hiller decided his destiny by escaping
secretly from Stuttgart beyond the frontier. A generous lady, Madam von
Wollzogen, invited him to her estate of Bauerbach, near Meiningen.

Here he resumed his poetical employments, and published, within a year,
the tragedies "Verschwoerung des Fiesco" and "Kabale und Liebe." This
"Conspiracy of Fiesco," the story of the political and personal
relations of the Genoese nobility, has the charm of a kind of colossal
magnitude. The chief incidents have a dazzling magnificence; the chief
characters, an aspect of majesty and force. The other play,
"Court-intriguing and Love," is a tragedy of domestic life; it shows the
conflict of cold worldly wisdom with the pure impassioned movements of
the young heart. Now, in September, 1783, Schiller went to Manheim as
poet to the theatre, a post of respectability and reasonable profit.
Here he undertook his "Thalia," a periodical work devoted to poetry and
the drama, in 1784. Naturalised by law in his new country, surrounded by
friends that honoured him, he was now exclusively a man of letters for
the rest of his days.

_From His Settlement at Manheim to His Settlement at Jena_ (1783-1790)

Schiller had his share of trials to encounter, but he was devoted with
unchanging ardour to the cause he had embarked in. Few men have been
more resolutely diligent than he, and he was warmly seconded by the
taste of the public. For the Germans consider the stage as an organ for
refining the hearts and minds of men, and the theatre of Manheim was one
of the best in Germany.

Besides composing dramatic pieces and training players, Schiller wrote
poems, the products of a mind brooding over dark and mysterious things,
and his "Philosophic Letters" unfold to us many a gloomy conflict of the
soul, surveying the dark morass of infidelity yet showing no causeway
through it. The first acts of "Don Carlos," printed in "Thalia," had
attracted the attention of the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar, who conferred on
their author the title of Counsellor. Schiller was loved and admired in
Manheim, yet he longed for a wider sphere of action, and he determined
to take up his residence at Leipzig.

Here he arrived in March, 1785, and at once made innumerable
acquaintances, but went to Dresden in the end of the summer, and here
"Don Carlos" was completed. This, the story of a royal youth condemned
to death by his father, is the first of Schiller's plays to bear the
stamp of maturit