The rusticated student set about his work here like one who had a character to retrieve. So far did he gain upon the good will of the college authorities in those years, that in 1799 they conferred upon him the degree of A.M., and his name will be found in the triennial catalogue of Yale, in the list, for that year, of the Honorarii et Alibi Instituti. He thus obtained his degree of A.M. two years earlier than in the ordinary line of things. Had he gone on regularly in his college course, he would have graduated in 1798, and would have taken his A.M., according to usual custom, in 1801. The fact that it was conferred upon him as it was, seems to be good evidence of a general diligence in his law studies.

As the story used to run, it happened, one night, in those years between 1796 and 1799, that a fire was raging somewhere in the vicinity of the Stackpole House, and the finelooking student, by a kind of accident, turned out of the crowd and took the steps of the old mansion as a good place to see the fire. A pair of eyes happened to be looking at him out of the window, that had seen him before. The door was opened, and the student was politely invited to walk in and look from a window where he could see the fire to still better advantage. This was the real beginning of an acquaintance, that ripened into marriage. The marriage took place in the summer of 1800. Meanwhile the law studies had been completed, and the student had opened for himself an office in Boston, and was expecting to make this the place of his residence and his business.

But in 1803, during the first term of Jefferson's presidency, the immense territory called by the general name of Louisiana (of which the present State of Louisiana is only a small portion) was purchased of France. Our young lawyer succeeded, through the aid of friends, in obtaining from Jefferson the office of District Attorney for this territory, and his place of residence was to be New Orleans. In Nov., 1803, he left Boston for that distant city-how distant in those days!—and as soon as he could make suitable arrangements for living, his wife followed, with their little daughter, then two years old. Here everything seemed to promise for him a brilliant and successful career. There was much in his fine looks and style to

captivate the people of that new southwest, and he rose rapidly in business, in wealth, in reputation. But in 1804, his wife died suddenly of the fever of that country, and the little girl, after a time, was sent back to her relatives in Boston. At her return she was probably not far from four years old-old enough to remember her father, from whom she was to be now strangely separated, after such experiences of toilsome journeying as do not often fall to the lot of a little child.

So the months passed on-the little girl now in Boston, prattling of her father, and of the sights she had seen in her southern life, and her father most busily occupied with the duties of his place. The business of the office had now so accumulated that the lawyer had with him, besides other help, a younger brother, who might assist him in his work, and at the same time study his profession. The income was so large that the District Attorney of Louisiana was enabled to live in such state as might seem becoming to a United States' officer. He had servants, fine horses, and carriages, and was wont to appear abroad in the streets of the city with such show and equipage as to attract the admiration of that gay, half-creole population. He was rising in popularity. Office, honor, and wealth seemed to open naturally before him. Flattering reports of his success and of his prospects reached his friends at the north, and his good father was cheered and rewarded for all his patience and toil.

But New Orleans was then what it has been since, a place of wild and ungoverned passions. Its code of morals was exceedingly corrupt, and its whole style of life showy and halffantastic. It was easy for such a man as our District Attorney to feel, that when he was among Romans he must adopt the style of the Romans. He had not the moral courage to carry down to that place the simple lessons of virtue, truth, and right, which he had learned in the quiet home of his father; or under the teachings of President Dwight and his coadjutors at Yale College. Honor in that city meant something exceedingly dif ferent from what was called honor among those plain Connecticut farmers, that sat under his father's preaching.

From the very nature of his life, from the exposures of his office, he was subject to continual frictions and irritations. The

temper of men about him was hot and jealous, ready to take fire at a word, and what was needed to quiet them was a calm, just spirit, ever seeking after the true and right.

