e to place him, for the next few years, in a position freer from
economic cares than now. Unexpectedly, in this difficulty, help
appeared out of Denmark. Two warm admirers of Schiller's genius, the
then hereditary Prince of Holstein-Augustenburg' (Grandfather of the
Prince Christian now, 1872, conspicuous in our English Court), 'and
Count von Schimmelmann, offered the Poet a pension of 1,000 thalers'
(150_l._) 'for three years; and this with a fineness and delicacy of
manner, which touched the recipient more even than the offer itself
did, and moved him to immediate assent. The Pension was to remain a
secret; but how could Schiller prevail on himself to be silent of it
to his Parents? With tears of thankfulness the Parents received this
glad message; in their pious minds they gathered out of this the
beneficent conviction that their Son's heavy sorrows, and the danger
in which his life hung, had only been decreed by Providence to set in
its right light the love and veneration which he far and near enjoyed.
Schiller himself this altogether unexpected proof of tenderest
sympathy in his fate visibly cheered, and strengthened even in
health; at lowest, the strength of his spirit, which now felt itself
free from outward embarrassments, subdued under it the weakness of his
body.

'In the middle of the year 1793, the love of his native country, and
the longing after his kindred, became so lively in him that he
determined, with his Wife, to visit Swabia. He writes to Koerner: "The
Swabian, whom I thought I had altogether got done with, stirs himself
strongly in me; but indeed I have been eleven years parted from
Swabia; and Thueringen is not the country in which I can forget it." In
August he set out, and halted first in the then _Reichstadt_'
(Imperial Free-town) 'Heilbronn, where he found the friendliest
reception; and enjoyed the first indescribable emotion in seeing again
his Parents, Sisters and early friends. "My dear ones," writes he to
Koerner, 27th August, from Heilbronn, "I found well to do, and, as thou
canst suppose, greatly rejoiced to meet me again. My Father, in his
seventieth year, is the image of a healthy old age; and any one who
did not know his years would not count them above sixty. He is in
continual activity, and this it is which keeps him healthy and
youthful." In large draughts the robust old man enjoyed the pleasure,
long forborne, of gazing into the eyes of his Son, who now stood
before him a compl