Instead of those fallacious hopes slain their thousands, intemperate of perpetual festivity, with which pleasure has slain its ten thousands. the world would allure us, RELIGION How long shall it be, ere the fate of confers upon us a cheerful tranquil your predecessors in the same ity. Instead of dazzling us with course teach you wisdom? How meteors of joy, which sparkle and long shall the experience of all ages expire, it sheds around us a calm continue to lift its voice to you in and steady light. vain? Beholding the ocean, on which you are embarked covered with wrecks; are not those fatal signals sufficient to admonish you of the hidden rock? Recollect your own feelings; inquire on what occasions you have felt the truest satisfaction; whether days intermixed with pleasure and business have not left behind them a more agreeable remembrance, than whole nights of licentiousness & riot. Look round you on the world; reflect on the different societies which have fallen under your observation; and think, who among them enjoy life to most advantage; whether they, who encircled by gay companions, are constantly fatiguing themselves in quest of pleasure; or they to whom pleasure comes unsought, in the course of active, virtuous, and manly life? We all of us have experienced the effects which any indisposition of the body, even though slight, produces an external prosperity. Visit the gayest and most fortunate man on earth only with sleepless nights; disorder any single organ of the senses; corrode but one of the least of his nerves; and you shall presently see all his guiety vanish; you shall hear him complain, that he is a miserable creature, and express his envy of the peasant and the cottager. And can It is an invariable law of our pre- you believe, that a disease in the -sent condition, that every pleasure soul is less fatal to enjoyment than a which is pursued to excess, converts discase in the animal frame; or that itself to a poison. In all the plea- a sound mind is not as essential as a sures of sense, it is apparent, that sound body to the happiness of man? only when indulged within certain Let us rate sensual gratifications ümits, they confer satisfaction. No as high as we please; we shall sooner do we pass the line, which be made to feel that the seat of entemperance has drawn, than perni-joyment is in the soul. cious effects come forward and shew The man of moderation alone themselves. Could I lay open to brings to all the natural and innoyour view the monuments of death, cent pleasures, that sound uncorthey would read a lecture on mod-rupted relish, which gives him & eration, much more powerful than much fuller enjoyment of them any that the most eloquent writers than the pallid and vitiated appetite can give. You would behold the of the voluptuary can allow him to graves, peopled with the victims of know. He culls the flower of eveintemperance. You would behold ry allowable gratification, without those chambers of darkness hung dwelling upon it, until its sweetness round on every side, with the be lost. He stops at the point betrophies of luxury, drunkenness, fore enjoyment degenerates into and sensuality. So numerous disgust, and pleasure is converted .would you find those victims to in- into pain. Moderate and simple aquity, that it may be safely assert- pleasures relish high with the temed, where war or pesti'nce have perate; whereas it is great fortune if the voluptuary does not return | magic circle, within which you aredisgusted even from a feast. In at present held. Reject the poison--the pleasures which are regulated ed cup, which the enchantress by moderation, besides, there is al-pleasure holds up to your lips. ways that dignity which goes along Draw aside the veil, which she with innocence. No man need to throws over your eyes. You will be ashamed of them. They are then see other objects, than you consistent with honour; with the now behold. You will see an abyss. favour of God and of man. But opening below your feet. You will the sensualist, who disdains all re- see VIRTUE and TEMPERANCE straint in his pleasures, is odious in marking out the road, which con-the public eye. His vices become ducts to true felicity. You will be gross; his character contemptible; enabled to discern, that the world is he ends in being a burden to him- enjoyed to advantage by none, but self and society. such as follow those divine guides; and who consider "PLEASURE AS THE SEASONING, BUT NOT AS TH BUSINESS OF LIFE. FOR THE EMERALD. By unhappy excesses, how many amiable dispositions have been corrupted or destroyed? How many rising capacities and powers have been suppressed? How many flattering hopes of parents and friends have been totally extinguished? THE objection against Mr. Bry-Who but must drop a tear over hu- ant's system, because of its endan-man nature, when he beholds that gering the Christian religion, we morning which arose so bright, have found to be destitute of solidovercast with such untimely dark-ity, and Mr. B. is perfectly clear ness; that good humour, which from every possible imputation once captivated all hearts; that vivacity, which sparkled in every company; those abilities, which were fitted for adorning the highest station, all sacrificed at the shrine of low sensuality; and one who was formed for running the fair career of life in the midst of public esteem, cut off by his vices at the beginning of his course, or sunk, for the whole of