Fertile and comprehensive indeed is the domain of history, comprising the whole region of probabilities within its jurisdiction--all the various shapes into which man has been cast--all the different scenes in which he has been called upon to act or suffer; his power and his weakness, his folly and his wisdom, his virtues in their meridian height, his vices in the lowest abyss of their degradation, are displayed before us, in their struggles, vicissitudes, and infinitely diversified combinations: an inheritance beyond all price--a vast repository of fruitful and immortal truths. There is nothing so mean or so dignified; nothing so obscure or so glorious; no question so abstruse, no problem so subtile, no difficulty so arduous, no situation so critical, of which we may not demand from history an account and elucidation. Here we find all that the toil, and virtues, and sufferings, and genius, and experience, of our species have laboured for successive generations to accumulate and preserve. The fruit of their blood, of their labour, of their doubts, and their struggles, is before us--a treasure that no malignity can corrupt, or violence take away. And above all, it is here that, when tormented by doubt, or startled by anomalies, stung by disappointment, or exasperated by injustice, we may look for consolation and encouragement. As we see the same events, that to those who witnessed them must have appeared isolated and capricious, tending to one great end, and accomplishing one specific purpose, we may learn to infer that those which appear to us most extraordinary, are alike subservient to a wise and benevolent dispensation. Poetry, the greatest of all critics has told us, has this advantage over history, that the lessons which it furnishes are not mixed and confined to particular cases, but pure and universal. Studied, however, in this spirit, history, while it improves the reason, may satisfy the heart, enabling us to await with patience the lesson of the great instructor, Time, and to employ the mighty elements it places within our reach, to the only legitimate purpose of all knowledge--"The advancement of God's glory, and the relief of man's estate." * * * * * POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. No. V. THE VICTORY FEAST.