'According to the pious wish of their Son, this year, 1769, did bring somewhat which "comforted" them. Captain Schiller, from of old a lover of rural occupations, and skilful in gardening and nursery affairs, had, at Ludwigsburg, laid-out for himself a little Nursery. It was managed on the same principles which he afterwards made public in his Book, _Die Baumzucht im Grossen_ (Neustrelitz, 1795, and second edition, Giessen, 1806); and was prospering beautifully. The Duke, who had noticed this, signified satisfaction in the thing; and he appointed him, in 1770, to shift to his beautiful Forest-Castle, Die Solitüde, near Stuttgart, as overseer of all his Forest operations there. Hereby to the active man was one of his dearest wishes fulfilled; and a sphere of activity opened, corresponding to his acquirements and his inclination. At Solitüde, by the Duke's order, he laid-out a Model Nursery for all Würtemberg, which he managed with perfect care and fidelity; and in this post he so completely satisfied the expectations entertained of him, that his Prince by and by raised him to the rank of Major.' He is reckoned to have raised from seeds, and successfully planted, 60,000 trees, in discharge of this function, which continued for the rest of his life. 'His Family, which already at Lorch, in 1766, had been increased by the birth of a Daughter, Luise, waited but a short time in Ludwigsburg till the Father brought them over to the new dwelling at Solitüde. Fritz, on the removal of his Parents, was given over as boarder to his actual Teacher, the rigorous pedant Jahn; and remained yet two years at the Latin school in Ludwigsburg. During this time, the lively, and perhaps also sometimes mischievous Boy, was kept in the strictest fetters; and, by the continual admonitions, exhortations, and manually practical corrections of Father and of Teacher, not a little held down and kept in fear. The fact, for instance, that he liked more the potent Bible-words and pious songs of a Luther, a Paul Gerhard, and Gellert, than he did the frozen lifeless catechism-drill of the Ludwigsburg Institute, gave surly strait-laced Jahn occasion to lament from time to time to the alarmed Parents, that "their Son had no feeling whatever for religion." In this respect, however, the otherwise so irritable Father easily satisfied himself, not only by his own observations of an opposite tendency, but chiefly by stricter investigation of one little incident that was reported to him. The teacher of religion in the Latin school, Superintendent Zilling, whose name is yet scornfully remembered, had once, in his dull awkwardness, introduced even Solomon's Song as an element of nurture for his class; and was droning out, in an old-fashioned way, his interpretation of it as symbolical of the Christian Church and its Bridegroom Christ, when he was, on the sudden, to his no small surprise and anger, interrupted by the audible inquiry of little Schiller, "But was this Song, then,