hat
Schiller, in the same month in which he had, eleven years ago, hurried
and in danger, fled out of Stuttgart to Ludwigsburg, should now in
peace and without obstruction come, from Heilbronn by the same
Ludwigsburg, to the near neighbourhood of his Parents. With bitter
tears of sorrow, her eye had then followed the fugitive, in his dark
trouble and want of everything; with sweet tears of joy she now
received her fame-crowned Son, whom God, through sufferings and
mistakes and wanderings, had led to happiness and wisdom. The birth of
the Grandson gave to her life a new charm, as if of youth returned.
She felt herself highly favoured that God had spared her life to see
her dear Son's first-born with her own eyes. It was a touching
spectacle to see the Grandmother as she sat by the cradle of the
little "Gold Son," and listened to every breath-drawing of the child;
or when, with swelling heart, she watched the approaching steps of her
Son, and observed his true paternal pleasure over his first-born.

'Well did the excellent Grandmother deserve such refreshment of heart;
for all-too soon there came again upon her troublous and dark days.
Schiller had found her stronger and cheerfuler than on her prior visit
to Jena; and had quitted his Home-land with the soothing hope that his
good Mother would reach a long and happy age. Nor could he have the
least presentiment of the events which, three years later, burst-in,
desolating and destroying, upon his family, and brought the health and
life of his dear Mother again into peril. It is above stated, in our
sketch of the Husband, in what extraordinary form the universal public
misery, under which, in 1796, all South Germany was groaning, struck
the Schiller Family at Solituede. Already on the 21st March of this
year, Schiller had written to his Father, "How grieved I am for our
good dear Mother, on whom all manner of sorrows have stormed-down in
this manner! But what a mercy of God it is, too, that she still has
strength left not to sink under these circumstances, but to be able
still to afford you so much help! Who would have thought, six or seven
years ago, that she, who was so infirm and exhausted, would now be
serving you all as support and nurse? In such traits I recognise a
good Providence which watches over us; and my heart is touched by it
to the core."

'Meanwhile the poor Mother's situation grew ever frightfuler from day
to day; and it needed her extraordinary strength o