pter of youth. He himself is sufficiently vindicated when he
is shown to be no corrupter of youth. Is there any sentiment of equity
that would prompt us to suppress the fact, that he died by the public
executioner of Athens? Or would it be doing honour to history--to this
great tribunal of appeal--to stifle our indignation against the unjust
and criminal sentences which she has had to repeal?

No doubt the poet would have had difficulties to contend with, in
following the course of history. In particular, as he had chosen to
represent Johanna as veritably inspired, he would have been tasked to
reconcile this severity of her fate, on the one hand, with the justice
of Heaven towards its own missionary; or on the other, with the
unblemished character of his heroine. Either Heaven must appear
forgetful of Johanna, or Johanna must be represented as having forfeited
a right to its protection. But this difficulty Schiller has not entirely
escaped in his own plot, and he has shown how it may be encountered.
Johanna might well yield to the tenderness of a human passion without
forfeiting our sympathy, or incurring a stain upon her moral character;
and yet this aberration of heart--this dereliction from the austere
purity required by her sacred mission--might, in a theological point of
view, be supposed to have forfeited her claim to the miraculous
interposition of Heaven in her behalf. So that, in the closing scenes,
though Johanna might have no claim on the miraculous favours of Heaven,
she would still be a saint at heart, and entitled to our deepest
sympathy; and Heaven would receive back, if not its prophetess and
champion, yet a noble child of earth, still further purified by more
than expiatory sufferings.

This species of difficulty meets us, in one instance, in the tragedy of
Schiller, in an unexpected and unnecessary manner. How are we to
understand the thunder which is heard in apparent confirmation of the
cruel accusation of Thibaut? As a mere coincidence, as a mere natural
phenomenon, we can hardly view it; appearing as it does in this
atmosphere of wonders. The archbishop seems to think that possibly the
thunder might testify _for_ Johanna. But as the effect is to produce her
condemnation, it is impossible it could have been _intended_ by Heaven
for her acquittal. And yet, if we are to look upon it as corroborating
the accusation of the father, it not only passes a very severe sentence
upon Johanna, but it sanctions