the spring of 1808, amid a concourse of hearers, that famous course of lectures on dramatic literature, which has since been published in three volumes, and translated into all languages, and which in many respects, deserves the reputation it has obtained. As there is a very good French and English translation of this work, we feel less regret that we can here take only a rapid survey of it. It contains an examination of the Greek, Latin, Italian, French, English, Spanish and German theaters. In the opinion of Schlegel, there are but three truly original theaters, which under this title are the objects of a minute analysis: the Greek theater, from which are de⚫ rived the Latin and French, and the two theaters, which he calls romantic, the Spanish and the English, which, although contemporary, have a peculiar physiognomy, independent of each other, and have served to form the German theater, the foundations of which were laid by Göthe and Schiller. The first volume is devoted entirely to the Greek theater, and is unquestionably the most remarkable. Never before Schlegel, had criticism been raised to such a height, to such splendor; it is a rare mixture of profound science, of lofty and brilliant poetry. The critic speaks of Greece with enthusiasm; he comprehends it, as an artist and a poet, in its most minute details, as well as in the harmony of the whole; the picture which he draws of Greek society, is one of the most beautiful things we have ever read. The following is one passage of many equally beautiful.

"The moral culture of the Greeks was a natural education perfected; the offspring of a noble race, endowed with delicate organs and a clear understanding, they lived under a mild and pure sky, and, favored by the happiest circumstances, accomplished all which it is given to man, confined within the limits of life, to accomplish here below. All their

arts and their poetry express the consciousness of this harmony of their different faculties. They realized the poetry of happiness."

In the same elevated tone, Schlegel proceeds to the analysis of Sophocles, Eschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes. Sophocles is his favorite Greek dramatist. The Latin and Italian theaters are treated very summarily and with extreme severity. The French theater is examin. ed more in detail, and this is undoubtedly owing to the desire of the critic to destroy the glory of this theater. Here Schlegel is inferior to himself: not that this portion of his work does not contain a great number of judicious ideas and observations, which are true and will remain so; but Schlegel is evidently under the influence of passion. It is the dictatorship of Napoleon, which he is attacking, in the dictatorship of the French theater, and this is proved by the instantaneous change in the tone and nature of his criticism. The professor, who but lately had contended, with as much elo. quence as reason, against the old negative criticism, exclusively intent upon the discovery of defects, iden tifying himself with the men of all countries and of all ages, in order to see and feel like them, now creeps along in the old beaten track, and analyzes Racine much as Laharpe would have analyzed Shakspeare. He sees, in the French theater, nothing but an imitation of the Greek, and after having proved how far from exact this imitation is, he concludes that the copy is bad and inferior to the original, instead of concluding that it is another, and that this very difference constitutes its true originality. He praises Racine, when he approaches the Greek tragedy, and blames him, when he removes from it: instead of seeing in Racine a romantic, that is a chivalric and Christian poet, painting, under Greek names and with the severe forms of Greek tragedy, chiv.

alric and Christian heroes; instead of discussing the advantages and disadvantages of this fusion of forms and ideas, more or less heterogene. ous, he persists in reducing the author of Phedra to this dilemma: you copy, therefore you are not an inventor, you invent, therefore you are a bad copyist.

In the examination of the French comedy, Schlegel is still more feeble; for example, when he says "Molière succeeded best in burlesque comedy, and his talent, as well as his inclination, was for farces," what does he prove, but that the worthy German critic understood not a word of Tartuffe or the Misanthrope? In the analysis of Shakspeare, the admiration of Schlegel becomes fanaticism: it is through out a perpetual hymn. He afterwards confessed with candor that the English, even the most Shakspearian, considered him as an ultra. Nevertheless, the examination of the English theater is, after that of the Greek theater, the most remarkable part of the work. The Spanish theater, of which Schlegel sums up the principal epochs, in the persons of Cervantes, Lope de Vega and Calderon, is analyzed more briefly, although with the same enthusiastic admiration. In the examination of the German theater, which he considers in its infancy, the critic shows himself more calm, perhaps even a little severe.

events.

The life of Schlegel, hitherto exclusively devoted to literature, was soon to be disturbed by political Having returned to France with Madame de Staël, and being denounced by the Prefect of Geneva, as anti-French, he was included in the same exile with his illustrious friend; with her, he took refuge in Sweden at Stockholm, where he be came acquainted with Bernadotte, then Prince Royal. The latter had just broken definitively with Napoleon and formed an alliance with Russia. At his suggestion, Schle

Vol. II.

25

gel wrote in French a violent pamphlet, against the Emperor, under the title of The Continental System. This pamphlet, published at Stockholm in January, 1813, after the disastrous retreat from Moscow, was translated into Swedish, English and German. In the campaign of 1813, Schegel accompanied Bernadotte, in the capacity of secretary, and wrote, it is said, the proclamations of the Prince Royal of Sweden. During the campaign, he also published a pamphlet, under the title of A Picture of the Political and Moral State of the French Empire in 1813. After the events of 1814 and 1815, Schlegel was ennobled and honored with several orders.

