was arrested and thrown into prison, he consoled his captivity by composing his drama of "Guillaume Tell," the worst of his productions, it is recorded. Lastly, it has been consecrated for all time by the genius of Friedrich Schiller. The legend was first brought to Schiller's notice, doubtless, by Goethe, who writes to him concerning it from Switzerland in 1797. Goethe himself thought of founding an epic on it. It was not, however, till 1801, before his journey to Dresden, that Schiller's attention was permanently directed to it. Completed on the 18th of February, it was brought out at Weimar on the 17th of March, 1804, with the most extraordinary success: the fifth act, however, was suppressed, in deference to the intended court alliance with the daughter of a murdered Russian emperor; it not being considered good taste to represent the assassination of an autocrat upon such an occasion.

Schiller's drama has been translated into French by Merle d'Aubigné and others, and many times into English,-among us by the Rev. C. T. Brooks. It follows the tradition substantially. Carlyle declares, indeed, that "the incidents of the Swiss Revolution, as detailed in Tschudi or Müller, are here faithfully preserved, even to their minutest branches." We tarried once for several days at Brunnen, and read the play upon the spot in sight of the Rütli, in the little balcony of the pension of the Golden Eagle, with the deep, calm, blue lake at our feet, and the Hacken and Axen mountains and the Selisberg shutting out the world for a time; and as we look at the play now, it recalls with the utmost minuteness the scenery and the coloring of it all: yet Schiller never was there. It was the last startling effulgence of his comet-like genius; for when the spring-flowers came again, he was gone from our earth.

In the last act of the great drama, as Tell sits at his cottage-door in Bürglen in Uri, surrounded by his wife and children, after the consummation of the deed, there approaches a monk begging alms;

- it is the parricide Duke John, flying the sight and presence of men. In the contrast of the feelings of these two persons, then and there, one reads Schiller's justification of his hero. As if to complete by contrast the moral of the drama of "Tell," it is related also in the tradition, that in 1354, when the stream of the Schächen was swollen, Tell, then bowing under the snowy years, seeing a child fall into it, as he passed that way, plunged in, and lost his life. Uhland has indicated this in his "Death of Tell," as only Uhland could:

"Die Kraft derselben Liebe,
Die du dem Knaben trugst,
Ward einst in dir zum Triebe,

Dass du den Zwingherrn schlugst." Some liken life to a book to be read in. To us it is rather an unwritten poem which each age repeats to the next, -melodious sometimes, as when the blind old mythic bard of Chios sang it under the olive-trees, by the blue Egean, to the listening Greeks, thirsty for beauty, drinking it ever with their eyes, and with their lips lisping it, or rough and more full of meaning, as when, with the men of Schwyz and Uri and Unterwalden, the great idea of freedom, majestic as their mountains, utters itself, composed and stern, in deeds which for all time make Switzerland honored and free.

On the 10th of November, 1859, the heart of Germany beat with gladness, if touched also with a certain sorrow, as in every hamlet, on every hill-side, from the German Ocean to the Tyrolese Alps, from the Vosges to the Carpathians and the Slavic border, the people met to celebrate with simple rites the hundredth birthday of its great poet Schiller, in whom they recognize not more what he did than what he sought after, whose striving is their striving, from highest to lowest,

the ideal man, burning to gather them together, and fold them as one flock under one shepherd, that, no longer divided, they may face the world and the future with one heart, with one great trembling hope, to lead the new civilization to its lasting triumphs.

Schiller had sung of Wilhelm Tell; and the men of Schwyz remembered him on that occasion, too, on the Rütli, with their confederates from Oberwalden and Niederwalden. On the afternoon of the 11th of November, they met at Brunnen, on the lake, as we have said,

