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THE COURANT ; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL. 239

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to view life with more quieted feelings, and his affection for
mankind is expressed in the genial words: "A kiss to all the
world."

Schiller, like Lessing, exerted great influence in again nationalizing
German poetry, and in bestowing upon it that regard
of which it had been robbed by the influence of "the
period of the cue (Zopfalter),'' and of the infusion of French
liteature. Every country has its peculiar inspirations, and a
national poet should never forget his native land. Certainly
no country is more replete than that of Schiller's with objects,
traditions and thoughts fit for the songsters' theme. But I do
not trust myself to occupy your attention any farther, for the
purpose of exhibiting more minutely the varied greatness of
your illustrious poet. Others, who will address you after me,
can perform this pleasing duty far better than I.

But one word more would I beg to add. It is only a few months back, that we received the painful intelligence of the
death of a great contemporary of Schiller―not ten years his
junior. Well may that sad occasion induce us to feel placed in
closer proximity to the life of Schiller, especially when we remember that his brother exerted a prominent influence in shaping
the character of the poet. If, then, we are now assembled
to do honour to the memory of a man who has taught us
to reverence the German nation, who has won the esteem of foreign countries for the name of Germany, should we not, in
mournful remembrance of the recent Past, commingle with the
tear we shed for Schiller's end, another for the sake of Humboldt?

[The quotation from Bulwer (Poems and "Ballads of Schiller,
vol. I, p. cxiv.,) and the cited poetry has been omitted on account of limited space.

At the conclusion of Mr. L.'s address, another song was given
by the orchestra, after which the President rose and stated
that in consequence of the serious illness of the author, an address
written for the occasion by HOWARD H. CALDWELL, Esq.,
would be presented through the kindness of Professor REYNOLDS.
The address elicited warm expressions of admiration:

It was said by a no less distinguished person than the great
Goethe himself, "We should do our utmost to encourage the
beautiful―the useful will encourage itself. "From this point
of view, there is much to be rejoiced at in the scene presented
here to-night. This festival commemorates the birthday of
a poet, and poets are the high priests of the beautiful. Preeminent
amongst the bards who, caring little for didactic, descriptive
or heroic poetry, have devoted themselves to the worship
of pure moral beauty, stands FRIEDERICH SCHILLER. His
vision is not filled by the fairest forms of external nature, however
―her changing seasons, her rosy dawn, her dreamy twilight,
her flowers and birds and blue skies, her lakes and waterfalls
and forests―not these inspired his song; but to him
nature in her most attractive garb was nothing, until shone upon
by the soul of man, and illumined by

"The light that never was on sea, or shoe,
The inspiration and the poet's dream.''

Precisely so he looked upon human character. His theme is
never man simply as he is to the outward world, but rather as
his secret heart would shew him, and still oftener as he should
be. He chose his characters and events, not so much to exhibit
the mere actual condition of human life, as to illustrate some
high moral truth―the practice of, or the failure to practice, which, constitutes the cardinal point ot the production. His
theory was in this wise: the ideal is a better and more effectual
teacher than the real; hence that the office of the poet is to
raise his fellow-man above the groveling thoughts of traffic and
the gratification of the senses, to those purer regions of thought
and feeling, where they may see fiction holding up her pictures
of all the possible, and under the appearance of daily life exhibit
that which may not have been, but which should be, all
which possibility embraces, and decorated with every charm
that the poet can add by his mysterious skill. There is a remarkable resemblance between SCHILLER's poetic theory and
FICHTE'S doctrine of the divine idea, which, he says, lies at
the bottom of all material appearance, and in all the complex
relations of human life―an idea not seen or appreciated except
by a chosen few, who in every generation stand forth to
express to the rest of mankind the "endless significance" of
things revealed to them alone. How beautifully, then, follows
his view of the mission of the poet! This divine idea creates
for itself a life within the mere personal life, different from,
and independent of, the character of the person; which new
life manifests itself only in love, and love is essentially creative.
In the words of a great Southern thinker, as well as poet,

" Soft brooding as the mated dove.
In climes unvisited by storm,
Begins the incubationg love
To shape a shadowy form."

This faculty of creation, this struggle, ever upward and onward, the world calls genius.

