At Weimar his present way of life was like his former one at Jena: his business was to study and compose; his recreations were in the circle of his family, where he could abandon himself to affections, grave or trifling, and in frank and cheerful intercourse with a few friends. Of the latter he had lately formed a social club, the meetings of which afforded him a regular and innocent amusement. He still loved solitary walks: in the Park at Weimar he might frequently be seen wandering among the groves and remote avenues, with a note-book in his hand; now loitering slowly along, now standing still, now moving rapidly on; if any one appeared in sight, he would dart into another alley, that his dream might not be broken.[37] 'One of his favourite resorts,' we are told, 'was the thickly-overshadowed rocky path which leads to the _Römische Haus_, a pleasure-house of the Duke's, built under the direction of Goethe. There he would often sit in the gloom of the crags, overgrown with cypresses and boxwood; shady hedges before him; not far from the murmur of a little brook, which there gushes in a smooth slaty channel, and where some verses of Goethe are cut upon a brown plate of stone, and fixed in the rock.' He still continued to study in the night: the morning was spent with his children and his wife, or in pastimes such as we have noticed; in the afternoon he revised what had been last composed, wrote letters, or visited his friends. His evenings were often passed in the theatre; it was the only public place of amusement which he ever visited; nor was it for the purpose of amusement that he visited this: it was his observatory, where he watched the effect of scenes and situations; devised new schemes of art, or corrected old ones. To the players he was kind, friendly: on nights when any of his pieces had been acted successfully or for the first time, he used to invite the leaders of the company to a supper in the Stadthaus, where the time was spent in mirthful diversions, one of which was frequently a recitation, by Genast, of the Capuchin's sermon in _Wallenstein's Camp_. Except on such rare occasions, he returned home directly from the theatre, to light his midnight lamp, and commence the most earnest of his labours. [Footnote 37: 'Whatever he intended to write, he first composed in his head, before putting down a line of it on paper. He used to call a work _ready_ so soon as its existence in his spirit was complete: hence in the public there often were reports that such and such a piece of his was finished, when, in the common sense, it was not even begun.'—_Jördens Lexicon_, § SCHILLER.]