A plucky and warm-hearted boy, under the care of an honest, brave, and intelligent father and a tender and religious mother,—this is all we know and care to know about Schiller during the first ten years of his life. In the year 1768 there begins a new period in the life of Schiller. His father was settled at Ludwigsburg, the ordinary residence of the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg, the Duke Charles. This man was destined to exercise a decisive influence on Schiller’s character. Like many German sovereigns in the middle of the last century, Duke Charles of Wurtemberg had felt the influence of those liberal ideas which had found so powerful an utterance in the works of the French and English philosophers of the eighteenth century. The philosophy which in France was smiled at by kings and statesmen, while it roused the people to insurrection and regicide, produced in Germany a deeper impression on the minds of the sovereigns and ruling classes than of the people. In the time of Frederick the Great and Joseph II. it became fashionable among sovereigns to profess Liberalism, and to work for the enlightenment of the human race. It is true that this liberal policy was generally carried out in a rather despotic way, and people were emancipated and enlightened very much as the ancient Saxons were converted by Charlemagne. We have an instance of this in the case of Schiller. Duke Charles had founded an institution where orphans and the sons of poor officers were educated free of expense. He had been informed that young Schiller was a promising boy, and likely to reflect credit on his new institution, and he proceeded without further inquiry to place him on the list of his _protégés_, assigning to him a place at his military school. It was useless for the father to remonstrate, and explain to the Duke that his son had a decided inclination for the Church. Schiller was sent to the Academy in 1773, and ordered to study law. The young student could not but see that an injustice had been done him, and the irritation which it caused was felt by him all the more deeply because it would have been dangerous to give expression to his feelings. The result was that he made no progress in the subjects which he had been commanded to study. In 1775 he was allowed to give up law, not, however, to return to theology, but to begin the study of medicine. But medicine, though at first it seemed more attractive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies. In the mean time another interference on the part of the Duke proved even more abortive, and to a certain extent determined the path which Schiller’s genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger, Lessing, Goethe, and Wieland’s translations of Shakespeare with rapture, no doubt somewhat increased by the dangers he braved in gaining access to these treasures.