certainty into another,
he is driven at length to still his scruples in the bosom of the
Infallible Church. The incidents are contrived with considerable
address, displaying a familiar acquaintance, not only with several
branches of science, but also with some curious forms of life and
human nature. One or two characters are forcibly drawn; particularly
that of the amiable but feeble Count, the victim of the operation. The
strange Foreigner, with the visage of stone, who conducts the business
of mystification, strikes us also, though we see but little of him.
The work contains some vivid description, some passages of deep
tragical effect: it has a vein of keen observation; in general, a
certain rugged power, which might excite regret that it was never
finished. But Schiller found that his views had been mistaken: it was
thought that he meant only to electrify his readers, by an
accumulation of surprising horrors, in a novel of the Mrs. Radcliffe
fashion. He felt, in consequence, discouraged to proceed; and finally
abandoned it.

Schiller was, in fact, growing tired of fictitious writing.
Imagination was with him a strong, not an exclusive, perhaps not even
a predominating faculty: in the sublimest flights of his genius,
intellect is a quality as conspicuous as any other; we are frequently
not more delighted with the grandeur of the drapery in which he
clothes his thoughts, than with the grandeur of the thoughts
themselves. To a mind so restless, the cultivation of all its powers
was a peremptory want; in one so earnest, the love of truth was sure
to be among its strongest passions. Even while revelling, with unworn
ardour, in the dreamy scenes of the Imagination, he had often cast a
longing look, and sometimes made a hurried inroad, into the calmer
provinces of reason: but the first effervescence of youth was past,
and now more than ever, the love of contemplating or painting things
as they should be, began to yield to the love of knowing things as
they are. The tendency of his mind was gradually changing; he was
about to enter on a new field of enterprise, where new triumphs
awaited him.

For a time he had hesitated what to choose; at length he began to
think of History. As a leading object of pursuit, this promised him
peculiar advantages. It was new to him; and fitted to employ some of
his most valuable gifts. It was grounded on reality, for which, as we
have said, his taste was now becoming stronger; its mighty r