation he could for a time forget realities. His first attempts were lyrical, and, we may add, worthless. They are imitative, pompous, and harsh in diction; often false in feeling; and dealing in abstractions. But in the drama he succeeded better. His ignorance of real life, it is true, left him exposed to a thousand distortions in his portraits of society; but his generous emotions and rebellious energies, at least, he felt he could transfer to some ideal representation. In painting his Robber Chief, Schiller only drew from himself: those wild bursts of affection, pity, vengeance, enthusiasm, and remorse, had already visited one lonely human heart in his military prison. The play of the 'kobbers' was written chiefly in the year 1780; it grew into shape under obstacles of every kind; being composed secretly, at such hours as he could steal from sleep or the studies of the academy. Once he had a narrow escape from one of the domiciliary visits of the duke, who, in making his rounds at night, entered the room so hastily, that Schiller had scarcely time to throw the manuscript under the table, and to replace it by some medical work. To enable him to bear these nightly labours, he had recourse to wine-sometimes, it is insinuated, not without detriment to the steadiness of his step next morning. At last, however, the play was finished, much about the time when Schiller left the academy (end of 1780); being presented to the situation of regimental surgeon in Stuttgard, with the salary of eighteen florins a-month. His academical friend Scharfenstein (afterwards General Scharfenstein) has furnished us with a picture of Schiller's first appearance on parade. How comic was his look! swaddled in regimentals, made after the old Prussian cut, which was particularly awkward and tasteless in the case of the surgeon's uniform; with three stiff pomatumed rolls of curls on each side of his head, a little military hat perched upon his crown, from which a long thick queue dangled behind; his long neck imprisoned in a tight horse-hair stock; his legs and thighs like cylinders of a uniform periphery; close-fitting pantaloons, sorely bespotted with shoe-blacking, and in which he moved, being unable to bend his knees, like a stork.' In re-casting the 'Robbers' for the Mannheim theatre, the fate of the villain Francis, the strange scene between Moor and Amelia in the garden, and the death of Amelia by the hands of the robber chief, were entirely altered. suicide being substituted in the last case as more consistent with the traditional laws of stage effect; but against this last change Schiller most strongly protested. The piece was produced in 1782; and, in spite of the ignorance of the world which it betrays, its power, originality, and wild energy of dialogue, won for it extraordinary success. But while it was enthusiastically admired by some, in others it excited only terror and aversion. Indeed a shell thrown into the heart of a peaceful city could scarcely have caused greater consternation than did this democratic drama in the quiet little dutchies of Germany. The poet received from the duke a peremptory order to confine himself to medicine, and the representation of the play was prohibited. A new tragedy, however, soon occupied his attention. This was the Conspiracy of Fiesco'-and he succeeded in imparting to the piece not a little of a southern glow and Italian temperament.- But the irksomeness of his position was daily increasing. His studies were distasteful to him; the close restraint was burdensome; he had lost the favour of his sovereign; and severe measures were threatened in case of future offence. At last he resolved to quit the territories of Wirtemberg. In company with Streicher, a student of music, he set out for Mannheim, in hopes that he might obtain the situation of stage-poet there. In this he was disappointed; but a day was fixed for the reading of Fiesco,' in presence of the more distinguished of the performers, Iffland, Beil, Beck, and others. Schiller began to read, and expectation was raised to the utmost height. Deep silence prevailed during the first act, but without the least symptom of approbation. At its close, Beil walked quietly away. At the end of the second, the whole party dispersed, except Ifland. Meier, the stage-director, took Streicher aside, and asked him gravely whether Schiller was really the author of the 'Robbers;' and Schiller himself, who saw that the reading of his play had acted as a nunc dimittis on his auditory, made a hasty retreat, leaving the unlucky drama in the hands of Meier, who promised to read it through. When they reached their apartment, after a pause of mortified silence, Schiller told Streicher that if his play were not accepted, he would turn actor himself, as he felt confident no one could declaim so well as himself. Fortunately he was spared this exposure of weakness. When Streicher went next morning to reclaim the manuscript, Meier scarcely allowed him to enter ere he exclaimed that 'Fiesco' was a masterpiece, and better adapted for the stage than the 'Robbers;' and that the failure had been entirely owing to Schiller's Swabian accent, and the wretched way in which he declaimed.' Meantime dark hints reached Schiller from Stuttgard, that even in Mannheim he was not safe from the displeasure of the duke; and he resolved to seek a temporary shelter in Frankfort. The faithful Streicher