the men of Schwyz embarking in one great boat, amidst peals of music, while numberless little canoes received the others. The wind, blowing strong from the north, filled the sail, and, as they floated down the Bay of Uri, they remembered Stauffacher and his friends, who had glided over the same dark waters at dead of night, past the Mytenstein to the Rütli, and the old time lived again; and the little chapel on the spot where Tell sprang ashore, erected by the Canton Uri, where once a year, since 1388, mass is said, and a sermon preached to the people, who go up in solemn procession of little boats, looked friendly over to them; and the countrymen of Schiller, present for the first time from Stuttgart and Munich, wondered at the solemn beauty of the snowpeaks reflected in the waters below. Α chorus of many voices broke upon the mountain-stillness, as the little fleet approached the Rütli; the men of Uri, already there," the first on the spot," and with them the men of Gersau, a valiant band, answered in a song of welcome; and they shook each other by the hand, and made a little circle, three hundred in all, upon the Rütli; and Lusser of Uri thanked the men of Schwyz for the invitation to remember their fathers here on the five hundred and fifty-second anniversary of the deeds which Schiller has so gloriously sung. We best remember the poet by repeating and upholding his words: :

"Wir wollen seyn ein einzig Volk von Brüdern,

In keiner Noth uns trennen und Gefahr.
Wir wollen frey seyn, wie die Väter waren,
Eher den Tod als in der Knechtschaft leben.
Wir wollen trauen auf den höchsten Gott,
Und uns nicht fürchten vor der Macht der
Menschen."

"One people will we be,-a band of brothers;
No danger, no distress shall sunder us.
We will be freemen as our fathers were,
And sooner welcome death than live as slaves.
We will rely on God's almighty arm,
And never quail before the power of man." *

Then they read the scene of the Rütli Oath from Schiller's play, and sing the Swiss national song, "Callest thou, my Fatherland?" And the pastor Tschümperlin admonishes them that they best cultivate the spirit of Schiller and Tell by worthy training of their children. As they are about to break up at last, the Landammann Styger of Schwyz suggests a beautiful thing to them: :-"As we came from Brunnen, and looked up at the Mytenstein as we passed it, the great pyramid rising up there out of the water as if meant by Nature for a monument, it seemed to us that a memorial tablet should be placed there, simple like the column itself, with words like these: 'To Him who wrote "Tell," on his One Hundredth Birthday, the Original Cantons."" And the proposition was received with unanimous shout of assent. "This was the worthy ending of the Schiller-Festival on the Rütli," says the contemporary chronicle.

On the 10th day of November, 1859, also, there was put into the hands of the Central Committee of the Society of the Swiss Union the deed of purchase of the Rütli. It is in the handwriting of Franz Lusser of Uri, Clerk of the Court, and dated the 10th of November, the birthday of Schiller. Thus Switzerland owns its sacred places, and the titledeeds long laid up in its heart are written out at last.

On the 21st of October of last year, on a brilliant afternoon, the men of Schwyz and Uri went forth again from Brunnen, with the chief magistracy of the land. From Treib came the Unterwaldners, all in richly decorated boats, and the inhabitants of Lucerne in two steamboats with much music, meeting in front of the Mytenstein, which lifts its colossal front

*Rev. C. T. Brooks's translation, p. 53.

eighty feet above the water there. The top of it was covered with a large boatsail, with the arms of the original Cantons and Swiss mottoes on it; in a wreath of evergreen, the arms of the other Cantons; in the middle of it, in token of the twenty-two Cantons, a white cross upon red ground; above all, the flag of the Confederacy spread to the Föhn. At the foot was a little stand made of twigs for the speaker, about which the little fleet was grouped, under the charge of the Landammann Aufdermauer of Brunnen, a gallant gentleman, host of the Golden Eagle, with his kind little sister, of whom we spoke at the beginning.

When all was still, Uri opens the musical trilogy,the words by P. Gall. Morell, monk of Einsiedeln, the music by Baumgartner of Zürich; Unterwalden takes up the burden; then Schwyz; then all three in chorus;-and the echo of the fresh voices among the rocks there was as in a cathedral. Then Landammann Styger climbs to the stand, and makes a little speech, and reads a letter from Schiller's daughter, (of which presently,) while the curious shepherd-boys stretch out their necks over the craggy tops of the Selisberg to look down upon the lively scene below.

