Prince of
Holstein-Augustenburg and from Count Schimmelmann. We quote from the
letter:--

"Your shattered health, we hear, requires rest, but your
circumstances do not allow it. Will you grudge us the pleasure of
enabling you to enjoy that rest? We offer you for three years an
annual present of 1,000 thalers. Accept this offer, noble man. Let
not our titles induce you to decline it. We know what they are
worth; we know no pride but that of being men, citizens of that
great republic which comprises more than the life of single
generations, more than the limits of this globe. You have to deal
with men,--your brothers,--not with proud princes, who, by this
employment of their wealth, would fain indulge but in a more
refined kind of pride."

No conditions were attached to this present, though a situation in Denmark
was offered if Schiller should wish to go there. Schiller accepted the
gift so nobly offered, but he never saw his unknown friends.(12) We owe to
them, humanly speaking, the last years of Schiller's life, and with them
the master-works of his genius, from "Wallenstein" to "William Tell." As
long as these works are read and admired, the names of these noble
benefactors will be remembered and revered.

The name of her whom we mentioned next among Schiller's noble friends and
companions,--we mean his wife,--reminds us that we have anticipated events,
and that we left Schiller after his flight in 1782, at the very beginning
of his most trying years. His hopes of success at Mannheim had failed. The
director of the Mannheim theatre, also a Dalberg, declined to assist him.
He spent the winter in great solitude at the country-house of Frau von
Wolzogen, finishing "Cabale und Liebe," and writing "Fiesco." In the
summer of 1783 he returned to Mannheim, where he received an appointment
in connection with the theatre of about L40 a year. Here he stayed till
1785, when he went to Leipzig, and afterwards to Dresden, living chiefly
at the expense of his friend Koerner. This unsettled kind of life continued
till 1787, and produced, as we saw, little more than his tragedy of "Don
Carlos." In the mean time, however, his taste for history had been
developed. He had been reading more systematically at Dresden, and after
he had gone to Weimar in 1787 he was able to publish, in 1788, his
"History of the Revolt of the Netherlands." On the strength of this he was
appointed professor at