The woods are sighing! And the wild birds crying! And loud and sorely the wild waters weep! And night winds are moaning! And muttering thunder rumbles hoarse and deep! Ghastly, frantic, and appalling, she broke into a yet wilder measure : Bring the storm, and bring the rain, Let the raving winds loose upon the swelling billows Down, Spirits, down, down! Shake the oak, and split the rock, Scream amid the dashing waves, and shriek among the willows! Her voice ended in a wild shriek, and she disappeared. I had no courage to follow up this adventure. Her character seemed to change here; enthusiasm degenerated into frenzy, and gentleness gave way to more than sybilline extravagance of voice and gesture. I returned to the cottage, and as I did not wish to be questioned by the woman concerning her daughter, I retired immediately to my chamber. There was something of a foreboding nature in this last incident. The morning after, I received a post let ter from the neighbouring town whither the widow had gone for provisions, acquainting me that my father was on his death-bed, and requiring my immediate attendance to receive his last blessing. This was imperative; and though I had neither seen nor heard of Lilian since the preceding night, after having taken a hasty leave of her mother, I set off immediately to the village where I might procure some mode of conveyance to my father's residence. The direct path from the Vale of the Waterfalls to the village lay through one of the glens or dingles in which the valley terminated. The sides of the mountains which formed this defile were so precipitous that they almost met overhead, and they were more over clothed with a dark mantle of hanging fir, which increased the gloom and horror of the place. At the very bottom lay the path, and as I looked up the sides of this dreary profound, which seemed the very realization of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, my fancy grew bewildered; though waking, I seemed to walk in a dream, and a thousand dim and terrible phantoms appeared to rise from the brambles under my feet, and darken still more the obscu rity which encompassed me. The in- heaven will spare us for each other: when I have paid the duties which I owe to my father, I will return to love and Lilian." "Lilian," said she, faintly smiling, "Lilian will then be no more! As I stood, unable from the impressiveness of her manner to make any answer, whether it was imagination, or that the echo in this place was extraordinarily powerful, I heard her last words repeated several times up the mountains, and "No more! no more! no more!" at length died away in hollow sighs among the rocks of the valley. Per ceiving me silent, she said, “Come, I will delay you no longer; depart to your home! On that glade," (pointing to a sloping bank at some distance,) "we separate for ever!" We proceeded in silence. When we had reached the spot, she stopped; and turning to me, her innocent bosom filled with tears, and her blue eyes dropping crystal, she pointed towards the vale which lay behind us, and in a voice scarcely audible with sorrow, "Listen," said she, "to the Rover's Farewell". Farewell the groves, and farewell the bowers! Farewell, O Vale of fast falling water! And farewell, Lilian! ... Here she was interrupted by a loud laugh_uttered over my shoulder. I turned to see from whom it came, but no one appeared. On turning again towards Lilian, she was gone. Immoveable with astonishment, I stood for some time stupified, but recovering my senses, I called several times, "Lilian, Lilian! dear Lilian, answer me!" She appeared a long way off at the entrance of the valley, with her hands covering her face, and walking slowly towards her home. I now recollected my father, and considering that it would be useless to pursue this adventure any farther at present, summoning up my courage, I proceeded onwards to the village. I had scarcely walked twenty paces, when, to my utter surprise, this apparition stood before me again in the midst of the path, but when I approached, quitted it and appeared on the top of some rock or prominence at a distance, where her small figure whitening in the sun would seem to kiss its haud to me as I passed. In this way, she continued to accompany me, till the signs of population began to appear. She had gradually kept behind me as I approached the high road, and when I at length reached it, on looking round I perceived her standing on a high rock at some distance, the sunbeams glistening in her eyes which were filled with tears, whilst she kissed her hand re peatedly, till she faded entirely from my view. When I reached my father's house, I found him partially recovered. I accompanied him to Italy, where he had been ordered by his physicians. -too late however for his preservation; he died within a few miles of Turin. My attention to him on his death-bed was necessarily unremitting; and this, combined with my own previous delicate state of health, occasioned a relapse of my nervous disorder. With some difficulty I recovered so much of my health as to think of returning to my native country, to which the desire of revisiting the Vale of the Waterfalls, and investigating its mysteries completely, was no small inducement. The unceasing attendance which my father's illness required upon my part, added to the novelty of scene and society, had prevented me from dwelling intensely on the extraordinary incidents which I so lately experienced; but my thoughts now reverted naturally to them, as well from my innate tendency to the romantic, as from the singularity of the facts themselves, and the influence of my late illness and my father's death, in rendering such melancholy recollections attractive. The cottage where my father died was situated on the borders of a lake in the bosom of a deep valley among the Piedmontese hills, and I was sitting, about the close of the evening, in the room that had been his, ruminating successively on him and on Lilian. The window where I sat looked out on the lake which lay in calm unruffled stillness before me, and the blue mountains towards the west were just sinking into that mellow haze which characterises