e it crushed and
trodden down so rudely.

The innocence, the enthusiasm, the exalted life and stern fate of
Louisa and Ferdinand give a powerful charm to this tragedy: it is
everywhere interspersed with pieces of fine eloquence, and scenes
which move us by their dignity or pathos. We recollect few passages of
a more overpowering nature than the conclusion, where Ferdinand,
beguiled by the most diabolical machinations to disbelieve the virtue
of his mistress, puts himself and her to death by poison. There is a
gloomy and solemn might in his despair; though overwhelmed, he seems
invincible: his enemies have blinded and imprisoned him in their
deceptions; but only that, like Samson, he may overturn his
prison-house, and bury himself, and all that have wronged him, in its
ruins.

The other characters of the play, though in general properly
sustained, are not sufficiently remarkable to claim much of our
attention. Wurm, the chief counsellor and agent of the unprincipled,
calculating Father, is wicked enough; but there is no great
singularity in his wickedness. He is little more than the dry, cool,
and now somewhat vulgar miscreant, the villanous Attorney of modern
novels. Kalb also is but a worthless subject, and what is worse, but
indifferently handled. He is meant for the feather-brained thing of
tags and laces, which frequently inhabits courts; but he wants the
grace and agility proper to the species; he is less a fool than a
blockhead, less perverted than totally inane. Schiller's strength lay
not in comedy, but in something far higher. The great merit of the
present work consists in the characters of the hero and heroine; and
in this respect it ranks at the very head of its class. As a tragedy
of common life, we know of few rivals to it, certainly of no superior.

The production of three such pieces as the _Robbers_, _Fiesco_, and
_Kabale und Liebe_, already announced to the world that another great
and original mind had appeared, from whose maturity, when such was the
promise of its youth, the highest expectations might be formed. These
three plays stand related to each other in regard to their nature and
form, as well as date: they exhibit the progressive state of
Schiller's education; show us the fiery enthusiasm of youth,
exasperated into wildness, astonishing in its movements rather than
sublime; and the same enthusiasm gradually yielding to the sway of
reason, gradually using itself to the constraints prescr