upon her from the commencement of her illness, was compelled to leave her, to deliver the first of a course of lectures which he had previously announced. With wondrous self-command he spoke for two hours on the most abstract subjects, scarcely hoping to find, on his return, his beloved companion still alive. This, as it happened, was the crisis of her disorder. With transports of gratitude and joy he hailed the indications of recovery; those who witnessed the excess of his delight were alone able to estimate the almost superhuman power of control which he had exercised while engaged in his academical vocation.

Beautiful are the tremblings of affection, and the graceful tenderness of those who, after danger or anxiety, look thankfully in each other's faces on delivery from fear. Beautiful the new-born flowerage of love that springs from past calamity. Yet often does it happen, in our world of vicissitude and care, that at the very time when we have been graciously relieved from apprehension, then does some new and terrible distress befall us. Even so it was fated to be now. As his wife was being restored to him with health, Fichte himself caught the infection. Its first symptom was a nervous sleeplessness, which resisted the effect of baths and the ordinary remedies applied for its relief. Then he was attacked by a wild delirium, in which the memories of past activity mingled confusedly with the phantasma of present pain. The valiant soul in its bewilderment held conflict with imaginary enemies, and struggled with deadly passion against the invisible furies of a distempered fancy. At times he conceived that only will and resolution were required to conquer the disease, and would strive desperately to resist the insidious agonies which were vanquishing his strength. In one of his lucid intervals, which were brief and seldom, he was told of Blucher's passage of the Rhine, and the final expulsion of the French from Germany. Then rose before him resplendent visions of future blessedness for Fatherland, and he imagined himself to be contending in the fray for the restoration of its liberties. All this feverish excitement and restlessness wore away his life. Once when his son was approaching him with medicine, he said, with a look of much affection, 'Leave it alone; I need no more of that: I feel that I am well.' He passed some hours in profound and unbroken sleep; nevertheless, on the eleventh day of his illness, during the night of the 27th of January 1814, he died. He died in his fifty-second year, while his bodily and mental faculties were as yet unimpaired by age; his fine black hair unshaded by any signs of gray; his step still firm, and his whole appearance vigorous and well sustained. So robust an intellect-a soul so calm, so lofty, massive, and commanding,' the world shall not see again for many days.

And so, reader, we have come abruptly to the strong man's end. We have followed him-not without a sympathising admiration-through the changes and chances of his life; and now we must pause in reverence over the untimely grave of his mortality. His life has been 'a battle and a march' against the principalities of evil and temptation-a conflict with error and insincerity, in others and in himself; and now the valiant soul has attained to its rest, the strong courageous fighter goes home with victory. The doctrine which he taught, and practically asserted by his life, is a justification of that higher hope which dawns in all times upon

earnest and enthusiastic souls-that lofty and commanding faith in the integrity of the moral principle in man, which seeks to transform the world into the image of the ideal. If it be true, as has been said, that the whole value of history and biography is to increase our self-trust, by demonstrating what is possible to man, then shall the life of this man be an encouragement and indication to them who would strive to fashion their own in accordance with the eternal realities of things. In severe rectitude, in endurance that would not shrink, in energy, and perseverance, and resolution, in incorruptible integrity and devout heroism of character, he is admirable for ever: 'as a man approved by action and suffering, in his life and in his death, he ranks with a class of men who were common only in better ages than ours,' but who were needed in no age more imperatively than now. The grand moral of his life, did any one still need to ask it, is to shew the possibilities of worth and virtue which are yet open to other men. Farewell, thou brave Fichte! and may the love of good men everywhere embalm thee in their memory! *

The facts related in this Paper are principally derived from a Life of Fichte by his son. The writer has been partly aided in shaping them to the present result by an English Memoir' by William Smith; whose excellent translations of several of Fichte's writings he takes the opportunity of recommending to the attention of studious and intelligent readers.

HEYNE: A BIOGRAPHY.

THE HE struggle of genius with adversity, though oftentimes represented, never ceases to be interesting. Every variation of this story has its own graces, and conveys its separate and peculiar lesson. Whoso passes worthily through the straits and perils of difficult and painful circumstances is thereby recommended to the sympathy and admiration of mankind. Men love to trace the paths by which he journeyed-to contemplate, as from a quiet and retired distance, the obstacles and dangers he survived and overcame to witness, with a wondering and pensive interest, the whole intricate drama of his baffled and renewed endeavours-and are not without a disposition to rejoice in the result, when it is seen that a manly and consistent purpose has been followed by success. The biographies of diligent and able persons are, accordingly, among the most attractive and encouraging studies which can engage the attention of hopeful and aspiring natures; being at once mementoes of triumphant energy and pledges of the possibilities which are open to further and corresponding enterprises. He that can succeed in delineating the outward and inward being and history of a man-especially of a man esteemed eminent and worthy in his generation-will not alone impart a rational and exalted pleasure to those who may attentively consider the delineation, but will likewise contribute something to illustrate and promote that intellectual and spiritual advancement whereof all men are more or less capable, and are morally enjoined to aim after. With some such intent, though on a small and very imperfect scale, it is here proposed to portray the life and experiences of Professor Heyne—a scholar whose reputation has now been long established among the learned, not only in Germany, his native country, but likewise in France and England, and indeed throughout Europe generally. By common acknowledgment of all competent and enlightened scholars, he was a man of solid and excellent attainments, and of a character in nearly all respects remarkable: upright, persevering, steadfast-minded; in what he did and what he suffered a notable example of high intelligence, of quiet and sedulous endeavour, personal energy and helpfulness; and also of a pure, modest, and unpretending probity. Any relation which shall represent, however faintly, the attempts, labours, and performances of such a man, cannot fail to be acceptable to many readers, and to some may possibly prove more instructive, and perhaps no less entertaining, than more voluminous and ambitious publications.

