his mixing in them; that indignant severity with which he met and subdued what he considered unfounded opposition, that keenness of sarcasm with which he repelled and withered (as it might be said) the powers of most of his assailants in debate, were exchanged, in the society of his intimate friends, for a kindness of heart, a gentleness of demeanour, and a playfulness of good humour, which none ever witnessed without interest, or participated without delight." Such is the testimony borne to Mr. Pitt's social qualities by his intimate and attached friend, the Hon. George Rose, in his "Brief Examination into the Increase of the Revenue, &c. of Great Britain, during Mr. Pitt's administration."

[Statue of Mr. Pitt, by Chantrey, in Hanover Square.]

SCHILLER is as universally acknowledged to be the second of German, as Milton is of English poets: and these great names, after those of Goethe and Shakspeare, denote the chiefs of the national literature of their respective countries. But the German poets were not merely contemporaries, but associated in friendship and congenial pursuits; and so much light is thrown upon the character of each by its being contemplated in connexion with that of the other, that in our endeavour to compress within very narrow limits the pregnant matter which this great man's name suggests, we shall take leave to call in aid our attempted characteristics of his greater friend, and request that this article may be considered as a sequel to the former.

Frederick Christopher von Schiller was born at Marbach, in the duchy of Wurtemburg, November 10, 1759. His father held the rank of captain in the service of the duke, and was in fortune so low, that he was glad to place his son, in 1773, after an ordinary school-education, in the ducal academy of Stuttgard, which, partaking of an eleemosynary character, subjected the pupils to military discipline, though training for arts and professions called liberal. Schiller had early in life manifested the sensibilities common to the religious and poetic temperament, but was compelled to forego the study of theology, because this institution made no provision for it. He began with law, but finally went through a course of medical study, so as to obtain the post of regimental surgeon in 1780. These pursuits were against his inclination. During eight years, as he said, his genius was in conflict with military subjection. He ought rather to have said, that thereby his genius received the direction which determined the course of his life; for it was while under the sad impressions produced by a life of restraint within the walls of the academy, that he composed his tragedy of The Robbers,' which he found means to print in 1781. Germany was at that period without a national theatre; scarcely half-a-dozen original stock-plays could be now produced which were then popular. Hence this juvenile work, with all its faults and extravagances (perhaps on account of these), was received with a tumult of applause in many parts of Germany. He was invited to adapt it to the stage, and it was performed the following year at Manheim. Of this most faulty and most famous maiden-play, it will be sufficient to remark that it exhibits, in overcharged colours, relations of life and character most likely to strike a youthful imagination. It represents in contrast two

brothers. One, originally noble and heroic, becomes the perpetrator of those crimes against society, which law punishes with its severest penalties. The other betrays a character far more odious and revolting to the moral sense of mankind. The result is a

catastrophe of appalling horror. The young poet solicited leave of absence to witness the representation of his first play, which was refused him. He therefore, in defiance, made a journey to Manheim, and was punished by a fortnight's arrest in his own house. He was also found guilty of having in his play uttered a national reflection on the people of the Grisons. For this he was reprimanded, ordered by his sovereign not to write on any subject but medicine, or at least to submit any literary work to the inspection and correction of his Serenity, and threatened with imprisonment in a fortress. While he was compelled to submit to a tyranny so humiliating, he learned that beyond the limits of the petty state to which he belonged his work was the subject of loud and even extravagant applause. After a severe conflict, he abandoned his parents, and the friends of his youth, and in October of the same year made his escape from an intolerable servitude. It has been gravely stated, to the credit of the duke, that he suffered his disobedient subject, some ten years afterwards, when he had acquired celebrity, to visit his family unmolested. That is, he was not seized and shot as a deserter.

When Schiller thus threw himself on the world, he had no other friends than those whom these early fruits of his talents had raised, no other support than the consciousness of those talents, nor other immediate resource than the unwrought materials of two other tragedies in prose, which he produced almost immediately, and which established his character as a

dramatic poet. These were the 'Conspiracy of Fiesco,' a political play taken from the romantic tale of St. Real, in which the intrigues of republican faction were picturesquely exhibited, and Cabal and Love, in which the tragic distress arises from the conflict between the natural passion of love, and the conventional social duties which originate in the relations of birth and station. During the completion of these juvenile works, which appeared in 1783 and 1784, his first asylum was Manheim, where he even deliberated about becoming an actor; and his first patron was the munificent ecclesiastic Baron von Dalberg, who became at a future period, under the French government, Prince-primate of Catholic Germany. Schiller also became the editor of the Rhenish Mercury,' a monthly miscellany devoted to literature and the arts, and engaged in manifold literary labours, for which he had to qualify himself by supplying the defects of a very imperfect education. He early felt the necessity of studying history, as indispensable to the cultivation of the serious drama, and so he became an historian by profession. At that time, it was a fashionable opinion that all sciences and arts were to be founded on metaphysics, and he became also a metaphysician. But in order to pursue these studies, it was not on the north-western frontier of Germany that he could profitably remain.

Saxony was already become the seat of literature as well as philosophy. He removed thither, and during the years 1785-1789, he resided at Leipzic, Dresden, Rudolstadt, and Weimar. At the latter place he gained the favour of Wieland and Herder, during the absence of Goethe in Italy. It was in 1787 that these great poets met. Though mutually repelled at first by obvious dissimilarities of character and genius, they were soon attracted and united by their common love of art and poetry. Under the auspices of his