d
fearful expectation, will determine whether I may venture to write in
person to your daughter. Fare you well, forever loved by--Your--

'FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.'

Concerning this proposal, we have no farther information to
communicate; except that the parties did not marry, and did not cease
being friends. That Schiller obtained the permission he concludes with
requesting, appears from other sources. Three years afterwards, in
writing to the same person, he alludes emphatically to his eldest
daughter; and what is more ominous, _apologises_ for his silence to
her. Schiller's situation at this period was such as to preclude the
idea of present marriage; perhaps, in the prospect of it, _Laura_ and
he commenced corresponding; and before the wished-for change of
fortune had arrived, both of them, attracted to other objects, had
lost one another in the vortex of life, and ceased to regard their
finding one another as desirable.

Schiller's medical project, like many which he formed, never came to
any issue. In moments of anxiety, amid the fluctuations of his lot,
the thought of this profession floated through his mind, as of a
distant stronghold, to which, in time of need, he might retire. But
literature was too intimately interwoven with his dispositions and his
habits to be seriously interfered with; it was only at brief intervals
that the pleasure of pursuing it exclusively seemed overbalanced by
its inconveniences. He needed a more certain income than poetry could
yield him; but he wished to derive it from some pursuit less alien to
his darling study. Medicine he never practised after leaving
Stuttgard.

In the mean time, whatever he might afterwards resolve on, he
determined to complete his _Carlos_, the half of which, composed a
considerable time before, had lately been running the gauntlet of
criticism in the _Thalia_.[13] With this for his chief occupation,
Gohlis or Leipzig for his residence, and a circle of chosen friends
for his entertainment, Schiller's days went happily along. His _Lied
an die Freude_ (Song to Joy), one of his most spirited and beautiful
lyrical productions, was composed here: it bespeaks a mind impetuous
even in its gladness, and overflowing with warm and earnest emotions.

[Footnote 13: Wieland's rather harsh and not too judicious
sentence on it may be seen at large in Gruber's _Wieland
Geschildert_, B. ii. S. 571.]

But the love of change is grounded on the difference betwe