Schiller’s numerous works may be classed under the heads of criticism, history, lyrical poetry, and the drama. We shall endeavour to characterise them, in the inverse order of their importance. In all of these departments his writings acquired immediate popularity. And in the latter they will enjoy permanent distinction, more from the vigorous style, warm sensibility, and fine moral feeling which are diffused over all his compositions, than from the development of the peculiar genius which any one class especially requires. When Schiller emancipated himself from the thraldom of his youth, the Kantian metaphysics were become popular among students. With characteristic ardour he became a disciple of the new school, and laboured to apply the critical philosophy to poetry and the arts. His first writings were scholastic exercises performed in public. But as the philosophy of his country, like his own mind, was in a state of transition, his metaphysical dissertations on æsthetical education, on naive and sentimental poetry, &c., deserve notice chiefly as appertaining to the literary history of a memorable philosophical crisis. They did not serve even to lay the foundation of a system of poetics, which was reserved for the Schlegels. These constitute three volumes. The historical works of Schiller originated in his dramatic studies. These led him to the subjects of his histories; and his mode of treating these subjects as a dramatist, and an historian, is such that we must blend the consideration of his two historical works with two of his most famous tragedies. The first of his elaborate dramas in blank verse was Don Carlos, in connexion with which was written the commencement of a history of the successful insurrection of the Dutch against the Spanish despotism. In his play he has not, like Otway in his forgotten tragedy, and Alfieri in his Filippo, rendered the real or supposed love of the young prince to his step-mother the most important incident. The heroic reformer, Marquis Posa, is the character that most excites the sympathy of the reader. And it is the sort of prophetic prelude to the reformation that engrosses his attention. So in the history, the author addresses himself rhetorically to the patriotism, the love of religious and civil liberty, and other virtuous feelings of his reader. Schiller is no where the critical investigator of doubtful facts, nor is he an authority to decide the merits of a doubtful character. His other great subject was the Thirty Years’ War. This narrative also is a series of eloquent dissertations, splendid descriptions, and pregnant moral reflections, rather than a philosophic development of the chain of events. His Wallenstein, which dramatises a chapter of that history, is the most laboured of his dramas; and it obtained for him the honour of a translation from a man of kindred genius, Coleridge. In the half comic prelude, called The Camp, and the two parts of the tragedy, all the