respects, may have granted me compared with him, are joined with so many dangers for the heart and for its true peace! 'I will not attempt to comfort you and my dear Sisters. You all feel, like me, how much we have lost; but you feel also that Death alone could end these long sorrows. With our dear Father it is now well; and we shall all follow him ere long. Never shall the image of him fade from our hearts; and our grief for him can only unite us still closer together. Five or six years ago it did not seem likely that you, my dear ones, should, after such a loss, find a Friend in your Brother, - that I should survive our dear Father. God has ordered it otherwise; and He grants me the joy to feel that I may still be something to you. How ready I am thereto, I need not assure you. We all of us know one another in this respect, and are our dear Father's not unworthy children.'" This earnest and manful lamentation, which contains also a just recognition of the object lamented, may serve to prove, think Saupe and others, what is very evident, that Caspar Schiller, with his stiff, military regulations, spirit of discipline and rugged, angular ways, was, after all, the proper Father for a wide-flowing, sensitive, enthusiastic, somewhat lawless Friedrich Schiller; and did beneficently compress him into something of the shape necessary for his task in this world. II. THE MOTHER. OF Schiller's Mother, Elisabetha Dorothea Kodweis, born at Marbach, 1733, the preliminary particulars have been given above: That she was the daughter of an Innkeeper, Woodmeasurer and Baker; prosperous in the place when Schiller Senior first arrived there. We should have added, what Saupe omits, that the young Surgeon boarded in their house; and that by the term Woodmeasurer (Holzmesser, Measurer of Wood) is signified an Official Person appointed not only to measure and divide into portions the wood supplied as fuel from the Ducal or Royal Forests, but to be responsible also for payment of the same. In which latter capacity, Kodweis, as Father Schiller insinuates, was rash, imprudent and unlucky, and at one time had like to have involved that prudent, parsimonious Son-in-law in his disastrous economics. We have also said what Elisabetha's comely looks were, and particular features; pleasing and hopeful, more and more, to the strict young Surgeon, daily observant of her and them. "In her circle," Saupe continues, "she was thought by her early playmates a kind of enthusiast; because she, with average faculties of understanding combined deep feeling, true piety and love of Nature, a talent for Music, nay even for Poetry. But perhaps it was the very reverse qualities in her, the fact namely that what she wanted in culture, and it may be also in clearness and sharpness of understanding, was so richly compensated by warmth and lovingness of character, perhaps it was this which most attracted to her the heart of her deeply reasonable Husband. And never had he cause to repent his choice. For she was, and remained, as is unanimously testified of her by trustworthy witnesses, an unpretending, soft and dutiful Wife; and, as all her Letters testify, had the tenderest mother-heart. She read a good deal, even after her marriage, little as she had of time for reading. Favorite Books with her were those on Natural History; but she liked best of all to study the Biographies of famous men, or to dwell in the spiritual poetizing of an Utz, a Gellert and Klopstock. She also liked, and in some measure had the power, to express her own feelings in verses; which, with all their simplicity, show a sense for rhythm and some expertness in diction. Here is one instance; her salutation to the Husband who was her First-love, on New Year's Day, 1757, the ninth year of their as yet childless marriage: 'Oh, could I but have found forget-me-not in the Valley, In fragrant blossoms the garland for this New Year, 'I grumble, in truth, that the cold North now governs us, "The Seven-Years War threw the young Wife into manifold anxiety and agitation; especially since she had become a Mother, and in fear for the life of her tenderly loved Husband, had to tremble for the Father of her children too. To this circumstance Christophine ascribes, certainly with some ground, the world-important fact that her Brother had a much weaker constitution than herself. He had in fact been almost born in a camp. In late Autumn, 1759, the Infantry Regiment of Major-General Romann, in which Caspar Schiller was then a Lieutenant, had, for sake of the Autumn Manoeuvres of the Würtemberg Soldiery, taken Camp in its native region. The Mother had thereupon set out from Marbach to visit her longabsent Husband in the Camp; and it was in his tent that she felt the first symptoms of her travail. She rapidly hastened back to Marbach; and by good luck still reached her Father's house in the Market-place there, near by the great Fountain; where she, on the 11th November, was delivered of a Boy. For almost four years the little Friedrich with Christophine and Mother continued