At the end of his speech, Styger lets fall the sail amid the beating of the drums and the shouts of the multitude; and on the flat sides of the rock appear the gilded metal letters, a foot high, "To the Singer of Tell, Fr. Schiller, the Original Cantons, 1859." And there were other little speeches, -one by Lusser, who exclaims with much truth, "The rocks of our mountains can be broken, but not bent"; and then followed the Swiss psalm by Zwysig. And afterwards, in the evening, a feast in the Golden Eagle in Brunnen, at which, with the ancient sobriety, they remember the dangers of the present, and affirm their neutrality, which should not hang upon the caprice of a neighbor, but be grounded in their own will, for there is no Lord in Christendom for them except Him who is above all.

Thus wrote Schiller's daughter: :

"Gentlemen of the Committee of the Schiller Memorial on the Mytenstein:

"Your friendly words have truly delighted and deeply moved my heart;· not less the engraving of the Mytenstein, which shall stand as the very worthy and noble memorial of the Singer of Wilhelm Tell in the land of the Swiss for all time forever, a token of recognition of the genius which, struggling for the highest good of mankind, has found its home in the hearts of all noble men and women. With infinite joy I greeted the beautiful idea, so wholly worthy of the land as of the poet, there, where magnificent Nature, grown friendly, offers its hand on the very ground where one of the noblest, most finished creations of Schiller takes root, to consecrate to him a memorial which, defying time and storms, shall illumine afar off every heart which turns to it.

"In memory also of my beloved mother, Charlotte, Schiller's earthly angel, I rejoice in this memorial. She it was who, with deepest love for Switzerland, which she calls the land of her affections, where she passed happy youthful days from 1783 to 1784, led Schiller to it, and by her fresh, lively descriptions made him partake of it; and so prepared the way for the genius which could embrace and penetrate all things for the masterly representation of the country, which, unfortunately, his feet never trod. If, unhappily, I am not able to be present at the festival on the 21st of October, I am not the less thankful for your kind invitation; and in that sacred hour I will be with you in spirit, deeply sympathizing with all that the noble idea brought into life.

"A little memorial of the 10th of November, 1859, representing Schiller and Charlotte, I pray you, Gentlemen, to accept of me, and, when you recall the parents, to remember also the daughter. Respectfully yours,

EMILIE V. GLEICHEN-RUSSWURM, geb. v. SCHILLER. Greiffenstein ob Bonnland. 12 October, 1860.

In the churchyard of Cleversulzbach lies buried, since the 2d of May, 1802, the mother of Schiller. Prof. Dr. E. Mörika, when he was preacher there, erected a simple stone cross over the grave, and with his own hands engraved upon it the words, "Schiller's Mother." On the famous 10th of November, 1859, woman's hand decorated the grave with flowers, and put a laurel wreath upon the cross;

and in the hour when great cities with festal processions and banquets and oratory and jubilant song offered their homage to the son, a few persons gathered around the grave of the mother, and in the silence there planted a linden-tree; for in stillness thus, while she lived, had his mother done her part, lovingly and with faith, to unfold and consecrate the genius of Friedrich Schiller.

ADVENTUROUS travellers, who penetrated into Canada during the late visit of the Sovereign-Apparent of that colony, have furnished the public, through the daily press, with minute and more or less faithful descriptions of places upon the grand routes. Quebec and Montreal have been done by them to a hair; Kingston and another wicked place made notorious for bad manners; Toronto, Hamilton, and London of the West photographed with a camera of maximum dimensions. Upon the two great railroadlines by which Canada is now traversed, the Grand Trunk and the Great Western, — there is hardly a station which has not been mentioned by the reporters, either for the loyal manner in which it was decorated to do honor to the youthful Prince, or for the rather inhospitable display of certain objectionable symbols by the people around.

