a short musical composition, generally in time, of a light and playful style. In more modern symphonies, quartets, trios, sonatas, &c., the scherzo takes the place of the older minuet, but is of a much more rapid movement. Some excellent examples of the scherzo are to be found in Beethoven's works; among others, one in his second Symphony, op. 36, in D major.

SCHIECHS, or SCHIECHS, is a name which is applied by the Arabs to their nobles. "Among the Bedouins," says Niebuhr, "it belongs to every noble, whether of the highest or the lowest order. Their nobles are very numerous, and compose in manner the whole nation; the plebeians are invariably actuated and guided by the schiechs, who superintend and direct in every transaction. The schiechs and their subjects are born to the life of shepherds and soldiers. The greater tribes rear many camels, which they either sell to their neighbours, or employ them in the carriage of goods, or in military expeditions. The petty tribes keep flocks of sheep. Among those tribes which apply to agriculture, the schiechs live always in tents, and leave the culture of their grounds to their subjects, whose dwellings are wretched huts. Schiechs always ride on horses or dromedaries, inspecting the conduct of their subjects, visiting their friends, or hunting. Traversing the desert, where the horizon is wide as on the ocean, they perceive travellers at a distance. As travellers are seldom to be met with on those wild tracts, they easily discover such as pass that way, and are tempted to pillage them when they find their own party the strongest."

SCHIEDAM, a city of the Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. It stands on the river Schie, near its junction with the Maas; is well built, and contains five churches, a good exchange and town-house, and 1520 dwellings, with (in 1832) 11,588 inhabitants. The chief trade is distillation. It has 200 distilleries employed in making gin, in which are consumed annually 900,000 quarters of corn. A great number of pigs are fattened, and their flesh converted into bacon. Long. 4° 18'. E. Lat. 51° 55'. N.

SCHILLER, JOHN CHRISTOPHER FREDERICK VON, was born at Marbach, a small town in the duchy of Württemberg, on the 10th day of November 1759. It will aid the reader in synchronizing the periods of this great man's life with the corresponding events throughout Christendom, if we direct his attention to the fact, that Schiller's birth nearly coincided in point of time with that of Robert Burns, and thus it preceded that of Napoleon by about ten years.

The position of Schiller is remarkable. In the land of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he is ranked as the second name in German literature; everywhere else he is ranked as the first. For us, who are aliens to Germany, Schiller is the representative of the German intellect in its highest form; and to him, at all events, whether first or second, it is certainly due, that the German intellect has become a known power, and a power of growing magnitude, for the great commonwealth of Christendom. Luther and Kepler, potent intellects as they were, did not make themselves known as Germans: the revolutionary vigour of the one, the starry lustre of the other, blended with the convulsions of reformation, or with the aurora of ascending science, in too kindly and genial a tone to call off the attention from the work which they performed, from the service which they promoted, to the circumstances of their personal position. Their country, their birth, their abode, even their separate existence, was merged in the mighty cause to which they lent their co-operation. And thus at the beginning of the sixteenth century, thus at the beginning of the seventeenth, did the Titan sons of Germany defeat their own private pretensions by the very grandeur of their merits. Their interest as patriots was lost and confounded in their paramount interest as cosmopolites. What

---