three, which may be well regarded as the three original springs of spiritual enjoyment

ous exertion, will have their best reward in the pure, unchanging happiness purchased by such self-denial. Pleasure, indeed, has a high-nature, mankind and art, which latter in er zest when spontaneous and self-created, its mingled representations blends and unites and it rises in value in proportion to its them all. affinity with that perfection of beauty in which moral excellence is allied to external charms. It must be a free spontaneous burst of feeling, not the result of certain means applied for the attainment of any particular object; for pleasure thus pursued becomes occupation rather than enjoyment. We call it desecration and pollution to employ holy things in ordinary uses. But is not the beautiful also holy? Man can by representation inform the understanding, by beauty he can improve the manners, works of art may supply material for contemplation, but the mind will gain little or nothing thereby. As all energy demands for its development a free unrestrained power of action, so the sense of beauty and its creative faculty are kindled in the soul only by the free enjoyment and habitual contemplation of its creations. This inward perception of the soul for the beautiful is far different to the superficial artistic taste which refuses to acknowledge a susceptibility to comprehend represented and ideal forms as a creative and generative faculty for art; for beauty reigns supreme not only in imitative works, but also in nature, in mankind and in love. It is easy to decide on the proper limits to be prescribed for the soul's indulgence in spiritual enjoyment-to mark where it may commence and where it ought to terminate; but it is, in truth, a delicate task to avoid transgressing those boundaries. The same may be said of the limits of each separate element of beauty. Of these there are

The most prominent characteristic of nature is an ever-flowing and exhaustless vital energy; that of art is spiritual unity, harmony and symmetry. To attempt to deny the latter assertion and define art as nothing more than a recollection or reproduction of the highest beauties of nature strikes at the very root of its free and independent existence. Had not art a power distinct from that of nature, were it not governed by its own peculiar laws, we should be compelled to regard it as a feeble device of the ancients, a subtle contrivance by which to protract in faint reflection the declining vigor of their own natural life. Those who were not allabsorbed in the consciousness of youth and vigor would hasten eagerly in pursuit of truth, and leave the gray-headed to seek warmth from the mummy of life and the feeble-minded to revel in unsubstantial shadows. ows. There are mistaken men who traduce Nature and falsely give her the epithet of "artistic," forgetting that, while Art is bounded on every side, Nature, on the contrary, is everywhere vast, illimitable and inexhaustible. Not only is she as a body of immeasurable extent, but every component element has in itself a twofold principle of fecundity. The universal variety of created forms is no less infinite than the ever-increasing productiveness of natural life, and a delicate task to natural life, and every point of space, countless in number and unbounded in duration, is filled with life. Yet Art, not content to borrow all its variety from Nature, would

on

even rend her asunder and separate the in- | mankind-"fly thy paltry legislations, thy ward vitality from the outward form. The miserable art, and reverently own thine drama and the stage alone actually unite Art allegiance to the generous and all-bounteand Nature, yet even here one isolated fea- ous mother whose full breast is the source ture is forcibly severed from her overflowing of all genuine life." There is in the human abundance, and although Nature is neces- breast a fearful, unsatisfied desire to soar into sarily presented to our view under two as- infinity-a feverish longing to break through pects which in other arts are usually divided the narrow bondage of individuality-and —as, for instance, a certain fixed and regular man is often so utterly subdued by this wild form combined with the varying features of longing that his very thirst for freedom makes actual life—still this union is highly defect- him a prey to the overwhelming force of Naive, and we feel the elements of which it is ture. In savage disdain he spurns the recomposed to be incongruous and imperfect. straint of laws and with loveless soul polThe representative portion of this plastic lutes the glorious excellence of his being. music is peculiarly incomplete. The an- Never were there any people more distincients by their ideal masks sacrificed the guished by their keen enjoyment of natural life and illusion of beauty and truth; the pleasures or their excess in every intelmoderns, on the contrary, sacrifice all beauty lectual and mental indulgence than the and truth both of life and of the illusion. Let Romans; never were any people more us compare with this a glance at the friendly mighty in strength, more lawless, intemrainbow with which the Infinite, as it were, perate and cruel, than that nation, from spans the heavens; or a glimpse of spring, the time when Brutus first stained his where the full variety of life penetrates noble name with the guilt of assassination through all our senses into our inmost to the period of Nero's darker crimes. Their being; or, lastly, the spectacle of a fear- capacity for enjoyment and means of supplyful, and yet glorious, conflict wherein the ing it were so boundless that the profusion abundance of man's imprisoned strength and luxury of a Roman life surpass the limfoams up and overflows in resistless de- its of our imagination. Even the enormity struction. Under these several aspects the of their crimes excites a feeling of wonder, human mind seems to embrace and compre- and indignation is almost absorbed in astonhend the entire wealth of existence and of ishment at the indomitable will, the unfeteternity, which, in close connection with the tered independence, which could dare their immensity of space, streams forth from the perpetration. The history and results of plenteous horn of undying Nature. "The such moral excesses are, however, inscribed world itself is ever young"-thus sings the in characters of flame on every page of their poet of Nature-" but its transitory scenes annals, and seem handed down as warnings pass swiftly by. Men come, men go, eager for all coming generations. All that the as in a race; each stretches forth his hand earth could furnish was insufficient to apto seize the torch of life." "Fly," she pease their insatiable desires, till even Roseems in seductive accents to exclaim to man vigor proved unable to withstand the

IN

Translation of E. J. MILLINGTON.

