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derings my nearest his heart, the wish for the education of his only son, was likely to be deeply tinctured with it. There is yet preserved, in his hand-writing, a prayer composed in advanced age, wherein he mentions how, at the child’s birth, he had entreated the Great Father of all, “to supply in strength of spirit what must needs be wanting in outward instruction.” The grey-haired man, who had lived to see the maturity of his boy, could now express his solemn thankfulness, that “God had heard the prayer of a mortal.” Friedrich followed the movements of his parents for some time; and had to gather the elements of learning from various masters. Perhaps it was in part owing to this circumstance, that his progress, though respectable, or more, was so little commensurate with what he afterwards became, or with the capacities of which even his earliest years gave symptoms. Thoughtless and gay, as a boy is wont to be, he would sport and dissipate his time too lavishly, and had often enough reproaches to undergo for this; but occasionally he was overtaken with feelings of deeper import, and used to express the agitations of his little mind in words and actions, which were first rightly interpreted when they were called to mind long afterwards. His school-fellows can now recollect that even his freaks had sometimes a poetic character; and we may credit their testimony, that a certain earnestness of temper, a frank integrity, an appetite for things grand or moving, was discernible across all the caprices of his boyhood. Once, it is said, during a tremendous thunder-storm, his father missed him in the young group within doors; none of the sisters could tell what was become of Fritz, and the old man grew at length so anxious that he was forced to go out in quest of him. The truant was scarcely past infancy, and knew not the dangers of a scene so awful. His father found him, at last, in a solitary place of the neighbourhood, perched on the branch of a tree, gazing at the tempestuous face of the sky, and watching the flashes as in succession they spread their lurid gleam over it. The lightning, he said, “was so fine!”—Such anecdotes, we have long known, are in themselves of small value: the present one has the additional defect of being somewhat dubious in regard to its authenticity. We have ventured to give it, as it came to us, notwithstanding. The picture of the boy Schiller worshipping the thunder is not without a certain interest, for such as know the man.

Schiller’s first teacher was Moser, the pastor and schoolmaster in the village of Lorch, where the parents resided from the sixth to the ninth year of their son. This person deserves mention for the influence he exerted on the early history of his pupil: he seems to have given his name to the priest “Moser” in the Robbers; his spiritual calling, and the conversation of his son, himself afterwards a preacher, are supposed to have suggested to Schiller the idea of consecrating himself to the clerical profession. This idea, which laid hold of and cherished some predominant though vague propensities of the boy’s disposition, suited well with the religious sentiments of the father, and was soon formed into a settled purpose. In the public school at Ludwigsburg, whither the family had now removed, his studies were regulated with this view; and he underwent, in four successive years, the annual examination before the Stuttgard commission, to which young men destined for the church are subjected in that country. Schiller’s temper was naturally devout: with a delicacy of feeling which tended towards bashfulness and timidity, there was mingled in him a fervid impetuosity, which was ever struggling through its concealment, and indicating that he felt deeply and strongly as well as delicately. Such a turn of mind easily took the form of religion, prescribed to it by early example and early affections, as well as nature. Schiller looked forward to the sacred profession with alacrity: it was the serious day-dream of all his boyhood, and much of his youth. As yet, however, the project hovered before him at a great distance, and the path to its fulfilment offered him but little entertainment. His studies did not seize his attention firmly; he followed them from a sense of duty, not of pleasure. Virgil and Horace he learned to con-