directed, and which he understood, if ever | nourishment. The effects of this check on man did or can understand it. IT LIFE. BAYARD TAYLOR. FROM "PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION." T is observed by Dr. Franklin, that there is no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as, for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might in a few ages be replenished from one nation only, as, for instance, with Englishmen. This is incontrovertibly true. Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand, but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all-pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it. Plants and irrational animals are all impelled by a powerful instinct to the increase of their species; and this instinet is interrupted by no doubts about providing for their offspring. Wherever, therefore, there is liberty, the power of increase is exerted; and the superabundant effects are repressed afterward by want of room and man are more complicated. Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career, and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide the means of support. If he hear it not, the human race will be constantly endeavoring to increase beyond the means of subsistence. T. R. MALTHUS. JOH OHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER is one of the greatest names in the list of modern German writers. He fills more places and acts more parts in the later history of European culture than any other German scholar, and is not without distinction in them all. Poet, dramatist, physician, historian and metaphysician, he burst upon the world in the last quarter of the eighteenth century like some celestial phenomenon too bright and rapid to promise permanence, but ensuring it by merits that transformed the coruscations into a steady and never-waning light. He was born on the 10th of November, 1759, at Marbach, in Würtemberg. He studied medicine, and was appointed a surgeon in the army of Würtemberg in 1780. In 1781 he astonished the world by the publication of his drama Die Raüber. It was interesting and powerful, but the glamour which he throws upon the robber's profession so offended the duke of Würtemberg that he angrily told him to let such work alone and stick to his profession. Schiller did not heed this injunction, but remodelled the play to make it more effective; whereupon he was arrested and imprisoned at Stüttgart. He escaped from his confinement, and we find him for eighteen months in the service of the Mannheim theatre, writing tragedies, adapting plays, and even then turning his attention to psychology. He gave a new impulse to the German study of Shakespeare by a spirited translation of Macbeth. In 1785 he was at Leipsic for a few months, and thence he went to Dresden, where he finished his tragedy of Don Carlos in 1786. The hero of this drama was the violent youth the son of Philip II. of Spain, whose death in prison was supposed to be at his father's instance, and whose hopeless love lends a sad romance to the history. In 1787, Schiller was at Weimar, which was some time after that his occasional residence. There he married, and he found congenial-sometimes controversial-society; for there he found Goethe, Herder and Wieland. In 1789 appeared his History of the Decline of the Netherlands, and immediately after he received the flattering appointment of professor of history at the University of Jena. In 1791 he issued his History of lenstein's Tod, the last two of which have the Thirty Years' War, which is consid-W ered by competent critics to be the best historical work up to that time written in Germany. The genius of study was upon him, and possessed him. He wrote upon Kant's Critic of Pure Reason; his pen was never at rest. He consumed the midnight oil when absorbed in his subject, he wrote all night, and kept up his waning powers by strong stimulants which injured his health. But his greatest works were yet to come. While throwing off ballads of singular beauty from time to time, he continued his dramatic writing. In 1799 appeared that wonderful trilogy of Wallenstein; the three parts were Wallenstein's Lager, Die Piccolomini and Wal LOVE IN IDLENESS. HEN comes the beauteous summer- And grass grows green once more, Their pleasant songs again, gay With their enlivening strain,- Unto the mead alone And pluck them for your own; May leave untouched the heel, DOETE DE TROIES. Though valiant all and virtuous; not the Whence are those mild and mournful sounds more I praise their ignorance, but I would plead For the grave manners by our sires of yore Observed, which now their sons no longer heed. I hear Through every land and on the pathless sea? Is it some spirit of air or fire from thee, Subject to laws I move by and revere, Whence springs the change? From letters? Which, lighted by thy glance, can ne'er No; from gay And frivolous customs of the modern day. I fear for thee, my country, and I sigh To see thee ape the slavish climes of IndTo see thee lose in feeble sloth the high Proud name thou ownest, like that conqueror blind And madly weak who triumphed but to die: Nor Trebia, Thrasimene nor Cannæ tame, I Translation of THOMAS ROSCOE. SONNET. FROM THE ORIGINAL OF SAA DE MIRANDA OF KNOW not, lady, by what nameless Mark but the triumphs of oblivion's gloom. Those looks, that voice, that smile, have Tiber alone endures, whose ancient tide |