Time had passed on until the year 1807. In a quarrel that had arisen with a certain man with whom he had some public business transactions, the District Attorney received a challenge to fight a duel, and under what he deemed to be the pressure of the southern code, he promptly and foolishly accepted it. His brother, who was in the office with him, knew in part, but not exactly, what was passing. He was troubled, anxious, and watchful; fearful of violence, but not knowing exactly in what shape it might fall. His lodging place was not in the same building with his brother. Rising in the early dusk of a March morning, and looking out into the street, he was astonished to see his brother's carriage driven rapidly by, with his brother in it half muffled in a cloak. Suspicion at once flashed upon him as to what was going forward. The carriage had disappeared. But he took its direction and hurried on if possible to reach it.

He came up with it, after a long and weary race, outside of the city limits, and just in season to behold a horrible sight. The duel had been fought, the seconds and witnesses were standing round, and his brother lay prostrate upon the ground bleeding to death. He died upon the spot, and was buried the next day in the Protestant burying-ground, where his ashes still lie, though his grave is entirely undesignated, and cannot now be found.

The little girl, thus left an orphan, was among kindred who would kindly care for her, and who would abundantly provide for her wants. After growing to years of womanhood, she married, and not long ago died, leaving behind her, in the city of her birth, a goodly number of descendants.

Were we not justified in our opening sentences, in saying that human life, in its unfolding, often moves in channels so strange and abrupt, that no novelist would ever be likely, in the operations of his fancy, to follow them or to conceive anything of the kind. The several portions of our story were at first so far asunder, that it did not seem they would ever come together; and yet, now that the story is told, all will agree that they are but parts of one whole.

The Stackpole House, as we have said, is no more; but the old parsonage-house in Eastern Connecticut, where he whose singular fortunes we have traced was born, is still standing in the same rustic quiet as of old. The birds of the air still sing about it, and build their nests in the trees. The cattle and sheep graze peacefully upon the neighboring hill-sides, as though this world had no trouble and sorrow. The meeting-house still stands upon the top of the rocky hill-not the same, but on the same spot-and the people from the scattered farmhouses still gather there Sabbath by Sabbath, to worship the God of their fathers. Life follows death, and death follows life in endless succession.

A few years ago, from an old barrel of sermons then standing in the attic of that house, which had been many times picked over by children, and grandchildren, the writer of this obtained the manuscript which has been described in these pages. It was not comely enough to attract the attention of those who had gone before, and unless the inner contents of it had been discovered, it would doubtless still have been passed by and left behind. But those interior treasures gave it a value, which no other sermon in the pile was likely to have.

ARTICLE IX. THE FRIENDSHIP OF GOETHE AND
SCHILLER.

IT is often said of Goethe that he was over-conscious in the matter of his superiority in the world of letters, and that as a consequence he was inclined to attach extravagant meanings to the extraordinary things he said and did. It may not be amiss to look at that portion of his literary career in which his rare powers culminated, with reference to his own estimate of his ability in directing those powers, and for the purpose of judg ing whether indeed egoism had any inordinate sway in their

exercise.

The tender relation he established between himself and Schiller, when the growth of both minds had passed the period of their literary adolescence, will furnish a field most inviting for such inquiry. The account he gives of it, as an alliance avowedly contracted in the interest of the highest of all art, and under the influence of discoveries which now we see to have been far in advance of his time, instead of suggesting vanity, will, I think, on impartial examination, add a tender lustre to the great glare of his fame, and afford a better clew to the subtlety of his genius than all the other events of his life put together.

First, we should say that the friendship of these two great men, like that we so often note between the antipodal figures of a marked epoch, is interesting as illustrating not the caprices of genius, but some of the profounder processes by which its triumphs are achieved. Genius is not a lawless force in the world of mind. The sentiment now pretty generally prevails that the times of its coming, and the work it will do, are in some sense the predestined data of the era it will represent. The scientific intellect of our age refuses to be baffled by the Byronic frenzy or the madness of Heine, and so takes hold vigorously of the challenging riddle of the Sphinx. All things must be inductively considered; genius shall be no exception; we have the thread to that labyrinth, and will penetrate its pro