the softness of an Italian evening; the lattice was open, and I leaned for ward to catch the summer breeze as it gently moved the tendrils of a jessamine which crept to the roof of the cottage. A rustic bench outside rose nearly to the level of the win dow; Lilian came and sat down on it. I started at the sight, but looking steadfastly on the figure, I saw it melt gradually into air. In a little time it appeared standing on the bright sur face of the lake, but disappeared in the same manner as before. Then on a rock at some distance, and again vanished. I had no doubt but this was a sha dow raised by my own imagination, pursuing the same train of ideas in tensely. Indeed the figure I now saw was very different from the original in the Vale of the Water falls. The form was evidently insubstantial; the figure, though preserving its characteristic outlines, was emaciated and stiff; the bloom had totally faded from its cheek and lip, and was replaced by the wan sickli ness of death; the eyes were glazed and motionless. "Lilian is dead," said I. Whilst I journeyed home, the figure occasionally appeared, but at each time more faintly than before, till it disappeared entirely. Upon reaching England, the Vale of the Waterfalls was my first object. I quickly sought out the village near to which it lay, and pursuing my former steps, soon found myself in the midst of the valley. It was beautiful as ever, but methought appeared to wear less the air of enchantment than when I had left it. I turned to the cottage; it was in ruins. The bower was overgrown with nettles and tall weeds; the smooth plat had shot up into long rank grass that waved heavily in the breeze, and emitted a close suffocating odour. As I stood ruminating on these changes, my heart swelling with the melancholy conviction that Lilian was indeed no more, a peasant appeared on the hills, carrying a mattock and other instruments. Up on his approach I made inquiries concerning the widow and her daughter. He replied, that the person who had lived in the cottage was dead some months, that she never had any daughter to his knowledge, but lived quite alone; that the only person he had ever heard of in the valley, beside her, was a young man who came there for the recovery of his health, but he remained for a short time only; that the cottage now belonged to himself, and he was about repairing it for his own family. This ac count, to me, appeared very singu lar. I went to the entrance of the dreary glen, where I had experienced such horrors. The mountains seemed to have opened overhead, and the place was comparatively lightsome. I passed through it safely, and came to the circle of green bushes where I had found Lilian weeping. A rude stone cross stood in the midst. It was apparently of very great age, yet I never had observed it before. These things were still more extraordinary. On returning to the vil lage, the inhabitants gave me the same account as the peasant had, and when I spoke of Lilian they seemed not to understand me. Many of them recognised me, yet I could gain no father satisfaction. They also called the vale by a different name. I have frequently revisited this valley, but never could obtain any intelligence concerning the extraordinary being whom it was my fortune alone to have met there. An impenetrable veil seemed to have been drawn over her history, and I am at length compelled to give up all attempts at investigating it. That she was mortal and had actual existence, the evidence of my senses, and my disbelief in the theory of spirits visiting this world, induce me to assert; yet it is totally unaccountable how such a being could exist, and but the whole world, with one exception, remain ignorant of it. I have never been able to come to any conclusion upon this point; sometimes, indeed, I am inclined to think that this vision of Lilian of the Vale was a mere creation of my own brain, naturally very imaginative, and at the period of this adventure, disturbed and overheated by the fever which accompanies a nervous disease such as mine. SCHILLER'S LIFE AND WRITINGS, PART III. FROM HIS SETTLEMENT AT JENA TO HIS DEATH (1790—1805.) THE duties of his new office naturally called upon Schiller to devote himself with double zeal to history; a subject, which from choice he had already entered on with so much eagerness. In the study of it, we have seen above how his strongest faculties and tastes were exercised and gratified; and new opportunities were now combined with new motives for persisting in his efforts. Concerning the plan or the success of his academical prelections, we have scarcely any notice in his class, it is said, he used most frequently to speak extempore; and his delivery was not distinguished by fluency or grace, a circumstance to be imputed to the agitation of a public appearance, for as Woltmann assures us, “the beauty, the eloquence, ease and true instructiveness with which he could continuously express himself in private, were acknowledged and admired by all his friends." His matter, we suppose, would make amends for these deficiencies of manner: to judge from his introductory lecture, preserved in his works, with the title, What is Universal History, and with what views should it be studied, there perhaps has never been in Europe another course of history sketched out on principles so magnificent and philosophical. But college exercises were far from being his ultimate object; nor did he rest satisfied with mere visions of perfection: the compass of the outline he had traced, for a proper historian, was scarcely greater than the assiduity with which he strove to fill it up. His letters breathe a spirit not only of diligence but of ardour; he seems intent with all his strength upon this fresh pursuit; and delighted with the vast prospects of untouched and attractive speculation, which were opening around him on every side. He professed himself to be exceedingly "contented with his business:" his ideas on the nature of it were acquiring both extension and distinctness; and every moment of his leisure was employed in reducing them to practice. He was now busied with the History of the Thirty Years' War. This