twenty-two, at which Captain Schiller had
made his first military sally into the Netherlands and the
Austrian-Succession War, his Son issued from the Karl's School, 15th
December 1780; and was immediately appointed Regimental-Doctor at
Stuttgart; with a monthly pay of twenty-three gulden' (_2l. 6s.=11s._
and a fraction per week). 'With this appointment, Schiller had, as it
were, openly altogether outgrown all special paternal guardianship or
guidance; and was, from this time, treated by his Father as come to
majority, and standing on his own feet. If he came out, as frequently
happened, with a comrade to Solituede, he was heartily welcome there,
and the Father's looks often dwelt on him with visible satisfaction.
If in the conscientious and rigorous old man, with his instructive and
serious experiences of life, there might yet various anxieties and
doubts arise when he heard of the exuberantly genial ways of his
hopeful Son at Stuttgart, he still looked upon him with joyful pride,
in remarking how those so promising Karl's Scholars, who had entered
into the world along with him, recognised his superiority of mind, and
willingly ranked themselves under him. Nor could it be otherwise than
highly gratifying to his old heart to remark always with what deep
love the gifted Son constantly regarded his Parents and
Sisters.'[51]--Of Schiller's first procedures in Stuttgart, after his
emancipation from the Karl's School, and appointment as
Regimental-Surgeon, or rather of his general behaviour and way of life
there, which are said to have been somewhat wild, genially, or even
_un_genially extravagant, and to have involved him in many paltry
entanglements of debts, as one bad consequence,--there will be some
notice in the next Section, headed "_The Mother_." His Regimental
Doctorship, and stay in Stuttgart altogether, lasted twenty-two
months.

[Footnote 51: _Saupe_, p. 25.]

This is Schiller's bodily appearance, as it first presented itself to
an old School-fellow, who, after an interval of eighteen months, saw
him again on Parade, as Doctor of the Regiment Auge,--more to his
astonishment than admiration.

'Crushed into the stiff tasteless Old-Prussian Uniform; on each of
his temples three stiff rolls as if done with gypsum; the tiny
three-cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the
long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow
horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdash