spiritual knowledge of nature--it has been, to many, a point of transition from the materialism and rationalism of the eighteenth century to the Christian Religion--and, indeed, this effect it has had on its illustrious founder himself, who has for some years returned to the bosom of Christianity, and who probably will be remembered by posterity more for his recent labours as a profound Christian naturalist, than for the pantheistic reveries of his youth.[21] Schlegel's earlier philosophical, as well as historical, works are no longer to be met with, and have not yet been re-published. In the Concordia for 1820, we find an outline of those lectures on the Philosophy of life, which the author delivered at Vienna, in the year 1827. This work immediately preceded the one to which this memoir is prefixed; and, as it embodies those general philosophical principles, of which in the latter an application is made to history, a rapid analysis of its doctrines, particularly in the psychological and ontological parts, will be useful, nay, almost necessary, to the elucidation of many passages in the following translation. But how can I attempt the analysis of a work where the arrangement of a formal, didactic discussion is studiously avoided--where the author pours forth his thoughts with all the freedom of conversation--high, spiritual conversation--where such is the exuberant fulness of his ideas, such the shadowy subtilty of his perceptions, that even the German language, copious and philosophical as it is, seems at times inadequate to their expression. Long as Germany had been habituated to the genius of Schlegel, she herself seems to have been startled by the appearance of a work where the boldest, the most unlooked for, the sublimest vistas of philosophy were opened to her astonished view. Bespeaking then the indulgence of the reader, I will now proceed to lay before him an outline of some of the principal ideas on psychology and ontology, contained in the Philosophy of Life.