Thus Schiller looked upon the poet as a man set apart―one
upon whom a celestial light was directly shining. Literature with him includes the essence of philosophy, religion and art―
whatever concerns the immortal part of man. She is alike the
daughter and the nurse of all that is spiritual and exalted in
our characdter. "Genius," says he, "is the gift of God; and a
solemn and awful responsibility rests upon all to whom this
sacred charge has been committed. Woe to him who perverts
it, in any ignoble cause, or sacrifices it on the accurst altar of his
Mammon!" "The artist," says Schiller, "is the son of his
age, it is true ; but pity for him if he is its pupil, or even its
favourite! Let some benificent divinity snatch him, when a
suckling, from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with
the milk of a better clime, that he may ripen to his full stature
beneath a distant Grecian sky. And, having grown to manoood [manhood],
let him return, a foreign shape, into his country, not to delight it
with his presence; but terrible, like the son of Agamemnon, to purify
it. But how is the artist to guard himself from the corruptions
of his time, which will, on every side, assail him?
Let him look upward to his dignity and mission, not downward to
his happiness and his temporal wants. This let him imprint and
express in fiction and in truth, in the play of imagination, the
earnestness of action, on all sensible and spiritual forms, and
cast it silently into everlasting time." I have dwelt thus long upon
Schiller's doctrine of the mission of the poet, because this doctrine
is the key to the whole history of his life ; and a point

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which, in reading his works, is indispensably necessary to
remember, in order properly to grasp the idea of the poet.
Madame de Staël summed up all criticism on the genius of
Schiller, when she said "Sa conscience etait sa Muse," for he
argued, as Cousin since has stated it, that the ideal tends always towards the infinite; therefore, that which expresses
ideal beauty purifies, in elevating the soul towards the infinite,
which is GOD. With such views of the mission of the poet,
it would hve been strange indeed to have found Schiller
as careless of moral effects as Goethe was. "Perhaps,"
says a distinguished British Essayist, "Goethe's devotion to
literature was as lofty and disinterested as that of Schiller,
and his views of the dignity of his vocation not less elevated
and pure. But he imparts little of this pure and elevated feeling
to his works, Goethe rarely seeks to enlist our sympathies
on the side of virtue or moral courage; his favourite
characters seem to be always beings in whom all decided
character
had dissolved away, who cultivate their tastes rather than
their feelings; and passively allow all emotions and impulses
to take their course. Schiller could not contemplate literature
in such a light ; he could not trifle with the solemn realities of
human duty, as Goethe did in the "Elective Affinities," or flatter
the weaknesses or vices of society by an airy, theatrical pageant of life, as in "Wilhelm Meister." Knowing the power
of literature both for good and evil, Schiller viewed his genius
as a sacred trust lent him for a time, to be expanded only on
themes that might support, instruct or elevate his fellow- men.

With this imperfect notice of the creed which not only moulded
into its forms all his writings, but also controlled the life of the
man. I shall proceed briefly to mention one other point, to
which my attention has been often before directed. I mean to
make a distinction―mark you, not a comparison―but a distinction,
between the two greatest of German poets. The question
has often been asked me, "Which is the greater, Goethe or
Schiller?" It is not a matter for comparison, inasmuch as the
difference is not in degree, but in kind; in degree each is confessedly
the master of his own province, while in kind they
differ totally, and so perfectly that neither can conflict with the
other. It is as absurd to undertake to compare them, as it
would be to propound the question, "Which is more beautiful,
a rose or a moon-beam?" But when men write such unscrupulous
essays as those of Carlyle, wherein he decries
Schiller, inorder to exalt Goethe, it becomes the duty of all
disinterested persons to call such literary assassination by its
proper name, and defend a poet whose only fault is that
Thomas Carlyle does not at all appreciate or comprehend him.
I am not making war upon the right of any man to his own
opinion; but I do detest that narrowness of mind which will
make a man say, "this is best, because I like it best;" which
will not see that other persons and things may be quite as good
as those upon which this owl-critic has perched. Men like
Carlyle (who, after all, is only a poor mortal, like the rest of
us) seat themselves to pronounce ex cathedra, and call all their
equals, who may hold different views, ignorant and short- sighted. Carlyle has no doubt of his personal infallibility―
see how history and criticism, kings, poets and philosophers,
all churches and all religions, crumble beneath his tread. It is
all the more provoking, because he tries to shew great admiration for Schiller as a philosopher. He puts a higher estimate
on Schiller's philosophical works than any of the Germans
themselves. I desire to be distinctly understood not to say one
word to lessen the fame of Goethe. He is, in his own dominions,
autocrat; but his kingdom adjoins a gentler and a sweeter
territory, over which rules a sceptered king for ever―Friederich
von Schiller. The broad distinction lies in this : Goethe
describes things precisely as he sees them; Schiller weaves
around them all the beautiful moral possibilites, and illustrates
what should have been. Goethe, it would seem by choice, selects
the abnormal, exceptional and unhappy beings, and by
consequence his pictures are dark and gloomy. They are not, however,
half as wicked as Menzel imagines. These dreary pictures
are true to the life, but if there be any lesson to be drawn
from them, Goethe leaves you to draw it yourself. Schiller,
always following his conviction of a duty and responsibility on
the part of the writer, draws from the history of the wicked
his strongest contrasts, to exhibit the deformity of vice and the
beauty of virtue. In short, the one has never been surpassed in
depicting actual life; the other never apporached in his power
of combining characters and events, so as best to exhibit some
moral truth. In a word, Goethe is the great poet of the real,
and Schiller the annointed prophet of the ideal.

