fevered fancies:-he imagined himself in the midst of the victorious struggle, striking for the liberties of Germany; and then again it was against his own disease that he fought, and power of will and firm resolution were the arms by which he was to conquer it. Shortly before his death, when his son approached him with medicine, he said, with his usual look of deep affection" Leave it alone; I need no more medicine: I feel that I am well." On the eleventh day of his illness, on the night of the 27th January 1814, he died. The last hours of his life were passed in deep and unbroken sleep.

Fichte died in his fifty-second year, with his bodily and mental faculties unimpaired by age; scarcely a grey hair shaded the deep black upon his bold and erect head. In stature he was low, but powerful and muscular. His step was firm, and his whole appearance and address bespoke the rectitude, firmness, and earnestness of his character.

His widow survived him for five years. By the kindness of the Monarch she was enabled to pass the remainder of her life in ease and competence, devoting herself to the superintendence of her son's education. She died on the 29th January 1819, after an illness of seven days.

Fichte died as he had lived, -the priest of knowledge, the apostle of freedom, the martyr of humanity. He belongs to those Great Men whose lives are an everlasting possession to mankind, and whose words the world does not willingly let die. His character stands written in his life, a massive but severely simple whole. It has no parts;-the depth and earnestness on which

it rests, speak forth alike in his thoughts, words, and actions. No man of his time-few perhaps of any time-exercised a more powerful, spirit-stirring influence over the minds of his fellow-countrymen. The impulse which he communicated to the national thought extended far beyond the sphere of his personal influence;-it has awakened,-it will still awaken,— high emotion and manly resolution in thousands who never heard his voice. The ceaseless effort of his life was to rouse men to a sense of the divinity of their own nature;-to fix their thoughts upon a spiritual life as the only true and real life;—to teach them to look upon all else as mere show and unreality; and thus to lead them to constant effort after the highest Ideal of purity, virtue, independence, and self-denial. To this ennobling enterprise he consecrated his being;—to it he devoted his gigantic powers of thought, his iron will, his resistless eloquence. But he taught it also in deeds more eloquent than words. In the strong reality of his life,-in his intense love for all things beautiful and true,—in his incorruptible integrity and heroic devotion to the right, we see a living manifestation of his principles. His life is the true counterpart of his philosophy;—it is that of a strong, free, incorruptible man. And with all the sternness of his morality, he is full of gentle and generous sentiments; of deep, overflowing sympathies. No tone of love, no soft breathing of tenderness, fall unheeded on that high royal soul, but in its calm sublimity find a welcome and a home. Even his hatred is the offspring of a higher love. Truly indeed has he been described by one of our own country's brightest ornaments as a "colossal, adamantine spirit, standing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men; fit to have

been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of beauty and virtue in the groves of Academe." But the sublimity of his intellect casts no shade on the soft current of his affections, which flows, pure and unbroken, through the whole course of his life, to enrich, fertilize, and adorn it. In no other man of modern times do we find the stern grandeur of ancient virtue so blended with the kindlier humanities of our nature, which flourish best under a gentler civilization. We prize his philosophy deeply,—it is to us an invaluable possession, for it seems the noblest exposition to which we have yet listened of human nature and divine truth,—but with reverent thankfulness we acknowledge a still higher debt, for he has left behind him the best gift which man can bequeath to man,-a brave, heroic human life.

In the first churchyard from the Oranienburg gate of Berlin, stands a tall obelisk with this inscription:

THE TEACHERS SHALL SHINE

AS THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE FIRMAMENT;

AND THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

AS THE STARS FOR EVER AND EVER.

It marks the grave of FICHTE. The faithful partner of his life sleeps at his feet.

FINIS.

PRINTED BY ROBERT HARDIE & COMPANY,

FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.

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