work, which appeared in 1791, is considered by the German critics as his chief performance in this department of literature: the Revolt of the Netherlands, the only one which could have vied with it, never was completed; otherwise, in our opinion, it might have been superior. Either of the two would have sufficed to secure for Schiller a distinguished rank among historians, of the class denominated philosophical; though even both together, they afford but a feeble exemplification of the ideas which he entertained on the manner of composing history. In his view, the business of history is not merely to record, but to interpret; it involves not only a clear conception and a lively exposition of events and characters, but a sound, enlightened theory of individual and national morality, a general philosophy of human life, whereby to judge of them, and measure their effects. The historian now stands on higher ground, takes in a wider range than those that went before him; he can now survey vast tracts of human action, and deduce its laws from an experience extending over many climes and ages. With his ideas, moreover, his feelings ought to be enlarged: he should regard the interests not of any sect or state, but of mankind; the progress not of any class of arts or opinions, but of universal happiness and refinement. His narrative, in short, should be moulded according to the science, and impregnated with the liberal spirit of his time. Voltaire is generally conceived to have invented and introduced a new method of composing history: the chief historians that have followed him have been by way of eminence denominated philosophical. This is hardly correct. Voltaire wrote history with greater talent, but scarcely with a new species of talent: he applied the ideas of the eighteenth century to the subject; but in this there was nothing radically new. In the hands of a thinking writer history has always been " philosophy teaching by experience;" that is, such philosophy as the age of the historian has afforded. For a Greek or Roman, it was natural to look upon events with an eye to their effect on his own city or country; and to try them by a code of principles, in which the prosperity or extension of this formed a leading object. For a monkish chronicler, it was natural to estimate the progress of affairs by the number of abbeys founded; the virtue of men, by the sum total of donations to the clergy. And for a thinker of the present day, it is equally natural to measure the occurrences of history by quite a different standard; by their influence upon the general destiny of man, their tendency to obstruct or to forward him in his advancement towards liberty, knowledge, true religion and dignity of mind. Each of these narrators simply measures by the scale, which is considered for the time as expressing the great concerns and duties of humanity. Schiller's views on this matter were, as might have been expected, of the most enlarged kind. "It seems to me," said he, in one of his letters, "that in writing history for the moderns, we should try to communicate to it such an interest as the history of the Peloponnesian war had for the Greeks. Now this is the problem: to choose and arrange your materials so that, to interest, they shall not need the aid of decoration. We moderns have a source of interest at our disposal, which no Greek or Roman was acquainted with, and which the patriotic interest does not nearly equal. This last, in general, is chiefly of importance for unripe nations; for the youth of the world. But we may excite a very different sort of interest if we represent each remarkable occurrence that happened to men as of importance to man. It is a poor and little aim to write for one nation; a philosophic spirit cannot tolerate such limits, cannot bound its views to a form of human nature so arbitrary, fluctuating, accidental. The most powerful nation is but a fragment; and thinking minds will not grow warm on its account, except in so far as this nation or its fortunes have been influential on the progress of the species." That there is not some excess in this comprehensive, cosmopolitan philosophy, may perhaps be liable to question. Nature herself has, wise ly no doubt, partitioned us into "kindreds, and nations, and tongues:" it is among our instincts to grow warm in behalf of our country, sim ply for its own sake; and the business of reason seems to be to chasten and direct our instincts, never to destroy them. We require individuality in our attachments: the sympathy, which is expanded over all men, will commonly be found so much attenuated by the process that it cannot be effective on any. And as it is in nature, so it is in art, which ought to be the image of it. Universal philanthropy forms but a precarious and very powerless rule of conduct; and the "progress of the species," will turn out equally unfitted for deeply exciting the imagination. It is not with freedom that we can sympathize, but with free men. There ought, indeed, to be in history a spirit superior to petty distinctions and vulgar partialities; our particular affections ought to be enlightened and purified; but they should not be abandoned, or, such is the condition of humanity, our feelings must evaporate and fade away in that extreme diffusion. Perhaps, in a certain sense, the surest mode of pleasing and instructing all nations is to write for one. This too Schiller was aware of, and had in part attended to. Besides, the Thirty Years' War is a subject in which nationality of feeling may be even wholly spared, better than in almost any other. It is not a German but a European subject; it forms the concluding portion of the Reformation, and this is an event belonging not to any country in particular, but to the human race. Yet, if we mistake not, this over-tendency to generalization both in thought and sentiment has rather hurt the present work. The philosophy, with which it is imbued, now and then grows vague from its abstractness, ineffectual from its refinement: the enthusiasm which pervades it, elevated, strong, enlightened, would have told better on our hearts, had it been confined within a narrower space, and |