it, into insignificancy and contempt! These, O sinful pleasure, are thy trophies! which could be attached to the support of an opinion savouring of infidelity. The life of Mr. B. has been an unequivocal proof, of a contrary doctrine; his labours in theology have been gigantic, and his mind has always been bent towards. the establishment of truth. Yet notwithstanding these facts. Mr. Bryant has been so violently opposed, that the author of the Pursuits of Literature found it requisite to defend him. "Some persons," Retreat then, from your dishon-says he, "have even declared that ourable courses, ye who, by licentiousness, extravagance, and vice, are abusers of the world! You are degrading, you are ruining yourselves; you are grossly misemploying the gifts of God; and mistake your true interest. Awake then to the pursuits of men of virtue and honour. Break loose from that Mr. Bryant had no right to touch the subject, that nothing can be more contrary to reason than to suppose, that the existence of a city and a war, of which we have read with delight from our boyish days, could be called in question. They allow the amplification of poetry, and its embellishments, and even. the anachronisms of Homer. But same part as they suppose the au Troy did exist, and the Grecians thor to have done, and sacrifice madid once besiege it, and Hector and ny things which have the sanction Achilles were as real heroes as the of ages. Hence if the credibility Archduke Charles and Bonaparte. of religion be impaired by these Most certainly I will quarrel with diminutions and drawbacks, they no man "about Sir Archy's great-promote the evil as much as the grandmother." It is a question of author; he denies the siege of Troy, probability and not of proof. But and they question every material nothing can be farther from Mr. circumstance with which it is said Bryant's character than the impu-to have been attended. They retation of having attacked the faith duce the whole to a buccaneering and credibility of ancient or of any war and a piratical transaction. history. It is scarcely entitled to But this is contrary to the whole notice. What was Troy? with tenor of history; and if our faith what part of history is it connected? can be by such means hurt, they Is not the Trojan war an insulated contribute to its ruin." solitary fact? If it were done away, We have seen then that Mr. is any historical event whatever Bryant's arguments are very strong made to fall with it? When it is to prove the object of his investiga stated, that four hundred and thirty tion; and that his opponents, findships (no matter of what size) were ing themselves unable completely to employed by the Grecians in the controvert him, have been obliged to Trojan war in the twelfth century, resort to collateral objections.-and only eighty-nine in the Pelo-Hence it appears, as far as we have ponnessian war in the fifth century examined, that there yet appears no before Christ, is this matter of ser- reason to disbelieve Mr. Bryant's ous history? Is not the whole allow-arguments disproving the "existed to pass the bounds of any proba-ence of Troy in Phrygia, and the bility but that of the poet ?" expedition of the Grecians as described by Homer." BIOGRAPHY. A brief sketch of the life of FREDERIC In addition to these arguments, the reviewers justify Mr. Bryant by the question, "whether those who oppose him do not co-operate to the same end? They say confessedly, that they do not believe the whole; and most of them give up the grand confederacy of the Grecian states at that early period, and His Don Carlos, which he conthe remote alliances with Rhodes, tinued during his residence at Dres. Epirus and Thrace. They do not den, was soon interrupted. He becredit the ten years' preparation for gan to read every thing that related war, nor the ten years' duration of to Philip; the library of Dresden it, nor the thousand ships and hun-afforded him abundant materials; dred thousand men. They hesi- and he became imperceptibly so tate at the story at Aulis; and deeply interested, that he neglected seem to doubt whether Iphigenia poetry for a time, and maintained were turned into a hind, and Hecu- an intimate connection with the ba afterwards into a she-dog: and Muse of History, to which we are they make other great concessions. indebted for his "Revolt of the But, in doing this, they act the Netherlands from the Spanish Government." The preceding his- drawn off by exterior objects, end" torians of Germany had been less all the energies of the mind may be attentive to the beautiful Muse of exerted with undivided forceHistory than to the dull spirit of Night, with its profound repose, chronicles: he united German in-its sacred stillness, and sublime dustry with the elegance of the ancients. tranquillity, was more agreeable to him than noisy distracting day. However singular it may appear, it is not the less true, that in the evening he might be found at his breakfast, and at midnight deeply engaged in business. The stan.p of midnight is in fact strikingly im pressed on many of his compositions. By this conduct he, alas! abridged his cheerfulness, l.is plea- It was impossible not to perceive what the Academy possessed in Schiller. In the year 1796 he re- At Leipzig, or rather at Gohlis. a charming village near that city, where he passed a summer with Mr. Goschen, he continued and completed his Don Carlos. Jinger, a writer whose premature