in the house of the well-contented Grandparents (who had not yet fallen poor), under her exclusive care. With self-sacrificing love and careful fidelity, she nursed her little Boy; whose tender body had to suffer not only from the common ailments of children, but was heavily visited with fits of cramp. In a beautiful region, on the bosom of a tender Mother, and in these first years far from the over 10 hätt ich doch im Thal Vergissmeinnicht gefunden Und Rosen nebenbei! Dann hät' ich Dir gewunden Ich zürne, traun, dass itzt der kalte Nord regieret, theilt mit Dir die Freuden und den Schmerz. sight of a rigorous Father, the Child grew up, and unfolded himself under cheerful and harmonious impressions. "On the return of his Father from the War, little Fritz, now four years old, was quite the image of his Mother; long-necked, freckled and reddish-haired like her. It was the pious Mother's work, too, that a feeling of religion, early and vivid, displayed itself in him. The easily receptive Boy was indeed keenly attentive to all that his Father, in their Family-circle, read to them, and inexhaustible in questions till he had rightly caught the meaning of it: but he listened with most eagerness when his Father read passages from the Bible, or vocally uttered them in prayer. 'It was a touching sight,' says his eldest Sister, the expression of devotion on the dear little Child's countenance. With its blue eyes directed towards Heaven, its high-blond hair about the clear brow, and its fast-clasped little hands. It was like an angel's head to look upon.' "With Father's return, the happy Mother conscientiously shared with him the difficult and important business of bringing up their Son; and both in union worked highly beneficially for his spiritual development. The practical and rigorous Father directed his chief aim to developing the Boy's intellect and character; the mild, pious, poetic-minded Mother, on the other hand, strove for the ennobling nurture of his temper and his imagination. It was almost exclusively owing to her that his religious feeling, his tender sense of all that was good and beautiful, his love of mankind, tolerance, and capability of self-sacrifice, in the circle of his Sisters and playmates, distinguished the Boy. "On Sunday afternoons, when she went to walk with both the Children, she was wont to explain to them the ChurchGospel of the day. Once,' so stands it in Christophine's Memorials, 'when we two, as children, had set out walking with dear Mamma to see our Grandparents, she took the way from Ludwigsburg to Marbach, which leads straight over the Hill,' a walk of some four miles. It was a beautiful Easter Monday, and our Mother related to us the history of the two Disciples to whom, on their journey to Emmaus, Jesus had joined himself. Her speech and narrative grew ever more inspired; and when we got upon the Hill, we were all so much affected that we knelt down and prayed. This Hill became a Tabor to us.' "At other times she entertained the children with fairy-tales and magic histories. Already while in Lorch she had likewise led the Boy, so far as his power of comprehension and her own knowledge permitted, into the domains of German Poetry. Klopstock's Messias, Opitz's Poems, Paul Gerhard's and Gellert's pious Songs, were made known to him in this tender age, through his Mother; and were, for that reason, doubly dear. At one time also the artless Mother made an attempt on him with Hofmannswaldau; 1 but the sugary and windy tone of him hurt the tender poet-feeling of the Boy. With smiling dislike he pushed the Book away; and afterwards was wont to remark, when, at the new year, rustic congratulants with their foolish rhymes would too liberally present themselves, 'Mother, there is a new Hofmannswaldau at the door!' Thus did the excellent Mother guide forward the soul of her docile Boy, with Bible-passages and Church-symbols, with tales, histories and poems, into gradual form and stature. Never forgetting, withal, to awaken and nourish his sense for the beauties of Nature. Before long, Nature had become his dearest abode; and only love of that could sometimes tempt him to little abridgments of school-hours. Often, in the pretty region of Lorch, he wished the Sun good-night in open song; or with childish pathos summoned Stuttgard's Painters to represent the wondrous formation and glorious coloring of the sunset clouds. If, in such a humor, a poor man met him, his overflowing little heart would impel him to the most active pity; and he liberally gave away whatever he had by him and thought he could dispense with. The Father, who, as above indicated, never could approve or even endure such unreasonable giving up of one's feelings to effeminate impressions, was apt to intervene on these occasions, even with manual punishment, unless the Mother were at hand to plead the little culprit off. 1 A once celebrated Silesian of the 17th century, distinguished for his blusterous exaggerations, numb-footed caprioles, and tearing of a passion to rags; -now extinct. |