OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 



This was the educational movement, notably in its 

 higher claims and in the wider sense which the word 

 education acquired in the writings of Lessing, Herder, 

 Schiller, and Goethe. Lessing wrote a treatise on the 

 education of mankind. Herder, in his writings as well 

 as in his official position, occupied himself all through 

 his life with the problem of education, which he con- 

 ceived to consist in the widening, deepening, and 

 spiritualising of human interest. Schiller published his 

 celebrated letters " on the eesthetical education of man," 

 and Goethe not only gave pointed and telling ex- 

 pression, in many passages of his writings and in his 

 voluminous correspondence, to the aims and ideals which 

 impelled his age, but also stood before the world as 

 a living example of the highest form of liberal self- 

 culture, striving continuously to subdue that element 

 which " drags us all down," and which, in his own 

 beautiful words, Schiller alone had cast into a shadowy 

 distance : " the Vulgar." l 



i Indessen schritt sein Geist gewaltig 



fort 

 In's Ewige des Wahren, Guten, Scho- 



nen, 



Und hinter ihm, in wesenlosem Scheine, 

 Lag, was uns Alle Mndigt, das Ge- 



meine. 



The poem in which these beauti- 

 ful lines are contained is, I believe, 

 little known in this country though 

 it is rich in poetical feeling and in 

 sentences which have become pro- 

 verbial, and contains some of those 

 telling words which Goethe has 

 introduced into the German lan- 

 guage. It had its origin in a me- 

 morial service held on the 10th 

 August 1805, after Schiller's death, 

 and was subsequently twice re- 

 peated in 1810 and 1815 /with some 

 additional stanzas. It is termed 



an " Epilogue to Schiller's Song 

 of the Bell"; this being, in the 

 opinion of many, one of the most 

 characteristic of Schiller's poetic 

 productions. As such it attaches 

 itself immediately to the closing 

 words of that " Song," accord- 

 ing to which the first ring of 

 the newly-cast bell should be the 

 message of Peace. If the " Song 

 of the Bell" gives one in a few 

 pages a fairly complete idea of the 

 peculiarity and many-sidedness of 

 Schiller's poetical genius, the " Epi- 

 logue," on the other side, .is quite 

 as characteristic of Goethe's mind : 

 one of the finest and most mag- 

 nanimous tributes that ever a poet 

 paid to the genius of his friend and 

 rival. 



