was really guilty of treason was a moot question which admitted of no partisan treatment.  But Schiller’s genius triumphed splendidly over the difficulties inherent in the subject.  In the Camp we get a picturesque view of the motley soldatesca which was the basis of Wallenstein’s power and prestige.  In The Piccolomini we see the nature of the dangerous game he is playing, and in Wallenstein’s Death the unheroic hero becomes very impressive in his final discomfiture and his pitiable taking-off.  The love-tragedy of Max and Thekla casts a mellow light of romance over the otherwise austere political action.

[Illustration:  1.  THE MILITARY ACADEMY IN STUTTGART WHERE SCHILLER WAS EDUCATED]

[Illustration:  2.  THE THEATRE IN MANNHEIM IN 1782 WHERE SCHILLER’S “THE ROBBERS,” “FIESCO,” AND “LOVE AND INTRIGUE” WERE FIRST PLAYED]

During the years 1795-1800 Schiller wrote a large number of short poems in which he gave expression to his matured philosophy of life.  His best ballads also belong to this period.  Pure song he did not often attempt, his philosophic bent predisposing him to what the Germans call the lyric of thought.  Perhaps his invalidism had something to do with it; at any rate the total number of his singable lyrics, such as The Maiden’s Lament, is but small.  As a poet of reflection he is at his best in The Ideal and Life, The Walk, The Eleusinian Festival, and the more popular Song of the Bell.  The first-named of these four, at first called The Realm of Shades, is a masterpiece of high thinking, charged with warm emotion and bodied forth in gorgeous imagery.  Its doctrine is that only by taking refuge in the realm of the Ideal can we escape from the tyranny of the flesh, the bondage of Nature’s law, the misery of struggle and defeat.  Yet it is not a doctrine of quietism that is here preached, as if inner peace were the supreme thing in life, but rather one of hopeful endeavor. The Walk, one of the finest elegies in the German language, is a pensive retrospect of the origins of civilization, loving contemplation of Nature giving rise to reflections on man and his estate. The Song of the Bell, probably the best known of all Schiller’s poems, gives expression to his feeling for the dignity of labor and for the poetry of man’s social life.  Perhaps we may say that the heart of his message is found in this stanza of The Words of Illusion: 

  And so, noble soul, forget not the law,
    And to the true faith be leal;
  What ear never heard and eye never saw,
    The Beautiful, the True, they are real. 
  Look not without, as the fool may do;
    It is in thee and ever created anew.