Quite as vehement as Carlyle, Menzel has sought and found
many grounds of complaint against Goethe; the two critics
make a very fair set-off, the one to the other. Having found
that Goethe prefers "to describe, not so much the healthful
nobleness, as the diseased infirmity of an intellectual character,"
Menzel denounces the works of this poet, as Bulwer
well says, "with a cant unworthy of so great a critic." Is it
to be wondered at, when even Carlyle, the idolatrous worshipper
of Geothe, admits the evil effects of the German bard's
writings in such language as the following: " Werther, infusing
itself into the core and whole spirit of literature, gave birth to a
race of sentimentalists, who have raged and wailed in every
part of the world; till better light dawned on them, or at worst
exhausted nature laid herself to sleep, and it was discovered
that lamenting was unproductive labour." The moral effects
of the works of Schiller have been fully appreciated, more
fully than they were during the life-time of Goethe, and while
all critics of the better sort place the two poets on an equal
footing as to the degree of power, many will be found who are
inclined to attach too much importance to the carelessness of
Goethe. Intellectually, they are equal―in fame, they are
equal―but under all moral aspects they are very widely apart.

What varied scenery arises on the magic panorama of Schiller's
poetry? His literary history begins with a terrible storm;
the rage of youth, passion and unrest, which took shape in
the drama of the "Robbers;" but it closed with a gorgeous
and majestic suns-set, in the splendid triumphs of his "William
Tell." Here, in "Fiesco," appears the angel form of Leonora,
and anon, the fierce conspirator standing alone in
the awful stillness of midnight, awaiting the fatal signal.
The scene changes, and here "Don Carlos" threads his dangerous
way amid all the snares of love, hate, jealousy and bigotry,
while in the strongest contrast is presented the gentle
Elizabeth, hiding her broken heart in obedience to the dictates
of virture. Anon, we see the pomp and pageantry of the

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"Camp of Wallenstein," irradiated by the love of Max and Theela. Here, we see the sad and beautiful form of "Mary
pining her life away in a lonely prison, and here arises the heroic
martyr, "Maid of Orleans," from whose sad end, with
wonderful grace, the poet leads on the choric music of the
"Bride of Messina," and takes us back to the days of the triumphs
of Sophoeles and Euripides. Last and greatest comes
"William Tell," climbing his dizzy cliffs, and knowing no lord
but the God of Freedom. Between these grand scenes are
heard the sweetest symphonies—songs of love and pain, of
hope and joy and sadness, all blending their beauties with his
longer works—such lays of enchantment as the "Song of the Bell," "The Cranes of Ibycus," "The Diver," and "The Ideals,"
short and perfect poems, which will live for ever.

