Terzky, who from political motives fosters a love which she well knows will never be crowned by a happy union. It seems that Schiller afterwards added the two last verses to complete the poem, and thus placed it with his other ballads in the edition of lyric poems, under the title of

The Maiden's Lament.

[The first two stanzas of this poem are sung by Thekla, in the Third Act of the Piccolomini.]

The oak wood is waving,

The clouds gather o'er;
There sitteth a maiden

Beside the green shore;

The breakers are dashing with might-with might:

And she sighs out aloud in the gloomy night, And weeping, thus waileth she

My heart it is broken,

The world is a void,

Nothing more can it give me,

For hope is destroyed.

All the bliss that the earth can bestow I have proved;

Heavenly Father-Oh! take-I have lived-I

have loved-*

Oh! take back thy child to thee.

• The tears that thou weepest,

Must vainly be shed;
For no sorrow awakens

The sleep of the Dead!
Yet say, what can solace and comfort the
breast,
When it mourns for the love by which once it

was blest,

was enabled to discover the most stirring subjects which the history of modern Europe offers to the tragedian. It will be found that in every one of his historical plays he just hits upon the turning point in the destiny of some great people, and each of the leading nations in Europe has thus furnished him with a plot. From the history of Germany no better subject for a dramatic work could be selected than the life and death of Wallenstein. This great commander of the imperial troops, during the Thirty Years' War, constitutes quite an epoch in the destinies of the people of Germany. Through that war the bond was broken, which during the middle ages, and even through the Reformation, had kept the limbs of the mighty empire together; and as Wallenstein, partly through his own guilt, failed in restoring the central power of the emperor over the many principalities, it was from his time that Germany went to pieces, and, instead of a compact nation, became a weak aggregate of petty states. The character of Wallenstein is in

Of all the great historical dramas of Schiller, Wallenstein' is the most admired. Being well versed in the history of modern Europe, and living at a time when the French Revolution and the subsequent events revealed the heart of man, and taught politics on a grand scale, Schiller

*This line is misunderstood by the translator. It ought to be:

Oh! mother in heaven-I have lived, I have

loved,

Ob, take back thy child to thee!

itself essentially dramatic. He was still alive in the memory of Schiller's coevals, as many a destroyed village in Germany, even now, bears frightful testimony to the ravages caused by that suicidal civil war. At the same time the crime of treason, of which Wallenstein was accused by his imperial antagonists, and for which he was doomed to an inglorious death from the hands of assassins, lies still shrouded in mystery; and there is even now a difference of opinion as to the question whether he really intended betraying his master, and through a secret alliance with Sweden and the Protestants in Germany, hoped to obtain for himself the crown of Bohemia, and, at the same time, peace for his country; or whether the court of Vienna, fearing his immense power at the head of an irresistible army, burdened him with the crime of treason in order to justify the most atrocious treachery on their own part. Thus the dramatist was not too closely fettered by evidence, and might deal with the facts more freely than a more modern subject

would have allowed him to do. Although Wallenstein may hardly be called a poetical character, yet his immense influence on his age, and the sudden turn in his fortunes, will ever lend to him a deep dramatic interest. The poet has taken great care to show us this character, and lay bare all the roots from which his overwhelming authority rose. Casting the whole subject in a trilogy, it is in the first short play, under the title of Wallenstein's Camp,' that he shows us the strong hold of the great commander on the souls of the private soldiers and non-commissioned officers whom he had called from the plough, the counting-house, or the schoolroom; and by wielding them into an irresistible armed body, had made them the arbiters of the nation's fate. In the second play, entitled, "The Piccolomini,' we are made to feel his influence on the officers, whom he had chosen from all countries of Europe, to be the servants of his will and the companions of his martial glory. In the third play, which bears the title of "The Death of Wallenstein,' he himself comes before us in all the formidable array of his mental powers, and armed with all that faith in himself and confidence in his star which is even strengthened by his firm belief in astrology. And yet, having to deal with all these energetic agencies, Schiller must have felt that the subject of his great work was prominently political, and that something was wanting in it without which the greatest theatrical effect can never be secured. say it in one word, much as this struggle for power may occupy our mind, our heart feels but little interest in it. Hence the poet thought it necessary to lend an additional charm to his plot by drawing upon the storehouse of his abundant invention. He made the edge of separation, which divided the political parties, to cut also through two young and noble hearts. To Wallenstein he gave a daughter, the heiress of his fortune and his expectations, and bound her in fatal love

To

to Max Piccolomini, the son of Wallenstein's most cunning, most treacherous, and most destructive enemy. Neither of these two characters exist in history, for Octavio Piccolomini, who in the play is the presumed father of Max, was at the time still a young man, being but thirtyfive years old when Wallenstein died; and although Wallenstein had a daughter of his second marriage (whose name, by the way, was not Thekla, but Mary Elizabeth), she was only about fourteen years old at her father's death. The introduction of such fictitious characters in a play which otherwise closely clings to history, may not stand before the verdict of the critic; but Schiller obtained his aim fully-for it is to these two parts that his work owes its great popular success. Max is placed in a conflict between Love and Duty, which drags his noble soul into unavoidable destruction, and Thekla, renouncing him, that his honour may not be sullied, rises to a height of character which shows us the noblest aim of tragedy, the glorification of personal liberty of decision in the midst of the most heart-rending conflicts, to which we may be doomed by merciless Fate.

The engraving in our present number, referring to Thekla's song, is taken from the beautiful photographs after drawings designed by some of the best German artists of the day, which accompany the new edition of Schiller's poems. The plan of this edition was formed by the celebrated firm of Cotta, on occasion of the centenary celebration of the poet's birthday, in 1859, and it has just been finished in a superior style, being one of the finest specimens of continental typography and ornamentation. The artist has not adhered to the costume of the time of Wallenstein, but dressed his weeping maiden in rather a modern and elegant attire; a liberty with which we are not inclined to find fault, seeing that the poem is of a universal character, and does not attach itself to any limited period in his tory.