would not forsake his companion; he procured about thirty florins from his mother, and, with this scanty allowance, the friends started on foot. The journey was long, and to Schiller, unused to such excursions, exhausting. They reached Darmstadt after a twelve hours' walk; but early next morning, after a broken night's rest, they again started for Frankfort. Having walked for some time, however, Schiller's step became more feeble, and the paleness of his countenance visibly increased. When they reached a little wood by the roadside, he declared he was unable to proceed farther, but would try if, by means of a few hours' rest, he could still reach Frankfort that night. He lay down to sleep on the grass under a shadowy thicket, Streicher sitting near him on the trunk of a felled tree, and watching with anxiety his unfortunate friend. There lay,' says Hoffineister, the noblest of poets, who was soon to be the glory of his country, poor, helpless, exhausted, without home, without prospects. Sleep took pity on him—his rest was undisturbed for two hours-his strength partially recruited, and, with nightfall, the wanderers reached Frankfort.' stir and magnificence, and from the variety and contrast of character which it displayed, exhibited to great advantage Schiller's skill in theatrical composition; but the catastrophe satisfied no one; the poetical interest of the play addressed itself more to the head than the heart. In Court Intrigue and Love' the distorted views of society conspicuous in the 'Robbers' are again made unpleasingly prominent. But the pathos of the scenes between Ferdinand and Louisa is even now irresistible; in the audience of Mannheim, on the first representation of the play, they awakened a tumult of enthusiasm. Schiller was present, and witnessed its success. At the close of the second act, the audience rose and broke forth into a general shout of approbation. Schiller was so overpowered, that he rose in return and bowed to the public, his face and bearing expressive at once of just selfestimation, gratitude, and satisfaction.' Schiller was now chosen a member of the German Society, and had the honorary title of councillor conferred on him by the Duke of Weimar. His attachment to Charlotte Von Wollzogen still continued; and in his last 'Could I but take you at your word, and be indeed your son! Your Charlotte would not indeed be rich, but assuredly she would be happy.' No notice, however, was taken of the hint; and the feeling on the part of Schiller himself seems gradually to have declined-owing, probably, to his increasing acquaintance with the interesting and accomplished daughter of the bookseller Schwan, the fair one whom he has idealized as the 'Laura' of his poems. Why this second passion also came to a premature conclusion, cannot be ascertained-probably the lady's parents were opposed to it, as Schiller was still in delicate health, and without any secure establishment in life. The parties seem to have been sincerely attached, and though they did not marry, they did not cease to be friends. Schiller's circumstances were now extremely embar-letter to Madame Wollzogen (7th June, 1784) he saysrassed; and he wrote to Baron Dalberg, who then superintended the direction of the Mannheim theatre, imploring him, in a deeply touching letter, to assist him in discharging a debt of two hundred florins which he had left behind in Stuttgard, and for which his creditor had now become clamorous. Would Dalberg, he wrote, but advance him a hundred florins on the credit of the representation of Fiesco,' or purchase it at what he thought its value, it would set his mind at rest. The baron was rich and powerful, and he knew and professed to pity his condition, so that Schiller looked forward with confidence to the wished-for answer. It came at last, and dashed his hopes to the ground: 'Fiesco' must be completely recast before the baron could venture to advance the money. Having sketched out the general plan of a new drama, 'Court Intrigue and Love,' Schiller turned to 'Fiesco,' completed the required alterations, which cost him as much toil as the original composition of the play, and sent it to Dalberg. The answer, however, was still unsatisfactory, and nothing remained but to offer the rejected drama for the press. A louis d'or per sheet was the price offered for it-Schiller and his friend had scarcely a farthing left-insignificant though it was, the offer was accepted, and for eleven louis d'or Fiesco' was transferred to the publisher. In March, 1785, Schiller removed to Leipsic; his situation at Mannheim having become disagreeable to him, in consequence of the actors having taken offence at some of his criticisms which appeared in the Thalia'-3 periodical which Schiller had originated. From Leipsic be proceeded in summer to Dresden, where he remained till June, 1787; and it was during his residence there that he completed his beautiful play Don Carlos. This play indicates a sounder tone of spirit, and a purer taste; and we perceive in it the dawn of that temperance in sentiment and But new anxieties arose. His threatened apprehension, expression which the knowledge of life, the study of history, at the instance of the grand duke, now assumed the ap- and the pursuit of critical and philosophical inquiries, had pearance of immediate danger, and again his place of forced upon him. In the 'Robbers' and its companions