Floris, possessed, however, in a considerable degree the qualities which
his brothers lacked. He possessed intelligence, a strong character, and
had great commercial sagacity; at the same time, he took a definite
interest in intellectual pursuits, reading Voltaire, of whom he was more
or less a disciple, and other French authors, possessing a keen
admiration for English political and family life, and furnishing his
house after an English fashion. He was a man of fiery temperament and
his appearance was scarcely prepossessing; he was short and stout; he
had a broad face and turned-up nose, and a large mouth. This was the
father of our philosopher.

When he was thirty-eight, Heinrich Schopenhauer married, on May 16,
1785, Johanna Henriette Trosiener, a young lady of eighteen, and
daughter of a member of the City Council of Dantzic. She was at this
time an attractive, cultivated young person, of a placid disposition,
who seems to have married more because marriage offered her a
comfortable settlement and assured position in life, than from any
passionate affection for her wooer, which, it is just to her to say, she
did not profess. Heinrich Schopenhauer was so much influenced by English
ideas that he desired that his first child should be born in England;
and thither, some two years after their marriage, the pair, after making
a _d�tour_ on the Continent, arrived. But after spending some weeks in
London Mrs. Schopenhauer was seized with home-sickness, and her husband
acceded to her entreaties to return to Dantzic, where a child, the
future philosopher, was shortly afterwards born. The first five years of
the child's life were spent in the country, partly at the Stuthof which
had formerly belonged to Andreas Schopenhauer, but had recently come
into the possession of his maternal grandfather.

Five years after the birth of his son, Heinrich Schopenhauer, in