JOHANNES YON, the only author whom Germany can oppose to the illustrious historians of Italy and Britain, was born at Schaffhausen in 1752, of which town his father was a pastor. In 1769, he commenced his academical life at Göttingen, where he applied himself principally to theology; a study and a profession which he soon deserted. In 1772, he was appointed professor of the Greek language in the gymnasium of his native town. In 1774, he removed to Geneva, where he principally resided till 1781. Here he delivered his lectures on Universal History, which were written originally in French; and here he formed the plan and commenced the investigations towards his History of the Helvetic Confederacy. In 1781 he was called, as professor of history, to the Carolinum of Brunswick, an appointment which he soon abandoned; and, the following year, he returned to Switzerland. By Heyne's recommendation, he was, in 1786, called as librarian, with the title of audic counsellor, to Mentz. In 1800, he was appointed librarian to the imperial library at Vienna; in 1804, he was called as historiographer and counsellor of war to Berlin; and, in 1807, he was appointed minister, counsellor of state, and general director of public instruction in Cassel, where he died in 1809.

To enter into any detail regarding the history of Mueller's life is here the less requisite, as there perhaps never existed an author whose internal character was more independent of outward circumstances, or in whom the writer was in a more remarkable manner distinguished from the man; whilst, at the same time, his writings breathe the whole energy of the deep feelings of his ardent disposition. An honest enthusiasm for truth and virtue was combined in him with an ambition which could be satisfied only with the renown of a great author. No exertion of intellect was for him too painful; and no perseverance in industry surpassed his endurance. Of a cheerful disposition, even amidst the adversities of life, he pursued, without faltering, his determined object. From the letters which, in his youth, he wrote to his friend De Boosten, we see him at the beginning the same as at the termination of his course. But this very consistency renders the contrast between the two characters which he united in his person only the more remarkable. By nature amiable, but soft even to weakness; open and liberal, though without one conspicuous trait of magnanimity; accommodating himself to circumstances with the pliability of a courtier, and yielding to the seduction of his passions in a point where morality condemns him without appeal; yet no sooner had he seized his pen, no sooner had he begun to narrate the great events of former times, than this man became a hero at once in firmness and elevation; and this not by any artificial discipline of his imagination, but from a genuine and resistless enthusiasm in his own moral delineations. It then became a necessity of his nature to think and write as if he himself had been one of the mighty warriors or statesmen, to glorify whose names it was his chief delight; now a Roman, now a Switzer of the ancient time, and now some other illustrious personage, whose character he superinduced upon his own in the moment of description. Moral and political grandeur had indeed for him so strong a charm, that he frequently deceived himself in his estimate of their amount.

With such a character of mind, Mueller could never be an historian who wrote only for the intellect, and still less an historian who wrote only for the memory. All that he read of remarkable persons and events became, in his imagination, a series of animated pictures. He must represent and paint, and he painted with few strokes, and happily, as if from life; whilst truth, as far as this could be discovered by historical research, was of greater value in his eyes than all the ornaments of rhetoric. His imagination was only active to place what he read before him in a living form. His historical delineations were inspired with the warmth of his peculiar temperament, but not misrepresented. As he himself was animated by whatever was good, and generous, and great, so he wished also to animate his reader by a sympathy with his portraits, and through the instructions which history conveys. But in Mueller's view, history must be instructive in a degree of which few historians have any conception. His free and clear intellect, adhering to no philosophical system, and with little inclination towards the abstract sciences in general, but penetrating deeply into the internal connection of historical events, was able to extract from this connection political and moral principles, which, though manifest even to the unlearned reader when placed before him, are overlooked even by the enlightened thinker when his observation is not guided by the legitimate deduction of causes and effects. And in this historical deduction, if we except Thucydides and Tacitus, Mueller has no superior. Not that he is equal to these great originals, nor even to some modern historians, in the detailed development of events, and in the arrangement of circumstances in the order of their absolute and relative importance. For the adequate attainment of this great end, Mueller was disqualified by a certain deficiency in the powers of abstraction and combination. The ideas, in his representation, display no regular subordination; and they are frequently crowded together, transposed, or dragged behind. In this respect he is more peculiarly opposed to Tacitus, although the Germans have fondly styled him the twin brother of that great historian, who, in the distinction of what is principal and accessory, has no equal, and almost no likeness, amongst the historians either of ancient or modern times. Thucydides and Tacitus he more nearly resembles in the energy and laconic brevity of his style. Pleased only with a strength and fulness of thought, he abhors all that is empty, or trivial, or redundant. Being impelled by youthful enthusiasm to write the history of his native Switzerland, and dwelling, as it were, for years amongst the original documents from which his materials were compiled, his powerful style insensibly contracted a certain antique colouring from the language of the ancient chronicles; and thus it is that his diction more vividly expresses the character of that peculiar period which, during the interval of composition, was then living in his own imagination. What was tasteless and offensive in the style of the old chronicles became softened down in Mueller's cultivated mind; but whilst his intellect was engrossed with the connection of events, a laconic brevity had for his individual taste an irresistible charm, even when purchased at the expense of easy and natural expression.

Mueller's History of the Helvetic Confederacy, the work on which he laboured longest, and to which he applied the whole force of his industry and talents, is the book in which we may best discover the spirit of his historical composition, in all its qualities both of comprehension and detail. But this work, one of the most singular productions of great historical intellect, requires so close an attention to a multitude of small matters of fact, the details of which might easily have been omitted, and, from the continued brevity, combined with the antiquated costume of the expression, exacts from the reader, unaccustomed to such a style, so vehement a stretch of thought, that we are ever and anon compelled to lay aside the book and breathe, in order to collect new strength for the perusal. Indeed, no book has, perhaps, been so much praised, and so little read, as the Helvetic History of our author. Mueller, who, from youth till death, and amidst literary and political occupations of another kind, always considered the history of his native country as the principal object of his life, had so accustomed himself to that character of composition which he thought accommodated to a history of Switzerland, that, in his other writings, he is not wholly able to divest himself of its peculiarities. His Universal History, first drawn up in French, for a society of young persons who were his pupils at Geneva, afterwards with greater care re-written in the German tongue, and first published after the author's death, though comprising, in abridgment, all ancient and modern ages, is, however, far inferior in historical value to the History of Switzerland; but the nature of its subject is more agreeable to the majority of readers; and in the condensation of the matter, the style has a certain facility, in which we easily recognise the man to whom French was in his youth a second mother tongue.

Of the other writings of Mueller, the most remarkable are the Letters, which were not written for the world, but published after his death in the collection of his works, of which they occupy several volumes. In these letters we discover the character of the man on its fairest and most honourable side; and we likewise see how far his style is removed from the affectation with which he has so often been reproached. Written rapidly, without premeditation, and addressed to confidential friends, the historian of the Helvetic Confederacy is recognised in every sentence of these letters; and the absence of a smooth and polished diction is in itself an excellence, when contrasted with the paint of letters written for admiration and display.