Had prudence been the dominant quality in Schiller's character, this practice would undoubtedly have been abandoned, or rather never taken up. It was an error so to waste his strength; but one of those which increase rather than diminish our respect; originating, as it did, in generous ardour for what was best and grandest, they must be cold censurers that can condemn it harshly. For ourselves, we but lament and honour this excess of zeal; its effects were mournful, but its origin was noble. Who can picture Schiller's feelings in this solitude, without participating in some faint reflection of their grandeur! The toil-worn but devoted soul, alone, under the silent starry canopy of Night, offering up the troubled moments of existence on the altar of Eternity! For here the splendour that gleamed across the spirit of a mortal, transient as one of us, was made to be perpetual; these images and thoughts were to pass into other ages and distant lands; to glow in human hearts, when the heart that conceived them had long been mouldered into common dust. To the lovers of genius, this little garden-house might have been a place to visit as a chosen shrine; nor will they learn without regret that the walls of it, yielding to the hand of time, have already crumbled into ruin, and are now no longer to be traced. The piece of ground that it stood on is itself hallowed with a glory that is bright, pure and abiding; but the literary pilgrim could not have surveyed, without peculiar emotion, the simple chamber, in which Schiller wrote the _Reich der Schatten_, the _Spaziergang_, the _Ideal_, and the immortal scenes of _Wallenstein_.