of solitude. This I seek to relieve in two ways; the first, for which I bless God, is to pray often, wherever I may be; and to seek a nearer communion with the Source of all love and goodness, in his own way, through my Saviour. This calms me, and I am at peace. The second is to write to my best and dearest life," &c.

The manner in which he bears his disappointment, when he was a candidate for the office of Keeper of the Records and failed, was admirable :

"If I succeed," he says, "it will be with God's blessing; if I fail, still it will be with his blessing! Why, then, should I for a moment be anxious? ...... The disappointment has been let fall so gently on me, that I can now say that my mind is perfectly peaceful and happy. I feel that all has been regulated by infinite love and perfect wisdom."

He

In the spring of 1834 he returned to Rothsay; and a year after, the wife, so tenderly loved, died in his arms! His diary, continued after her death, is full of his feelings, in which, however, resignation prevailed over grief; and prayer, with daily study of the Scriptures, formed the sources of his comfort, mixed with the reading of his wife's diary, and his dwelling upon her mysterious bliss. He now gave himself assiduously to the training of his children, to whom he became the most attractive companion. However severe his studies, he would relax at once when in their company, and by ludicrous imitations convulse his little audience with laughter. Every amusing incident during the day was treasured up for them, and retailed in a narrative for their amusement. For them he played music; and to them he devoted the interval of his labours between dinner and tea. drew for them amusing sketches the Goblin Puck, with all the young Pucks, in every imaginable attitude. But with these entertainments he mingled lessons of gentle piety. He taught them to give to God their last thoughts at night and their first in the morning. When walking with them through the beauties of nature, he would have them look upon the Author of all this as a loving father near at hand. "At your happiest moments," he said, "lift up your whole heart to God and thank him." He practised what he taught; his example dwelt with them. They saw his own habit of prayer; his bent head and closed eyes, when they were in the fields with him, showed how he was engaged. It was thus he made the Sunday impressive. To him, indeed, it was a festival; from the intensity of his devotion when in church, the tears which streamed down his cheeks, as he took the sacrament, they learned the sources of his happiness; and he spoke to them of their mother, of her goodness, her patience and her beauty, recurring to little incidents in her illness, and repeating texts and verses which she loved. He would not let them see her after her death, lest her memory should be associated with silence and

gloom; but that their young hearts might dwell on her smile, her loving blessing, and the sweet spring flowers she gave them. Their love for him was, as we may well suppose, intense; his letters to them, as they became a little older, are full of playful affection; and every study or amusement became associated with him.

A slight paralytic seizure, which he had in the beginning of 1841, served to draw forth their love. Their agony of sorrow, and, when he recovered, their extasy, show what happy trainers love and piety are. But we must hasten to the conclusion. Mr. Tytler had naturally a buoyant temper, and strong constitution; but his deep affection made him suffer longer and more severely than happens to those of less keen sensibility. After his father's death his careworn look struck his friends, and they complained that his forehead had wrinkles and his countenance a haggard air which ill became a youth of twenty-five. The grief for the loss of his wife, however, softened by resignation and a joyful conviction of her bliss, told on him still more. He confessed to his friends that he carried her picture always with him, and had looked at it every night before retiring to rest. Nine years after her death he says, "I believe there have been few, if any, days, and certainly no evening, that I have not thought of her." On the other hand, his love of fun brought cheerfulness, and he had an intense love of sport. For shooting especially he had all his life a passion; before the season began he looked forward to it like a boy, and spoke of it in his dreams. During two months spent in later life at Newliston, in the busiest period of his writing, he put aside his beloved history, and it passed absolutely from his thoughts. Unhappily, as his work approached completion, this resource for diverting the overtaxed mind failed him. Severe losses had straitened his income; he was obliged to live with the utmost economy, to confine himself to London and Hampstead, and to give all his energies to his writings. This pressure brought on the paralytic seizure in 1841; and, though he recovered from this, and carried his history to its termination two years after, it is evident that his constitution was seriously impaired. When the tension of exertion was removed, he felt a lassitude and repugnance to writing, which showed that the brain had been over-wrought; and soon after his second marriage, in the autumn of 1845, his health gave way, and the whole nervous system collapsed. Various remedies were tried. The water cure, for which evidently he was not a subject, was applied, but on Christmas eve, 1849, he sank at the age of 58. How deeply he was loved and mourned, the letters of his sisters and the tribute of his friends prove; how humbly and prayerfully he lived, his diary and the observation of those around him bear witness. But nothing is at once more instructive and interesting than the habitual sense which he maintained of the presence and goodness of God. This thought was

the assuager of his sorrows and the stay of his mind. Whether he loved or was bereaved-was in danger or found rescue-was in health or smitten by sickness-had hopes or was disappointedwas poor, or by the kind consideration of his sovereign received a modest increase of means the thought always was the same, rising up ever in his mind, as he expressed it on that occasion, when he looked back on the steps by which he was saved from drowning. "This surely was very merciful; so that from first to last all has been providential, and it is sweet to think that what people call presence of mind was truly nothing else than the presence of God."

With these hints we commend the memoir to the attention of our readers.

THE MORAL TENDENCY OF SCHILLER'S WRITINGS.

To the Editor.

