ch, all testified of strict military training; which also extended
itself over his whole domestic life, and even over the daily devotions
of the Family. For although the shallow Illuminationism of that period
had produced some influence on his religious convictions, he held fast
by the pious principles of his forebears; read regularly to his
household out of the Bible; and pronounced aloud, each day, the
Morning and Evening Prayer. And this was, in his case, not merely an
outward decorous bit of discipline, but in fact the faithful
expression of his Christian conviction, that man's true worth and true
happiness can alone be found in the fear of the Lord, and the moral
purity of his heart and conduct. He himself had even, in the manner of
those days, composed a long Prayer, which he in later years addressed
to God every morning, and which began with the following lines:

True Watcher of Israel!
To Thee be praise, thanks and honour.
Praying aloud I praise Thee,
That earth and Heaven may hear.[45]

[Footnote 45:

'Treuer Waechter Israels!
Dir sei Preis und Dank und Ehren;
Laut betend lob' ich Dich,
Dass es Erd' und Himmel hoeren' &c.]

'If, therefore, a certain otherwise accredited Witness calls him a
kind of crotchety, fantastic person, mostly brooding over strange
thoughts and enterprises, this can only have meant that Caspar
Schiller in earlier years appeared such, namely at the time when, as
incipient Surgeon at Marbach, he saw himself forced into a circle of
activity which corresponded neither to his inclination, strength nor
necessities.

'On the spiritual development of his Son this conscientious Father
employed his warmest interest and activities; and appears to have been
for some time assisted herein by a near relation, a certain Johann
Friedrich Schiller from Bittenfeld; the same who, as _Studiosus
Philosophiae_, was, in 1759, Godfather to the Boy. He is said to have
given the little Godson Fritz his first lessons in Writing,
Natural-History and Geography. A more effective assistance in this
matter the Father soon after met with on removing to Lorch.

'In the year 1765, the reigning Duke, Karl of Wuertemberg, sent Captain
Schiller as Recruiting Officer to the Imperial Free-Town
Schwaebish-Gmuend; with permission to live with his Family in the
nearest Wuertemberg place, the Village and Cloister of Lorch. Lorch
lies in a green meadow-ground, surrounded by beech-woo