residence must be shifted. Madame Wollzogen, with we breathe heavily as in a thunder-laden atmosphere; but whose sons he had become acquainted at the academy of in Don Carlos' we emerge into a region of purer air, Stuttgard, now most kindly offered to the persecuted and genial bursts of sunshine break in about us, though poet a home at her seat of Bauerbach, near Meiningen, the tempest may still be seen lingering on the outskirts where he arrived in November, 1782. The quiet of of the horizon. From the completion of 'Don Carlos,' Bauerbach at first tranquillized him; and here his third in 1786, to the formation of the first idea of Wallentragedy was completed. But the dreary winter, and the stein,' about 1791, the whole turn of Schiller's mind was solitude of the place, appear to have soon affected his critical, sceptical, or historical. To this period belongs spirits. In addition to these came an unfortunate ro- the 'Geister Seher' (spirit seer)—a fragment, but a most mantic attachment to the daughter of his patroness, Char- interesting and powerful one. We own we do not regret lotte Von Wollzogen, which threatened to disturb the that the romance is incomplete; that the mind of the kindly relations subsisting between the poet and the reader is left to fill up the unfinished sketch with its own family. At this juncture Dalberg, having ascertained fancies, and to regard with strange awe that marked and that the Duke of Wirtemberg had forgotten or forgiven omnipresent Russian Armenian, whose stonelike aspect Schiller's flight, offered him an engagement for a year as petrifies Venetian Sbirri and Sicilian impostors-whose dramatic poet at Mannheim. In September, 1783, Schil- secret agency sets in motion cardinals, inquisitors, nobleler entered upon his new office, undertaking to furnish men, members of the Bucentauro, and valets-de-chambre the theatre with three pieces, viz. :- Fiesco,' Court-who haunts St Mark's Place, to convey, at the distance Intrigue and Love,' and Don Carlos.' A salary of three hundred florins a-year, and one night's receipts of each play, was to be allowed him; the copyright of the plays to remain with himself. Scarcely were matters arranged, when a fever, then raging in the town, assailed him. He suffered long and severely, and only recovered after several relapses. At last, however, Fiesco' and 'Court Intrigue and Love' were finally prepared for the stage. Fiesco,' from its of a thousand miles, the messages of death, and whose recollection Byron could not help associating with the City of the Sea. The 'Geister Seher' was the first work of its class, and it remains the best. From Dresden, Schiller removed to Weimar, where he became acquainted with Goëthe and Wieland. With Wieland he was soon on terms of friendship; but on his first introduction to Goethe, each party felt disappointed with the other-both lived, however, to alter this im pression. While at Dresden, he might generally be seen rambling about the romantic environs of the town, or pushing a boat against the stream of the Elbe, particularly in stormy weather, or joining in the evening some of the numerous parties to which his genius and his amiable dispositions procured him ready access; but in Weimar, excepting an occasional solitary walk, he confined himself chiefly to his apartment. On a visit to Bauerbach, Schiller became attached to Charlotte Von Lengefeld, and in her he found his companion for life. She had a graceful form and mould of features, with mild and expressive eyes; had a talent for drawing and poetry, and her temperament was lively and sensitive. Through the friendly offices of Goethe, Schiller was appointed professor of history at Jena, in 1789; and in 1790, the lovers, after three years' probation, were united. A serene contentment now displaced his former restless and turbulent emotions; and when he first felt the joy of being a father his delight was almost childish. The two works which best display Schiller's talents as a historian are, The Revolt of the Netherlands' and the History of the Thirty Years' War.' The first is unfinished; but few works display a rarer combination of the elements of historical excellence-breathing, along with its philosophic breadth of view, the warmth and colouring of poetry. The Thirty Years' War,' though a noble work, is overlaid with distinctions and balancings of opinion-with speculation and generalization; and with the exception of some graphic and striking descriptions, the philosophical unduly predominates over the poetical. In 1791, his historical labours were cut short by a dangerous illness. He was now repaying, with fearful interest, the drafts he had made upon his health by nocturnal studies. A pulmonary attack reduced him to the brink of the grave, and from its effects he never entirely recovered. Some time after this his love of poetry returned; and abandoning the sentimental lyric, his muse poured forth its treasures in those noble narrative ballads he has left us, and which will be the admiration of all time. He had erected a little study in the garden of his country-house at Jena; and here he frequently sat absorbed in thought during the greater part of the night. From a neighbouring house, which overlooked the garden, he might be heard earnestly reciting some passage he had written-walking swiftly up and down his chamber-then suddenly throwing himself down into his chair and