The old village cobbler his cap waves with glee: To the dance are fast flocking, with frolic and jest, best: Where tarry the suitors? Our hearts are all fain ! And who dons her kirtle for frisking it gay? His flock leaves the shepherd all heedless behind, But he takes, all silent, his fiddle to hand Half brooding, half playing, unconscious doth stand; In the nun's cloister garden, on flowery steep, Bends one o'er the fountain, and, listening, doth weep: "Oh, veil! oh, black raiments! oh, bitterest pain! Ay! Heini of Steier has come back again!" -Translated by MRS. FREILIGrath-Kroeker. SCHELLING, FRIEDRICH WILLIAM JOSEPH VON, a German philosopher, born at Leonberg, Würtemberg, January 27, 1775; died at Ragatz, Switzerland, August 20, 1854. He studied at Tübingen and Jena, devoting himself mainly to speculative philosophy, and may properly be considered as the founder of a school, of which the fundamental idea, as finally developed, is an attempted reconciliation of philosophy with positive Christian theology. In his earlier speculations, however, he dwells more especially upon the identity of mind with Nature. In 1808 he was made secretary of the Academy of Arts at Munich, where he became Professor of Philosophy in 1827. In 1841 he was called to Berlin, where he delivered a course of lectures on The Philosophy of Revelation. His chief works are Ideen su Einer Philosophie der Natur (Ideas toward the Philosophy of Nature, 1797); Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der Höhern Physik sur Erläuterung der Allgemeinen Organismus (Of the World-Soul, an Hypothesis of the Higher Physics in Elucidation of the Universal Organism, 1798); Erste Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (First Attempt at a Systematic Philosophy of Nature, 1799); System des Transcendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental Idealism, 1800); Bruno, oder über das Göttliche und Naturliche Princip der Dinge (Bruno, a Dialogue concerning the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, 1802), and Philosophie und Religion (1804). His Works were published in fourteen volumes (1856-61). LOCAL GUARDIAN SPIRITS. There is a peculiar and mysterious power that dwells concealed in a locality. Certain tenets or views of the world are found indigenous in certain defined localities, and not only on large continents-as in the East-but in small districts, and such as lie in the midst of regions inhabited by people of an alien creed. Were not the ancient oracles confined to certain places? And may we not thence infer, generally, that locality, in its relations with the higher life, is not such an indifferent thing as has been commonly supposed? How often should we be surprised to find-if we had not the confirmed habit of seeing only outward things-that the circumstances which we mistake for causes are merely means and conditions? and that, while we are little thinking of it, spirits are active around us, and ready to lead us either to good or to evil, according as we yield to the influence of one or the other? . May it not be assumed that the souls of the men who have long had reverence paid to them in certain districts may-through the magic influence of faith-actually become the Guardian Spirits of those localities? I speak of the men who first brought into these forests the light of the faith, who first planted vines on these hills and corn in these valleys, and who were thus the authors of a more humanized life in regions previously wild and almost inaccessible: is it not natural, I say, that they should retain a permanent interest in the district which they brought to a state of culture, and in the people whom they led to union in one faith? THE SYMPATHY OF MIND WITH NATURE. O Springtime, the season of aspiration! with what delight in life thou fillest the hearth! On one side, the Spiritual World is attracting us, and we feel assured that only in its closest bond of union can our true happiness be found. On the other hand, Nature, with her thousandfold witcheries, calls back our hearts and our senses to her own eternal life. It is hard that neither the internal nor the external can fully satisfy our desires, and that the souls in which the two are united are so few. A life purely spiritual cannot satisfy us; there is something in us that has a longing for reality. As the thoughts of the artist can find no rest until he has embodied them in an external representation; as the man of genius, when inspired by an ideal, strives either to find it, or to reveal it in a bodily form; so the object of all our aspiration is to find in the perfect Material, the counterpart and reflection of the perfect Spiritual. It is the Springtime that has awakened in me this blos. soming of thoughts and hopes. I see it clearly, and feel it deeply. We are the children of Nature, we be. long to her by our birth, and we can never be wholly separated from her; and if Nature does not belong to God, we also cannot belong to Him. Not we alone as. pire, but all Nature longs to return to the source of her existence. True, she is now made subject to the law of externality. But this firm structure of the world will at last be resolved into a Spiritual life. The divine fire that now lies imprisoned there will finally prevail, and will consume all that now exists only by means of a re pression of Nature's true inner life. 000 SCHERER, WILLIAM, a German philologist and historian of literature, born at Shönborn, Lower Austria, April 26, 1841; died in Berlin, August 6, 1886. He studied German and Sanskrit philology at Vienna and Berlin, and became Professor Ordinary of Language and German Literature at Vienna in 1868, at Strasburg in 1872, and at Berlin in 1877. He was one of the most learned and excellent of German writers, and his History of German Literature (1883; Mrs. Cony beare's translation, republished in New York 1886) is already a standard work. He was co-author of Monuments of German Poetry (1864); History of Alsace (1871), and Sources and Researches of the History of the Language and Civilization of German Peoples, his last work. Under his own name only, are History of the German Language (1868); German Studies, 3 vols. (1872-78); Religious and Epic Poetry of the German Empire, 2 vols. (1874-75); History of German Poetry, from the XIth to the XIIth Century (1875); The Psalms of Notker (1876)—ninth century; The Beginnings of German Prose Romance, and Jorg Wickram (1879)-his novel, and Essays on Goethe (1886). We select from Scherer some traits of the German hero-legends, dating back to about A.D. 600, and remoulded six hundred years later into the famous Nibelungenlied and some other poems. |