he seed is
given, but the furrow must be ploughed in which it is to grow; and the
same grain which, if thrown on cultivated soil, springs into fullness and
vigor, will dwindle away, stunted and broken, if cast upon shallow and
untilled land. There are certain events in the life of every man which
fashion and stamp his character; they may seem small and unimportant in
themselves, but they are great and important to each of us; they mark that
slight bend where two lines which had been running parallel begin to
diverge, never to meet again. The Greeks call such events _epochs_, _i.e._
halts.

We halt for a moment, we look about and wonder, and then choose our
further way in life. It is the duty of biographers to discover such
epochs, such halting-points, in the lives of their heroes; and we shall
endeavor to do the same in the life of Schiller by watching the various
influences which determined the direction of his genius at different
periods of his poetical career.

The period of Schiller's childhood is generally described with great
detail by his biographers. We are told who his ancestors were. I believe
they were bakers. We are informed that his mother possessed in her
_trousseau_, among other things, four pairs of stockings,--three of cotton,
one of wool. There are also long discussions on the exact date of his
birth. We hear a great deal of early signs of genius, or rather, we should
say, of things done and said by most children, but invested with
extraordinary significance if remembered of the childhood of great men. To
tell the truth, we can find nothing very important in what we thus learn
of the early years of Schiller, nor does the poet himself in later years
dwell much on the recollections of his dawning mind. If we must look for
some determinating influences during the childhood of Schiller, they are
chiefly to be found in the character of his father. The father was not
what we should call a well-educated man. He had been brought up as a
barber and surgeon; had joined a Bavarian regiment in 1745, during the
Austrian war of succession; and had acted as a non-commissioned officer,
and, when occasion required, as a chaplain. After the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle he had married the daughter of an innkeeper. He was a
brave man, a God-fearing man, and, as is not unfrequently the case with
half-educated people, a man very fond of reading. What he had failed to
attain himself, he wished to see realized in his only son. T