ow,
through the various fortunes of the succeeding centuries, the character
of the Swiss has remained for the most part the same as in the earlier
time:--these things one may read at large elsewhere; but we hasten to
the conclusion.

The story of Tell has been the subject of several dramas. Lemierre, a
popular French dramatist of his day, (though J. J. Rousseau affects to
call him a _scribe_ whom the French Academy once crowned,) produced
a play founded upon it, in Paris, in 1766; but the language of Swiss
freemen on a French stage was little to the taste of those days, and
it was a failure. Voltaire, when asked what he thought of it,
replied,--"_Il n'y a rien a dire; il est ecrit en langue du pays._" But
twenty years afterwards it was revived with prodigious success; for the
truth which was in it flashed out then, forerunner of the storm which
was soon to break over France. Again, when Florian, whom we are to
remember always for his "Fables," banished in 1793 by the decree which
forbade nobles to remain in Paris, taking refuge at Sceaux, was arrested
and thrown into prison, he consoled his captivity by composing his drama
of "Guillaume Tell,"--the worst of his productions, it is recorded.
Lastly, it has been consecrated for all time by the genius of Friedrich
Schiller. The legend was first brought to Schiller's notice, doubtless,
by Goethe, who writes to him concerning it from Switzerland in 1797.
Goethe himself thought of founding an epic on it. It was not, however,
till 1801, before his journey to Dresden, that Schiller's attention was
permanently directed to it. Completed on the 18th of February, it
was brought out at Weimar on the 17th of March, 1804, with the most
extraordinary success: the fifth act, however, was suppressed, in
deference to the intended court alliance with the daughter of a murdered
Russian emperor; it not being considered good taste to represent the
assassination of an autocrat upon such an occasion.

Schiller's drama has been translated into French by Merle d'Aubigne and
others, and many times into English,--among us by the Rev. C. T. Brooks.
It follows the tradition substantially. Carlyle declares, indeed, that
"the incidents of the Swiss Revolution, as detailed in Tschudi or
Mueller, are here faithfully preserved, even to their minutest branches."
We tarried once for several days at Brunnen, and read the play upon the
spot in sight of the Ruetli, in the little balcony of the _pension_ of
th