But neither in Canada nor elsewhere is it upon the grand routes that glimpses can be had of interior life and character. Primitive simplicity is altogether incompatible with railroads. The boy who resides near a station is quite an old man, compared with any average boy taken from the sequestered clearings ten miles back he may be a worse kind of boy, or he may be a better, but he isn't the same kind, at any rate. Of girls it is more difficult to speak with confidence

I do not aver that the railroad is devoid of a kind of poetry of its own, the same kind of sentiment, nearly, that resides about anvils and smelting-furnaces in the Hartz Mountains and in the great coal-districts: an infernal kind of sentiment, for the most part, being inseparable from burning fiery furnaces and grime; as in "Fridolin,” and in the "Song of the Bell," and in the " Forging of the Anchor." Once, particularly, in travelling by rail, did I experience the mysterious glamour that seems to hang round iron more than about any other metal. It was past midnight; and on waking up after a sleep of some hours, I found myself alone in the long car, which had come to a stand-still while I slept. The stillness of the night was broken at intervals by a short, loud boom, as of an iron bell ringing up some terrible domestic from the incomprehensible unseen. On looking out of the window, I saw by some dim lamp-light that we

were alone in an immense iron hall; we, I say, for there was a ponderous, grimy being darkly visible to me, whose gigantic shadow made terrible gestures upon the walls and among the great iron girders of the roof, as he moved slowly along the train, striking the wheels with a heavy sledge-hammer as he went. Of course there was nothing unusual in such a proceeding, the object of which was, probably, to ascertain something connected with the condition of the rolling stock; but there was a kind of awful poetry in the toll of the iron bell, which ran, and reverberated, and tingled among the iron ribs in the building, making them all sing as if they were things of flesh and blood, with plenty of iron in the latter, which is reckoned to be conducive to robust health.

But the romance of rolling stock has yet to be disengaged, and the inspired conductor or bardic baggage-master destined to do that is yet in the shell. May he long remain there!

Off the track some ten or twenty miles, though, almost anywhere, some of the materials, at least, for good, regular poetry of the old-fashioned kind are to be found. A mill, for instance, with a wooden wheel, no demoralizing iron about it, in fact, except what cannot well be dispensed with, in view of wear and tear. A white cottage, where the miller dwells serene; mossy roof, red brick chimney, and no lightning-rod or any other iron, being the principal features of the serene miller's abode. Cherries, in that tranquil person's garden, that are nearly ripe, and roses of a delicate red, but none so ripe or so red as the lips and cheeks of the serene miller's daughter, who trips across the little wooden foot-bridge over the mill-stream, singing a birdy kind of song as she goes. She is clad in a black velvet bodice and russet skirt, and has no iron about her of any description, unless, indeed, it is in her blood,-where it ought to be. The breath of kine waiting to be relieved of their honest milk, which is a good, solid kind of fluid in such places, and

meanders about the land with great freedom in company with honey. All these things will be very scarce in the world by-and-by, on which account it seems to be a judicious thing to go off the track a little, now and then, if only to " say that we have seen them."

In following the graphic narratives of the Prince of Wales's tour, the mind naturally wandered away to places not visited by him, although within easy distance of his fore-ordered course. It is well that there are places left to talk about! Let us conjure up a few old reminiscences of one,— a silent, primitive little nook of the North, within an hour's ride of Quebec, but too insignificant a spot for the coveted distinction of a royal visit. Crowned heads, then, will have the goodness to transfer their attention, and skip to the next article.

The nook to which I refer is Lorette, in Lower or French Canada, where it is commonly called Jeune Lorette, to distinguish it from Ancienne Lorette, - a less interesting place, distant from it about four miles.

Jeune Lorette is situated about eight miles north-west of Quebec, upon the beautiful, romantic stream called the St. Charles, which rushes down many a picturesque gorge, and winds through many pleasant meadows, in its course of some twenty miles from Lake St. Charles away up in the hills to the St. Roch suburb of Quebec. Here it assumes the character of a deep, tortuous dock, incumbered with the débris of many ship-yards, and reflecting the skeleton shapes of big-ribbed merchantmen on the stocks. Here, too, it is generally called the Little River; probably to distinguish it from the great River St. Lawrence, into which it oozes at this point.

But higher up, as I have said, the St. Charles is romantic and rushes on its fate. At Lorette, it divides the village in twain: a western section, for the most part peopled by French-Canadian habitans; an eastern one, inhabited by half-breed Indians, a remnant of the once powerful Hurons of old.