Schiller died at the early age of forty-five, while his illustrious
friend Goethe lived to be eighty-two. I have often thought
how well these two great poets illustrated the "ruling passion
strong in death." "Light ! give me more light !" cried the
expiring Goethe. It was altogether in keeping with the life
history of the man—accustomed as he always had been to look
upon reality in its most grotesque, and even its most hideous
and repulsive forms, as the gloom of death began to invade his
faculties, he cried for light, so that he might behold the actual
in clear and distinct outlines. Equally characteristic were the
words of Schiller in his last hours. He said : "Many things
are now growing clearer and clearer—life has become so plain."—
Under the shadow of death, his great soul was seizing truths
imperfectly revealed before—and the ideal was beginning to
shew itself as the truest real, before his eyes ! Was it not
well, then, that his last word should express no struggle for
light, no regret at his early death? But the beautiful sun-set
upon which he gazed was not more placid than the last words
of the dying poet, as he softly whispered, "Calmer and calmer,"
and so expired.

"⸺E'en then he trod
The threshold of the world unknown ;
Already from the throne of God
A ray upon his garments shone ;
Shone and awoke the strong desire
For love and knowledge reached not here,
'Til freed by death, his soul of fire
Sprang to a fairer, ampler sphere !
Then, who shall tell how deep, how bright,
The abyss of glory opened 'round ;
How thought and feeling flowed like light
Through ranks of being without bound."

About ten o'clock P. M., the company sate down to a most
excellent supper, prepared in Mr. McKenzie's superior manner.
Four long tables, loaded with substantial viands and delicacies,
were completely surrounded, and the short time in which many
good things disappeard, was the best evidence of the keen appetites
that attacked them. After supper, the festival was kept
up until a late hour with music and dancing.

[The birth-day of Schiller occurred on the 10th, but the celebration
was postponed on account of the State Fair.]

RACHEL—A writer in the Constitutional Press, an English periodical, gives the following description of a visit to Rachel,
the late French tragic actress :

"The only evening I had the pleasure of passing in her company
was, I think, in 1845, when she was still in health and
spirits. I had looked upon M. Charpentier, the portrait painter,
whose full-length portrait of Rachel the reader has seen a
hundred times in the shop windows ; the original picture of
George Sand ; and, as I expressed a desire to see Rachel in
private, M. Charpentier said ; 'I am going to her presently ;
come with me.' It was not an offer to be rejected, and I sacrificed
a stall at the theatre without hesitation. When we arrived
there we found Rachel alone. Immediately that the first
civilities were over she jumped up and told Charpentier he
must give her his opinion on a bonnet she had just bought, and,
with a charming 'vous permettez ne'st ce pas?' to me, she vanished,
and returned with the bonnet on her head. I thought I
never saw a more fascinating woman, as she held the strings
under her chin, and held her little head up to be criticised.—
What Balzae was fond of describing as les chatteries de femme,
the cat-like grace and egotistic softness which distinguished
some women, Rachel had in perfection. For some time her
talk was millinery, and nothing else. On this subject she was
voluble and earnest ; a woman, in short. I remember feeling
that I cut a very poort figure all this while ; for, not being a
Frenchman, I had neither knowledge of details nor opinion respecting
ensembles, so was forced to play dummy—which is not an exhilerating part, especially when you have been introduced
to a charming woman as a literateur distingue (one is always distingue
unless celebre), and desire to produce a favourable impression.
She perceived at a glance that I knew nothing of
such matters, and took no notice of me as long as they 'talked
chiffons.' I repaid myself by noticing her. It was singular
how a face so very common in its elements, a mere little Jewish
physiognomy, if you considered the details, became positively
beautiful when animated. Still more singular was it that a
girl, picked up from the streets, so to speak, should at once
have acquired the utmost drawing-room elegance. If the reader
has seen her play Lady Tartuffe, the only modern part she
played, he will probably remember the drawing-room grace of
her manner. It was this, reduced to drawing-room proportions,
of course, which I remarked when, quitting the millinery, she
sate down, and began to talk of England, the theatre, Jules
Jamin (who was then plaguing her life with irritating, because unanswerable,
objections), and the Exposition. Other visitors
dropped in, and the conversatioin became general. When I
took leave, she begged me to come and see her again before returing
to England ; but I never did, for I felt that I should
see nothing more. The impression she produced on me was
that of a woman with a wonderful temperament, very little intelligence,
very little sympathy, and irresitably fascinating
manners."

MATERIAL FOR INTERNAL DECORATION.—A correspondent of
the Builder suggests that the agates, and other similar stones,
found upon the sea beach and in gravel, might, by the aid of
steam, be cut and polished at an expense small enough to admit
of their being used, set in cements, after the manner of
mosaic, as a facing either for walls or entablatures.