ally the
fewest dangers. And thus the prudent and withal pious Father, too, saw
no reason to object to this inclination of the Son and wish of the
Mother.

'It had almost happened, however, that the Latin School, in
Ludwigsburg (where our Fritz received the immediately preparatory
teaching for his calling) had quite disgusted him with his destination
for theology. The Teacher of Religion in the Institute, a
narrow-minded, angry-tempered Pietist,' as we have seen, 'used the sad
method of tormenting his scholars with continual rigorous, altogether
soulless, drillings and trainings in matters of mere creed; nay he
threatened often to whip them thoroughly, if, in the repetition of the
catechism, a single word were wrong. And thus to the finely-sensitive
Boy instruction was making hateful to him what domestic influences had
made dear. Yet these latter did outweigh and overcome, in the end; and
he remained faithful to his purpose of following a spiritual career.

'When young Schiller, after the completion of his course at the Latin
School, 1777, was to be confirmed, his Mother and her Husband came
across to Ludwigsburg the day before that solemn ceremony. Just on
their arrival, she saw her Son wandering idle and unconcerned about
the streets; and impressively represented to him how greatly his
indifference to the highest and most solemn transaction of his young
life troubled her. Struck and affected hereby, the Boy withdrew; and,
after a few hours, handed to his Parents a German Poem, expressive of
his feelings over the approaching renewal of his baptismal covenant.
The Father, who either hadn't known the occasion of this, or had
looked upon his Son's idling on the street with less severe eyes, was
highly astonished, and received him mockingly with the question, "Hast
thou lost thy senses, Fritz?" The Mother, on the other hand, was
visibly rejoiced at that poetic outpouring, and with good cause. For,
apart from all other views of the matter, she recognised in it how
firmly her Son's inclination was fixed on the study of Theology.'--(This
anecdote, if it were of any moment whatever, appears to be a little
doubtful.)

'The painfuler, therefore, was it to the Mother's heart when her Son,
at the inevitable entrance into the Karl's School, had to give-up
Theology; and renounce withal, for a long time, if not forever, her
farther guidance and influence. But she was too pious not to recognise
by degrees, in this change also, a H