decease Comedy still deplores, resided during the same summer at Gohlis, and they contracted a mutual friendship for each other; and pro-sures, and even his life. bably the lively company of the comic had no small degree of influence over our tragic poet, whose tone of mind was at that time dis-ceived a regular honorary professor-tinguished by uncommon vivacity. ship, with a salary of two hundred From Leipzig Schiller returned dollars, which after he left Jena was to Weimar, the residence of so ma- continued to be paid by the Duke ny men of genius. Here he ac-of Weimar, and was augmented a quired the friendship of Wieland, short time previous to Lis death. and likewise of M.Von Wollzogen, Meanwhile Goethe, who had bewhose sister he afterwards married. come the friend of Schiller, endeaSome years afterwards Schiller voured to restore him to life and its was appointed professor of history at enjoyments. Jena, he perceived, Jena, and he taught that science with was not the place for this purpose; almost unexampled applause. At it was necessary to remove lim to a later period he likewise held lec-a region of greater freedom, and he tures on asthetics. Were we to invited him to Weimar.-This re le moval had the desired effcct. describe the scholar striving with the utmost zeal to attain the highest possible degree of perfection, it would be necessary to shew how he learned Greek of Schutz; how, instigated by Reinhold, he indefatiga- This cheerful tone pervades all bly studied the criticism of Kant, the works he composed in the lat-and made himself intimately ac-ter years of his life at Weimar : quainted with the best poets of all ages and of all nations. That he might be able to study and to labour with less interruption, he reversed the order of nature. Night, when all the bustle of life is over, when universal silence prevails, when the attention is not they are not the offspring of sombre midnight, but the productions of genial day. Among these was his "Maid of Orleans," which gain-ed him additional reputation; an eye-witness to the first representa- tion of it observes, that when the play was over, all thronged cut of spoke much concerning soldiers and the tumults of war, but still more frequently pronounced the name of Lichtenberg, in whose works he had a short time before been reading. Towards noon he he awoke once more in the possession of his faculties for a short time, of which he availed himself to take a painful farewell, and to desire that his body might be committed to the earth without any pomp, in the most private and simple manner. He was even cheerful, and said, 'Now life is perfectly clear to me: many things are now plain and distinct. He soon afterwards sunk again into a slumber, from which he never more awoke. the house to see him. The extensive space from the theatre to the Ranstadt gate was crowded with people. He came out, and in a moment a passage was cleared. "Hats off!" exclaimed a voice: the requisition was universally com- became more composed, and fell plied with; and thus the poet pro-into a gentle slumber, from which ceeded through multitudes of admiring spectators, who all stood uncovered, while parents in the back ground raised their children in their arms, and cried-"That is Schiller." Schiller was tall, and rather slender. Even during his residence at Jena his body seemed to suffer from the exertions of his mind his face was pale, and his cheeks hollow; but silent enthusiasm sparkled in his animated and his high open forehead announced the character of profound reflection. His whole demeanour was calculated to excite confidence. There was nothing in it of reserve, nothing of pride, haughtiness, or affectation; every expression was marked with such candour and sincerity, and unfolded such excellent qualities of the heart, that before you had passed a quarter of an hour in his company, you felt as if you had been acquainted with him for years. eye, "His body was opened: the lungs were found almost entirely destroyed, the chambers of the heart were nearly filled up, and the gall was uncommonly distended. An accurate cast of his skull was taken for Dr. Gall. His funeral was fixed for Sunday, but as his body advanced too rapidly to corruption, it was found necessary to inter him in the night between Saturday and Sunday. According to his own desire, he was to have been Sickness attacked him early, and but several young literati and artists, carried to the grave by artisans, here his medical attainments were desirous of evincing their love and prejudicial to him instead of prov-respect to their distinguished coling advantageous, for they made him too attentive to his body andom that duty. Among these league even in death, relieved them its changes, and deprived him. A thiends of the inmortal poet were the repose so necessary for the Professor Voss and the painter establishment of his health. A premature report of his death was circulated in the public journals; but when it proved unfounded the Duke of Augustenburg in conjunction with Count Schimmelmann, secured to him a pension for life. lemn silence the coffin was borne Jagemanu. In profound and soto the church yard between the hours of twelve and one. The sky was entirely overcast, and threatened rain; the blustering wind rushed awfully through the ancient roofs Hi: died in May 1805. During of the vaults, and the trophies siliness he was quite delirious,groaned.-But no sooner was the |