HUMBOLDT'S KOSMOS.

FROM "LIFE OF HUMBOLDT."

It

the laws of the beautiful. The intellectual | any other period of his life. He had a new sense and the soul's inner life are combined and grand scheme on foot-one that he had in lofty perfection by the union of these three pondered over for years. He thought of it faculties. Singly they will produce only sus- at Paris, in his study among his books and ceptibility, sensitiveness or strength of judg- manuscripts and in the salons of art and ment. The deep inspiration of love and the fashion among the wise and the foolish. lavish luxuriance of Nature, mutually blended He thought of it in Mexico as he groped and subjected to the immutable laws of art, his way in the darkness of the mines or are presented to us in the tragedies of Soph- wandered among the ruins of vanished naocles. Here the problem of human existence tions. He thought of it in Peru, on the is solved, and the mind of man reposes in rugged sides of Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, tranquil equanimity. in the terrible pass of Quindiu, in the dense forests of the Orinoco and at Cumana among the earthquakes. He thought of it on the deck of the Pizarro in the midst of the sea, and on the crater of Teneriffe in the illimitable wilderness of air. He thought of it everywhere, by day and at night, in his waking moments and in his dreams. was always with him. It was the one thought of his thoughts, his first and last conception, the most majestic statue of his house of life. It was Kosmos. "Its undefined image," he wrote in 1814, "has floated before my mind for almost half a century." All the travels that he had undertaken and all the books that he had written related to this great work. It was not as a traveller that he had crossed the sea and explored unknown lands, nor yet as a man of science, but as the traveller, the man of science. He aimed at no common fame. Indeed, he aimed at none. It was to a nobler object than "the bauble reputation" that he devoted his life: it was a thirst for knowledge, a passion for wisdom-not in one thing or many things, but in all things. To be a wise man was not enough: he would be the wisest of men. the wisest of men. His wisdom was universal, like the universe to which it was

N February, 1827, Humboldt removed from Paris. He did not proceed directly to Berlin, but joined his brother's son-in-law, Count Bülow, who had just been appointed ambassador to England, on a journey to London. Humboldt's stay in England was short, for in May we find him permanently settled in Berlin. He found his brother in Berlin, for he had a residence there, as well as at Tegel, and scores of his old friends-among others, Augustus Schlegel. The king received him with open arms and conferred upon him the title of privy councillor. He might have been secretary of state, if he had chosen-indeed, there was no office too good for him-but he loved science too well to change it for politics. Never enamored of that artful but powerful goddess, who, whatever her faults, is sure in the end to reward her worshippers, he was less likely to be won by her blandishments then than at

directed, and which he understood, if ever tions than failing in good ones, dies caged man did or can understand it. like a felon in the lone barren isle of St. Helena.

WE

BAYARD TAYLOR.

GOOD RESOLUTION.

HATEVER may have been yester-
day's vow and promise, with the

Our engraving is from the painting of Liversage.

SCHILLER.

sternest resolutions to keep them, we may JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH judge that the temptations of to-day are too strong to be resisted. The sky is shining with radiant clouds; the bench at the door is broad and inviting; the pipe is full of fragrant weed; the upturned justemptied mug is large and may be replenished; and the "good resolution," good resolution," so far in a state of abeyance, is about to melt into thin air.

VON SCHILLER is one of the greatest names in the list of modern German writers. He fills more places and acts more parts in the later history of European culture than any other German scholar, and is not without distinction in them all. Poet, dramatist, physician, historian and metaphysician, he burst upon the world in the last quarter of the eighteenth century like some celestial phenomenon too bright and rapid to promise permanence, but ensuring it by merits that transformed the coruscations into a steady and never-waning light. He was born on the 10th of November, 1759, at Marbach, in Würtemberg. After preliminary preparation he studied medicine, and was appointed a sur

And yet, with Sartor Resartus to aid, how little it would need to transform this rustic into something of heroic mould! Clothe the man in other guise. For the nightcap substitute a cocked hat; put upon his breast the white plastron of the Young Guard; put trunk-hose above his boots and spurs upon them; let the right hand rest upon his sword-geon in the army of Würtemberg in 1780. belt and put the sword in his left as the ar- In 1781 he astonished the world by the pubbiter of war,—and you have a Napoleonic lication of his drama Die Raüber. It was figure making plans and "good resolutions" interesting and powerful, but the glamour for the future. And thus do extremes meet. which he throws upon the robber's profesThe red-nosed tavern drone, who from year sion, and the consequent romance, so offendto year dreams that he might accomplish ed the duke of Würtemberg that he angrily better things, goes on swigging his beer, told him to let such work alone and stick to smoking his pipe, idling away the working his profession. Schiller did not heed this hours-leaves the broom which, whether injunction, but remodelled the play to new or old, in such hands, never sweeps make it more effective; whereupon he was clean," and dies at last leaving nobody bet- arrested and imprisoned at Stuttgart. He ter because he has lived. And such, too, is escaped from his confinement, and we find the fate of the mightiest of earth's chief him for eighteen months in the service of tains, who, more for carrying out bad resolu- the Mannheim theatre, writing tragedies,