SIR,-Forty years ago the names of Schiller and Goethe were almost unknown amongst us. The French and Italian languages were supposed to form an essential part in the education of our daughters; but German was thought to be a rough coarse language, abounding in gutturals, and not likely ever to be pleasant to ears polite. Every one knew, indeed, that Luther on the Galatians is a work which well deserves notice, and that Klopstock's Messiah is the produce of a mind of the highest order; but most were contented to peruse these books in a translation; and though the fame of the grammars and lexicons prepared by German industry began to spread among us, there was little expectation that German poets and historians were soon to be as highly esteemed as their more profoundly learned antiquarians and philologists.

But a very serious question arises with reference to this modern and prevailing taste. Is it safe, is it advisable, that our sons and daughters should spend their time and their energies in such studies? It may well be asked, is there not great danger in reading the writings of men who are so much tainted with rationalism, or blinded by infidelity? Are those who are thus engaged likely to become either wiser or better through such mental occupation?

Such men as Schiller and Goethe represent a large portion of the human race. They give utterance to the sentiments and feelings which animate the hearts of many thousands around us; and we cannot understand, and we cannot improve, the opportunities for good which present themselves in our intercourse with our fellow-creatures, if we do not become acquainted with the real state of mind which exists among them.

There is, however, one thing which is certainly most reprehensible. Many parents who are really in earnest in their endeavours

to promote the best interests of their children, nevertheless allow them to read German books, and to frequent German schools, without any sufficient guarantee that they are not exposing them to the influence of teachers whose instructions must of necessity have a most pernicious tendency. Unacquainted as they are with the subtle sophistry of German neology, and deceived by the outward appearance of mildness and innocence, which the unbeliever at heart knows how to assume, they confide in those who are most unworthy of the trust reposed in them, as the intimate companions and spiritual guides of their children, although in their general walk and habits of life there may be much that is commendable and amiable.

There is a great difference between the two great German poets whose names we have mentioned. Both were men of genius, both possessed an extraordinary power of language, both have done much to spread the fame of their age and nation; but Schiller is greatly to be preferred to Goethe as to the moral tone which breathes through his writings.

Schiller may well be compared with Sophocles. The study of Sophocles is not likely to do any harm if the heart be right with God. Those who know what repentance and faith in the Son of God imply and secure, will not be led astray by such a writer. Just as the simple and innocent imagery which Homer delights in has nothing to do with the corrupt and corrupting pruriency of many modern poets, so is Schiller, for the most part, free from such pollution. He is no more to be compared with some modern writers in Germany, as well as in France and elsewhere, who have done and are doing so much harm to the simple and unwary, than Plato, and the system he taught, can be compared with the teaching and the practice of the Buddhists. "It is now

He says,

Schiller himself complains of such men. thought to be a sign of a refined taste, when religion is made the subject of wit and ridicule. Some imagine, that a man cannot be really a genius, if he does not know how to scoff at the most sacred truths. The noble simplicity of the Bible is ridiculed in the daily conversation of these so-called wits; and what is so holy and so solemn that it cannot be made the subject of laughter, if it be falsely represented and caricatured ?"

But while we thus willingly acknowledge the distinguishing excellences of this great poet, it is necessary that we should distinctly point out the great defects for which no superiority of style in prose or poetry, no beauty of language or force of imagination, can possibly compensate.

They are:

1. That he does not properly recognise the presence and the power of Him in whom we live and move and have our being.

He talks about "nature," and "fate," and the "Spirit that rules the world;" but he does not sufficiently remember that the

Father, who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, "is not far from every one of us.'

Like the Athenians of old, he builds an altar to the "UNKNOWN GOD." Thus, in "Wallenstein," we are told :

"Es giebt im Menschenleben Augenblicke,

Wo er dem Weltgeist näher ist als sonst,
Und eine Frage frei hat an das Schicksal."

Literally, "There are moments in the life of man, in which he is nearer to the Spirit of the world than at other times, and is allowed to ask a question of fate."

It is not easy to understand precisely what Schiller means by the expressions "Weltgeist," "Anima mundi," "Spirit of the world," but it is evidently something like "fate;" it is not the living eternal God, the Holy One of Israel. Poets may justly claim a great license in personifying the seasons of the year, objects in nature, the blessings of liberty, and other things which we admire and wish for; but this does not justify expressions like those above referred to.

Perhaps the worst of Schiller's poetical effusions is one of his earliest efforts. It is a song, in which "joy" is personified and addressed as a divinity; and the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, as to their share in the happiness which is implored as the gift of this supposed deity, is overlooked.

But it must not be forgotten, that Schiller did not sink into the depths of that pantheism which has prevailed so awfully in Germany. He did not, as we see, write as a man would do who is penetrated with a due sense of the love of Him whose mercy endureth for ever; but he was too much in earnest to be carried away entirely by the reasonings of that vain philosophy which abounded among his contemporaries.

2. As he does not know the holiness and the mercy of the living God, so he errs greatly as to the state of human nature. He dreams of liberty and greatness, of reason and power, as belonging to us in our fallen condition; and speaks of man as the ancient Greeks and Romans described him, in the fancied goodness of which he supposes him to be capable through his own unaided strength.

3. The man of sorrows, the crown of thorns, the cross of Christ, are but seldom alluded to. How can any one who does not understand the holiness of the law and the fall of man, comprehend the mystery of redeeming love?

And yet we find, that there were seasons in his life in which he was not far from the kingdom of God. Thus, when eighteen years of age, he offered up the following prayer: "O God, anxious doubts have often covered my soul with the darkness of night. Thou knowest the sorrow of my heart, and that I have wrestled with Thee for heavenly teaching. Thou hast cast my lot in days.