vity, came on in its course, cold, bleak,
and stormy; and along with it his sickness returned. The help of
physicians was vain; the unwearied services of trembling affection
were vain: his disorder kept increasing; on the 9th of May it reached
a crisis. Early in the morning of that day, he grew insensible, and by
degrees delirious. Among his expressions, the word _Lichtenberg_ was
frequently noticed; a word of no import; indicating, as some thought,
the writer of that name, whose works he had lately been reading;
according to others, the castle of Leuchtenberg, which, a few days
before his sickness, he had been proposing to visit. The poet and the
sage was soon to lie low; but his friends were spared the farther pain
of seeing him depart in madness. The fiery canopy of physical
suffering, which had bewildered and blinded his thinking faculties,
was drawn aside; and the spirit of Schiller looked forth in its wonted
serenity, once again before it passed away forever. After noon his
delirium abated; about four o'clock he fell into a soft sleep, from
which he ere long awoke in full possession of his senses. Restored to
consciousness in that hour, when the soul is cut off from human help,
and man must front the King of Terrors on his own strength, Schiller
did not faint or fail in this his last and sharpest trial. Feeling
that his end was come, he addressed himself to meet it as became him;
not with affected carelessness or superstitious fear, but with the
quiet unpretending manliness which had marked the tenor of his life.
Of his friends and family he took a touching but a tranquil farewell:
he ordered that his funeral should be private, without pomp or parade.
Some one inquiring how he felt, he said "_Calmer and calmer_;" simple
but memorable words, expressive of the mild heroism of the man. About
six he sank into a deep sleep; once for a moment he looked up with a
lively air, and said, "_Many things were growing plain and clear to
him!_" Again he closed his eyes; and his sleep deepened and deepened,
till it changed into the sleep from which there is no awakening; and
all that remained of Schiller was a lifeless form, soon to be mingled
with the clods of the valley.

The news of Schiller's death fell cold on many a heart: not in Germany
alone, but over Europe, it was regarded as a public loss, by all who
understood its meaning. In Weimar especially, the scene of his noblest
efforts, the abode of his chosen friends, the s