writing; and recruiting his strength occasionally from a flask of Rhenish or Champagne, which was always placed beside his desk. Here' Wallenstein,' 'with difficulty and labour hard,' grew into a shape of compact and finished beauty. Criticism on this production is needless. It has taken its place as the greatest drama which has appeared in Europe since the time of Shakspeare; combining, in a remarkable degree, ideality of conception with natural reality; and the youthful glow of enthusiastic feeling with the wise and thoughtful spirit of one over whom years and experience had passed—and not in vain. 6 In 1799, Schiller removed from Jena to the milder climate of Weimar. William Tell' was his next playand it was his last. In grandeur it approaches his Wallenstein,' and in its pictures of Switzerland, and its simple inhabitants, it is inimitable. In 1804, he was seized in Berlin, where he had been witnessing the representation of his William Tell,' with a violent attack of his former malady; and though he partially recovered, a relapse, in the spring of 1805, proved fatal. He had been delirious in the morning of the day on which he died (9th May), but, about four o'clock, he fell into a soft sleep, from which he awoke in the full possession of his senses. Some one inquiring how he felt, his answer was- Calmer and calmer!' Once he looked up with a gleam of animation, and said-'Many things are growing plain and clear to me. Soon after he sank again into a slumber, which gradually deepened into the sleep of death. He Schiller died at the age of forty-five; unequalled in German literature save by one-Goëthe. But one remark is forced upon us by the association of their names: Goethe rarely seeks to enlist our sympathies on the side of virtue or moral courage; while Schiller viewed his genius as a sacred trust lent him for a time, to be expended only on themes that might support, instruct, or elevate his fellow-men. He has found his reward. is eminently the favourite poet of his countrywomen. With the gentler portion of creation-with all who have preserved the heart unstained, and the affections unchilled and unperverted-he will always be so; for he speaks to the best feelings of their nature, in words and images elevated as the deeds which he loved to paintchaste and noble as the fancy from which they sprung. SKETCHES OF MODERN HISTORY. EDWARD THE THIRD AND HIS FRENCH WARS. (Continued from page 279.) THE town and port of Calais, as every one knows, is situated on the narrowest part of the channel which separates France and England, and immediately opposite the rival port of Dover, both towns being within sight of each other in clear weather. At the early period to which our narrative relates, Calais was a place of greater consequence than it is at present. Not only in the strength of its fortifications and the extent of its trade, but also in the intelligence and bravery of its inhabitants, it justly aspired to a high rank among the cities of France. To an invading English army it was virtually the key of the French kingdom; and when, therefore, Edward sat down deliberately to effect its capture, his adversary felt that the loss of this important post would inflict on him a more severe blow than even the disaster of Cressy. Accordingly he was not inactive. While endeavouring to succour the besieged city, he sought also to create such confusion in England as would distract its monarch's attention. David Bruce was now established on the throne of his father in Scotland, and adhered to the alliance of France. In an evil hour for himself he was induced, by the representations of his ally, to undertake that disastrous inroad into England which resulted in the battle of Nevil's Cross, where his army was utterly routed by inferior numbers, and he himself made prisoner and carried to London. Nearly at the same time Charles de Blois, the rival claimant for the dutchy of Brittany, fell into the hands of the English, and was confined in the Tower of London, as his adversary, De Montford, had long been in the Tower of the Louvre. These occurrences failed to distract the attention of the English monarch from his enterprise. He continued to press on the siege, or rather blockade, with great vigour; while the inhabitants and garrison, on their part, undismayed by the power and threats of their formidable adversary, defended the city with unflinching resolution. Edward had surrounded it on the land side by lines of intrenchment, and at sea a strong squadron blocked up the harbour; but seeing the great strength of the place, he wisely resolved not to waste the lives of his soldiers in assaults, but to reduce it by the slow but sure operation of famine. John de Vienne, the governor, determined to rid himself of such as, in the merciless language of war, are called 'useless mouths,' drove a number of the poor inhabitants of both sexes and all ages into the English lines, where, to the credit of the national humanity, they were well treated, and provided with money to carry them elsewhere. But the hopes of the garrison began to fail, when, in the words of a letter written by them to Philip about this time, imploring succour, they had eaten their horses, their dogs, and all unclean animals, and nothing remained for them but to devour one another. Their sovereign was not unmindful of the condition of his gallant and devoted subjects, and was now bent on mak |