Christian Gottlob Heyne was born at Chemnitz, in Upper Saxony, in the month of September 1729. His father, George Heyne, was a weaver in humble, and even impoverished circumstances. The manufactures of Saxony were in his day visibly declining; and consequently the miseries of his class were almost daily accumulating, and their prospects becoming constantly more and more hopeless. Scarcely could the workman, with his utmost diligence, earn a sufficiency for his own support, still less was he capable of adequately providing for his family. Heyne was accordingly nurtured and brought up in the most extreme and bitter poverty. The earliest companion of my childhood,' says he, 'was want; and my first impressions, came from the tears of my mother, who had not bread to give her children.' He was also the first-born of the family, and had therefore the completest opportunities for witnessing the various phases of destitution which the household from time to time presented. Many a piteous and distressing spectacle appears to have been exhibited in that poor weaver's cottage, where the father often worked through long weary days-from early morning until late at night—and then perhaps could not find a purchaser for the product of his labour. Scenes of memorable sadness, hunger-pangs, the still despair of stricken industry, were things familiar to the boy from earliest infancy; and with the strange bewildered sympathy of a child, he often looked upward to his mother's face, and wept to see her sorrowful. His was a childhood of that unhappy sort which Charles Lamb has so touchingly depicted— a childhood which has 'no childishness in its dwellings,' no toys, no pastimes, no pleasant or sweet remembrances-nothing but the keen experiences of a premature worldliness, Saturday-night anxieties, the dull oppression and the bondage of despondency. How painful a thing is it that a child should have any curiosity about the price of bread, or be so conditioned as to entertain a fear of being sent away as creditless from a baker's shop! Whoever has seen a child in such extremity-not yet hardened or rendered callous by long familiarity with wretchednesswill not readily forget the deplorable dejection of its countenance.

Young Christian Heyne suffered many such rebuffs; suffered them until his young heart grew vindictive and rebellious. It is little known how much unnatural exasperation is kindled in even tender minds by harassing and straitened circumstances. To this poor boy, as he began to apprehend some little of the discrepancies of society, it appeared that people were everywhere combined, as in hostile conspiracy, to render him and those who were dear to him unhappy. The distress occasioned to his parents by the haughty bearing of 'purse-proud' traders-forestallers, who bought up the linen made by the poorer people at the lowest, and often unjust prices, to sell in other districts at the highest-aroused and fostered in him a burning indignation. Often, on Saturday nights, had he seen his mother 'wringing her hands and weeping,' when it happened that she had come back with the web of the father's weaving-the product of a week's hard toil, and not unfrequently of sleepless nights-having been unable to find any one to buy it. On such occasions the boy or his sister would sometimes be sent out with the same piece of cloth, to try if they could get rid of it, at any of the places where the mother's application had been unsuccessful. Necessity as Heyne has related, often constrained the poorer sort to sell

the sweat of their brows for anything the forestallers thought well to offer, and to make up the deficiency between the price and value in starvation. The imperiousness and petty tyranny of these unjust dealers so powerfully and painfully laid hold upon his mind, that when afterwards, at school, he first heard of 'tyrannicide,' he says he conceived the project of acting the part of a Brutus on all those oppressors of the poor' who had so often cast his father and mother into straits, deeming that it would be a noble deed to rid the earth of them for ever. 'And here,' adds he, 'I had the first instance or illustration of a truth which I have since frequently had occasion to observe-that if the man who is armed with a feeling of his wrongs, and possessed of any considerable strength of soul, does not risk the worst, and become an open criminal, it is solely owing to the beneficent effect of the circumstances wherein Providence has placed him, which, by fettering his activity, guard him from attempting the destructive enterprises his excited passions may suggest. That the oppressing portion of mankind should be secured against the oppressed is apparently regarded, in the scheme of the inscrutable Wisdom, as a most important element of the present system of things.'

Heyne's parents, though thus miserably situated, did what they could to procure him some little education. At an early age he was sent to one of the humbler sort of schools, where he soon obtained the praise of taking delight in learning, and of making more than ordinary progress. Before he was ten years old he even began to assist in raising the money for his school fees, by giving lessons to a neighbour's child in reading and in penmanship. When the common school course had carried him as far as he could be advanced by it, he became desirous, as he says, of 'proceeding into Latin.' Unluckily, it was beyond his parents' means to provide the money for such a purpose. This was a great grief to the boy, and he bore it about with him for many days, perceiving little likelihood of ever being delivered from it. However, one day when he was greatly distressed, even to sobs and tears, by pondering on his cheerless prospects, he happened to be sent to fetch a loaf from the shop of a baker, who was his godfather, and a near relation of his mother; and as it chanced, was questioned by the worthy man concerning his discomposure, which, after a stream of tears, the boy succeeded in revealing, and presently had good reason to be comforted. The godfather was in easy circumstances, and as Heyne records, he magnanimously offered to pay out of his own pocket the weekly sum required for the desired teaching, imposing in return only one condition upon the pupil-namely, that he should come to him every Sunday, and repeat such part of the Gospel as he had learned by heart: an arrangement which Heyne considered had one very good effect upon him, inasmuch as it exercised his memory, and taught him to recite without bashfulness or hesitation.

Overjoyed by his unexpected fortune, the boy started off homewards to proclaim the grand intelligence, triumphantly tossing up his loaf into the air, and capering with barefooted adroitness to catch it as it descended. His almost delirious excitement was naturally detrimental to the successful management of sleights-of-hand, and after a few surprising hits, the loaf fell into a puddle: an unfortunate circumstance, which brought the elated experimenter a little more to his senses. However, the chid