distinguished woman arrived at Berlin in 1805, and desirous of acquainting
herself more thoroughly with German literature she selected Schlegel to
direct her studies of it, and at the same time confided to his charge the
completion of her children's education. Quitting Berlin he accompanied
this lady on her travels through Italy and France, and afterwards repaired
with her to her paternal seat at Coppet, on the Lake of Geneva, which now
became for some time his fixed abode. It was here that in 1807 he wrote in
French his _Parallel between the Phaedra of Euripides and the Phedre of
Racine_, which produced a lively sensation in the literary circles of
Paris. This city had peculiar attractions for Schlegel, both in its
invaluable literary stores and its re-union of men of letters, among whom
his own views and opinions found many enthusiastic admirers and partisans,
notwithstanding that in his critical analysis of Racine's _Phedre_ he
had presumed to attack what Frenchmen deemed the chiefest glory of their
literature, and had mortified their national vanity in its most sensitive
point.

In the spring of 1808 he visited Vienna, and there read to a brilliant
audience his _Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature_, which, on their
publication, were hailed throughout Europe with marked approbation, and
which will, unquestionably, transmit his name to the latest posterity.
His object in these Lectures is both to take a rapid survey of dramatic
productions of different ages and nations, and to develope and determine
the general ideas by which their true artistic value must be judged. In
his travels with Madame de Stael he was introduced to the present King,
then the Crown Prince, of Bavaria, who bestowed on him many marks of his
respect and esteem, and about this time he took a part in the _German
Museum_ (_Deutsche Museum_), of his brother Frederick, contributing some
learned and profound dissertations on the _Lay of the Nibelungen_. In
1812, when the subjugated South no longer afforded an asylum to the