tly upon signature of this
strict Bond, young Schiller had begun to study Jurisprudence;--which,
however, when next year, 1775, the Training-School, raised now to be a
"Military Academy," had been transferred to Stuttgart, he either of
his own accord, or in consequence of a discourse and interview of the
Duke with his Father, exchanged for the Study of Medicine.

'From the time when Schiller entered this "Karl's School"' (Military
Academy, in official style), 'he was nearly altogether withdrawn from
any tutelage of his Father; for it was only to Mothers, and to Sisters
still under age, that the privilege of visiting their Sons and
Brothers, and this on the Sunday only, was granted: beyond this, the
Karl's Scholars, within their monastic cells, were cut off from family
and the world, by iron-doors and sentries guarding them. This rigorous
seclusion from actual life and all its friendly impressions, still
more the spiritual constraint of the Institution, excluding every free
activity, and all will of your own, appeared to the Son in a more
hateful light than to the Father, who, himself an old soldier, found
it quite according to order that the young people should be kept in
strict military discipline and subordination. What filled the Son with
bitter discontent and indignation, and at length brought him to a kind
of poetic outburst of revolution in the _Robbers_, therein the Father
saw only a wholesome regularity, and indispensable substitute for
paternal discipline. Transient complaints of individual teachers and
superiors little disturbed the Father's mind; for, on the whole, the
official testimonies concerning his Son were steadily favourable. The
Duke too treated young Schiller, whose talents had not escaped his
sharpness of insight, with particular goodwill, nay distinction. To
this Prince, used to the accurate discernment of spiritual gifts, the
complaints of certain Teachers, that Schiller's slow progress in
Jurisprudence proceeded from want of head, were of no weight whatever;
and he answered expressly, "Leave me that one alone; he will come to
something yet!" But that Schiller gave his main strength to what in
the Karl's School was a strictly forbidden object, to poetry namely,
this I believe was entirely hidden from his Father, or appeared to
him, on occasional small indications, the less questionable, as he saw
that, in spite of this, the Marketable-Sciences were not neglected.

'At the same age, viz. about