He soon after settled at Paris, but on the death of Madame de Staël, quitted France and was appointed a professor at the University of Bonn. In this latter part of his career, Schlegel, already versed in the knowledge of all the languages and all the literatures of Europe, devoted himself to the study of the oriental languages, especially of the Sanscrit. He is now one of the most distinguished Indian scholars of the age. After having established at Bonn a printing office ad hoc, he enriched this part of science with several important works; among others, two volumes, entitled the Indian Library (1820); a volume published at Bonn in 1829, containing the Latin translation of an episode of the Sanscrit poem, Mahabharata; a French work with the title, The Origin of the Hindoos; a memoir, addressed to M. Sylvestre de Sacy, in which, contrary to the opinion of that orientalist, he maintains that the invention of the tales of a Thousand and One Nights, attributed to the Arabians, belongs to the Indians; and another memoir, entitled, Reflections upon the Study of the Asiatic Languages, dedicated to Mackintosh. While Schlegel was thus occupied with the East, he also found time to devote

to his former labors. After a journey to England and France, he delivered at Berlin in 1827, a course of lectures, on the history of the fine arts, since published in two volumes. He maintained a controversy, full of interest, with the learned M. Raynouard, concerning the nature, origin and influence of the Provençal language and literature. The beautiful lectures of M. Fauriel, on the origin of the romances of chivalry, also gave rise to a series of articles on this subject, published by Schlegel in the Débats of 1833 and 1834. These different works, accompanied by several articles less important, have been inserted in the French volume lately published.

From all this the reader can not fail to recognize in Schlegel, a poet, critic, philologist, orientalist and translator, a man whose name will live in the literary history of the last fifty years. If the limits of this sketch permitted, it would be interesting to inquire, wherein Schlegel has become obsolete in literature; which of his ideas Germany has accepted and which it has repudiated: to seek, not only in Germany, but also in France, the traces of the influence exercised by him over modern criticism, unquestionably superior to ancient criticism, if not in erudition, at least in the elevation of the point of view, the grandeur and

the range of the ideas. The fault of Schlegel's criticism, we have already indicated: it is an excessive pretension to universality; to constitute oneself the supreme judge of the literatures of all nations, is an enormous and dangerous enterprise. "With regard to both poets and prose-writers," as M. Sainte Beuve has well remarked, "each nation is the best judge of its own: the flowergirl of Athens, or, to speak in the style of Paul Louis Courrier, the meanest woman of the rue Chauchat, knows more of certain indigenous faults, than the foreign man of genius."

When unmindful of this truth, we are in danger of committing strange mistakes we are liable, like Göthe, to see in Du Bartas, one of the greatest poets of France, or like Schlegel, in Molière, only a vulgar harlequin. Another disadvantage of this too ambitious criticism, is that of enfeebling, by diffusing too widely, the powers of him who devotes himself to it. Schlegel appears to have felt, but too late, this injurious effect; for he concludes the preface to his last publication, with this expression, which will also serve us for a conclusion: "Those essays are like landmarks, planted along my litera ry career; at the end of which I must acknowledge to myself, that I have undertaken much and accomplished little."

AMIDST a universal conflict of opinion, perhaps the most remarkable which has occurred in the history of Christianity, there is one idea pervading all Christendom, and intimately incorporated with the religious thinking of the adherents of every hierarchy and every creed. That idea is, that the whole world is to be converted to the Christian faith: and the belief is very general

that the time when that hope is to be realized is near at hand. But the conceptions of different bodies of nominal Christians as to what is implied in a conversion of the human race to the Christian faith, and as to the means by which such an event is to be brought to pass, are widely diverse from each other, presenting all possible gradations between the widest extremes of dissimilarity.

exemplary, and in some instances an extreme self-denial, for the sake of giving to the cause of missions, whose sensibilities would perhaps be wounded by the suggestion that any thing more is needed to secure the world's conversion, than merely to apply the requisite power to this part of our machinery.

Now far be it from us to speak lightly of such self-denial, or of the object for the sake of which it is practiced. It is indeed true that a great increase of a self-denying and liberal spirit is an indispensable condition of success in the great work. And at this hour, when every good enterprise in our land is in embarrassment from the lack of funds, far be it from us to discourage the pious disinterestedness by which these enterprises are saved from extinction. But still we must and do maintain that the conception of our great enterprise which contemplates no other means of its accomplishment, than the application of increased moving power to the existing forms of religious machinery, is imperfect and delusive. The means of the world's conversion are twofold-the intellectual and the executive and it is a great calamity to the church and to the world, that while the executive part of this process has been deliberately and solemnly undertaken, as the great enterprise of modern Christendom: the progress which has been made in the intellectual part, has been only by the reaction of the enterprise itself upon prevalent habits of thinking, or by other indirect influences in the providence of God, and too generally in opposition to the wishes and sentiments of the great majority of the nominally Christian world. The necessity of this part of the process is not seen, nor has the church in this or any other country ever to any extent undertaken its performance. It is still true, though we are rapidly nearing the middle of this boasted nineteenth century, that the man

who undertakes solemnly and candidly to make a fresh comparison of the doctrinal system, or the principles of organization held in any one of our communions, with the acknowledged infallible standard, may certainly anticipate that the great mass of that portion of the church will be against him, and regard his speculations as arrogant, unneces sary, and pernicious. This is not the temper which the present condition of the world calls for. It is not the spirit which God requires of his people. We propose therefore to show, that there is an intellectual work to be done in Christendom, as an indispensable preparation for the world's conversion, and therefore requiring the solemn, deliberate and immediate effort of the church, as truly as the sending of mission. aries to the heathen, or the dissemination of the Bible. That every doctrine of every sect is to be again and again examined, and every principle of organization to be again and again compared with the direct instructions, or the clear and logical implications of the word of God.

1. This we argue, from the most obvious consideration, that by far the greater portion of us must, from the very nature of the case, be more or less in the wrong.

Of several conflicting views of the same subject, only one can be right; all may be wrong; and all but one must necessarily be so. Let us now leave out of our estimate all the sects whose numbers are inconsid. erable, and all those whose claim to the evangelical character is considered as doubtful. We shall still have some ten organized bodies of Christians-which we leave each reader to reckon up for himself. Of these ten sects-differing from each other in various degrees, yet constituting in effect one body, as opposed to Rationalism on the one hand and to Romanism on the other

it is too certain to require any argument, that at least nine are