had ventured forth to the warfare on his
own charges; without means, experience, or settled purpose, it was
greatly to be feared that the fight would go against him. Yet his
situation, though gloomy enough, was not entirely without its brighter
side. He was now a free man, free, however poor; and his strong soul
quickened as its fetters dropped off, and gloried within him in the
dim anticipation of great and far-extending enterprises. If, cast too
rudely among the hardships and bitter disquietudes of the world, his
past nursing had not been delicate, he was already taught to look upon
privation and discomfort as his daily companions. If he knew not how
to bend his course among the perplexed vicissitudes of society, there
was a force within him which would triumph over many difficulties; and
a 'light from Heaven' was about his path, which, if it failed to
conduct him to wealth and preferment, would keep him far from baseness
and degrading vices. Literature, and every great and noble thing which
the right pursuit of it implies, he loved with all his heart and all
his soul: to this inspiring object he was henceforth exclusively
devoted; advancing towards this, and possessed of common necessaries
on the humblest scale, there was little else to tempt him. His life
might be unhappy, but would hardly be disgraceful.

Schiller gradually felt all this, and gathered comfort, while better
days began to dawn upon him. Fearful of trusting himself so near
Stuttgard as at Mannheim, he had passed into Franconia, and was living
painfully at Oggersheim, under the name of Schmidt: but Dalberg, who
knew all his distresses, supplied him with money for immediate wants;
and a generous lady made him the offer of a home. Madam von Wolzogen
lived on her estate of Bauerbach, in the neighbourhood of Meinungen;
she knew Schiller from his works, and his intimacy with her sons, who
had been his fellow-students at Stuttgard. She invited him to her
house; and there treated him with an affection which helped him to
forget the past, and look cheerfully forward to the future.

Under this hospitable roof, Schiller had leisure to examine calmly the
perplexed and dubious aspect of his affairs. Happily his character
belonged not to the whining or sentimental sort: he was not of those,
in whom the pressure of misfortune produces nothing but unprofitable
pain; who spend, in cherishing and investigating and deploring their
miseries, the time which should be sp