THE WORDS OF ERROR.

THREE Errors there are, that for ever are found
On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best ;
But empty their meaning and hollow their sound—
And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.
The fruits of existence escape from the clasp

Of the seeker who strives but those shadows to grasp —

So long as Man dreams of some Age in this life

When the Right and the Good will all evil subdue ; For the Right and the Good lead us ever to strife, And ever will Evil the conflict renew.

Till thou lift it, and stifle aloft in the air,
The earth that it touches its strength will repair.1

1 This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the Son of Earth,-so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,-so the soul contends in vain with evil-the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth, and strangled him when raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the passion, the earth's offspring) when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.

So long as Man fancies that Fortune will live,
Like a bride with her lover, united with Worth;
For her favours, alas! to the mean she will give—
And Virtue possesses no title to earth!

That Foreigner wanders to regions afar,
Where the lands of her birthright immortally are!

So long as Man dreams that, to mortals a gift,
The Truth in her fulness of splendour will shine;
The veil of the goddess no earth-born may lift,1
And all we can learn is—to guess and divine!
Dost thou seek, in a dogma, to prison her form?
The spirit flies forth on the wings of the storm!

O, Noble Soul! turn from delusions like these,
More heavenly belief be it thine to adore ;
Where the Ear never hearkens, the Eye never sees,

Meet the rivers of Beauty and Truth evermore !

Not without thee the streams;-there the Dull seek them ;-No! Look within thee-behold both the fount and the flow!

1 See the "Veiled Image at Sais."

GERMAN ART.

By no kind Augustus reared,
To no Medici endeared,

German Art arose ;

Fostering glory smil'd not on her,
Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her,
Did her blooms unclose.

No, she went by Monarchs slighted-
Went unhonoured, unrequited,

From high Frederick's throne;
Praise and Pride be all the greater,
That Man's genius did create her,
From Man's worth alone.

Hence to loftier springs ascending,
Hence to broader waves extending,
Our great German Song!
From its own fulness fill'd, it flows,

And scorning curbs its strength o'erthrows,
Rolls from the Heart along.

THE WALK.

THIS (excepting only "The Artists," written some years before) is the most elaborate of those Poems which, classed under the name of Culture-Historic, Schiller has devoted to the Progress of Civilisation. Schiller himself esteemed it amongst the greatest of the Poems he had hitherto produced-and his friends, from Goethe to Humboldt, however divided in opinion as to the relative merit of his other pieces, agreed in extolling this one. It must be observed, however, that Schiller had not then composed the narrative poems, which bear the name of Ballads, and which are confessedly of a yet higher order— inasmuch as the Narrative, in itself, demands much higher merits than the Didactic. It is also reasonably to be objected to all Schiller's Poems of this Culture-Historic School, (may we be pardoned the use of the German Barbarism,) that the leading idea of the Progress of Civilisation, however varied as to form in each, is essentially repeated in all. Nor can we omit this occasion of inculcating one critical Doctrine, which seems to us highly important, and to which the theories of Schiller's intimate and over-refining friend, William Von Humboldt, were strongly opposed. The object of Poetry, differing essentially from that of abstract Wisdom, is not directly to address the Reasoning faculty-but insensibly to rouse it through the popular medium of the emotions. Science aims at Truth, and through Truth may arrive at Beauty. Poetry or Art aims at Beauty, and through Beauty it cannot fail to arrive at Truth. The fault of "The Walk," of "The Artist," -more than all, of "The Ideal and the Actual Life," not to specify some other Poems, less elaborately scholastic-is, that they strain too much the faculty with which Poetry has least to do, viz., the mere Reason. Poetry ought, it is true, to bear aloft and to sustain the mind in a state of elevation-but through the sentiment or the passion. It fails in something when it demands a high degree of philosophy or knowledge in the reader to admire-nay, to comprehend it. It ought not to ask a prepared Audience, but to raise any audience it may address. Milton takes the sublimest theme he can find--he adorns it with all his stately genius, and his multiform learning; but, except in two or three passages, (which are really defects in his great whole,) he contrives to keep within reach of very ordinary understandings. Because

the Poet is wise, he is not for that reason to demand wisdom from his readers. In the Poem of "The Walk," it is only after repeated readings that we can arrive at what seems to us its great and distinctive purpose-apart from the mere recital of the changes of the Social State. According to our notion, the purpose is this-the intimate and necessary connection between Man and Nature-the Social State and the Natural. The Poet commences with the actual Landscape, he describes the scenery of his Walk: Rural Life, viz.-Nature in the Fieldssuggests to him the picture of the Early Pelasgian or Agricultural life— Nature is then the Companion of Man. A sudden turn in the Landscape shows him the poplar avenues which in Germany conduct to cities. He beholds the domes and towers of the distant Town-and this suggests to him the alteration from the rural life to the civic-still Nature is his guide. But in cities Man has ceased to be the companion of Nature-he has become her Ruler (der Herrscher.) In this altered condition the Poet depicts the growth of Civilisation, till he arrives at the Invention of Printing. Light then breaks upon the Blind-Man desires not only to be Lord of Nature, but to dispense with her. "Instead of Necessity and Nature he would appoint Liberty and Reason. Reason shouts for Liberty-so do the Passions, and both burst from the wholesome control of Nature. He here refers to the French Revolution, depicts with great vigour the dissolution of all social ties, and, in the simile of the tiger escaping from its bars to the wilderness, suggests the great truth, that it is only by a return to Nature that he can regain his true liberty and redemption. Not, indeed, (as Hoffmeister truly observes,) the savage nature to which Rousseau would reduce Man-that, Schiller was too wise to dream of, and too virtuous to desire;-but that Nature which has not more its generous liberty than its holy laws-that Nature which is but the word for Law-God's Law. He would not lead Man back to Nature in its infancy, but advance him to Nature in its perfection. The moral Liberty of a well-ordered condition of society is as different from the physical liberty lusted after by the French Revolutionists, as (to borrow Cowley's fine thought) "the solitude of a God from the solitude of a wild beast." And finally, after this general association of Nature with Mankind, the Poet awakens, as from a dream, to find himself individually alone with Nature, and concludes, in some of the happiest lines he ever wrote, by insisting on that eternal youthfulness of Nature, which links itself with its companion Poetry. "The Sun of Homer smiles upon us still." In the original German, the Poem is composed in the long rhymeless metre, which no one has succeeded, or can succeed, (with all respect to Professor Longfellow,) in rendering into English melody. But, happily, the true beauty of the composition, like most of Schiller's,