d village should have vied in
doing honor to the memory of one of their greatest poets. The letters
which have reached us from every German capital relate no more than what
we expected. There were meetings and feastings, balls and theatrical
representations. The veteran philologist, Jacob Grimm, addressed the
Berlin Academy on the occasion in a soul-stirring oration; the directors
of the Imperial Press at Vienna seized the opportunity to publish a
splendid album, or "Schillerbuch," in honor of the poet; unlimited
eloquence was poured forth by professors and academicians; school children
recited Schiller's ballads; the German students shouted the most popular
of his songs; nor did the ladies of Germany fail in paying their tribute
of gratitude to him who, since the days of the Minnesaengers, had been the
most eloquent herald of female grace and dignity. In the evening torch
processions might be seen marching through the streets, bonfires were
lighted on the neighboring hills, houses were illuminated, and even the
solitary darkness of the windows of the Papal Nuncio at Vienna added to
the lustre of the day.(11) In every place where Schiller had spent some
years of his life, local recollections were revived and perpetuated by
tablets and monuments. The most touching account of all came from the
small village of Cleversulzbach. On the village cemetery, or, as it is
called in German, the "God's-acre," there stands a tombstone, and on it
the simple inscription, "Schiller's Mother." On the morning of her son's
birthday the poor people of the village were gathered together round that
grave, singing one of their sacred hymns, and planting a lime-tree in the
soil which covers the heart that loved him best.

But the commemoration of Schiller's birthday was not confined to his
native country. We have seen, in the German papers, letters from St.
Petersburg and Lisbon, from Venice, Rome, and Florence, from Amsterdam,
Stockholm, and Christiana, from Warsaw and Odessa, from Jassy and
Bucharest, from Constantinople, Algiers, and Smyrna, and lately from
America and Australia, all describing the festive gatherings which were
suggested, no doubt, by Schiller's cosmopolitan countrymen, but joined in
most cheerfully by all the nations of the globe. Poets of higher rank than
Schiller--Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe--have never aroused such world-wide
sympathies; and it is not without interest to inquire into the causes
which have secured to Sc