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strings of a violin, and consequently has no vibration, and therefore cannot respond to the vibrations of a violin; but I have since thought that there was more truth in this wild idea of a child's ignorance than would at first appear, and it seemed to lead the way to a second thought which crossed my mind in the transport of ecstasy produced by this, the first violin-playing worthy of the name which I had ever heard.

I knew the secret now, both of the entrancing whisper of the wind-music, and also, why, at a certain point, it had failed. The blind, senseless wind, blowing merely where it listed, had aroused the human spirit through the medium of grass and reed and rock and forest, and called it through the fairy gate into cloud and dreamland; but when, instead of the blind, senseless wind, the instructed human spirit itself touched the strings, music, born of cultured harmony, through all the long scale of octave and according pitch, won for the listening, rapt, ecstatic spirit an insight and an entrance into realms which the outward eye had not seen, the secrets of which it is not lawful or possible to utter to any save to the spirit-born.

"You seem absorbed in the music, my boy," said this gentleman to me : "do you play the violin, perchance?"

I said that I had played on no instrument save picking out harmonious thirds on an old harpsichord at the parsonage house. My father was perfectly an amateur : he loved music so much that he refused to play himself, or to allow any one else to play in his hearing save those who could play well: " playing a little" was his dread.

The gentleman shut up his precious violin in its case and produced another, on which he showed me the possibility of varying the note through every shade of pitch by the position of the finger on the vibrating string. It is impossible to describe the delight I felt when I was able to feel out a chord of three notes,

"I am violating your father's instructions perhaps," said the gentleman smiling; "but every one must have a beginning. Nevertheless, he has much on his side. It has been said, rather cynically, 'The moment a man touches an instrument, he ceases to be a musician.""

I did not understand this then, but I understood it well afterwards.

The gentleman left one of his less cherished instruments behind him, with some simple exercises which he enjoined me to practise only and to attempt nothing else, but I blush to say that I did not follow his advice. I played the chords he left me now and again, but I was absorbed in the one idea that his playing had left with me-the thought of the human spirit informing the senseless wind. I delighted only in the fancy that I was a mere automaton, and that the pervading spirit-the spirit that inspires man and breathes in Naturewas playing through my spirit upon the obedient vibrating strings. In this way I played fantasias of the most striking and original character, and at the same time destroyed all my chances, or ran a serious risk of doing so, of ever becoming a violinist.

Three quiet years passed in this manner, during which I lived almost constantly at Geiselwind with the Graffinn, who, in fact, treated me as her own son. At the end of that time she informed me that she intended to send me to the university of Wenigstaat. She chose this university for me, she told me, because it was near, but above all because it was not famous, but was, in fact, a mere appanage to a kingly city, and was therefore less likely to pervert from the correct and decorous habits in which they had been brought up the ideas and habits of young men. She would provide me

with a sufficient income, and would take care that my wardrobe and appointments were those of a gentleman, a station which she wished me to occupy and to maintain without disgrace.

The habits of society in the universities and elsewhere were very different in those days from what they have since become. The old society of the days before the revolution existed in its full strength. French taste in costume and amusements was universal; and the fashion of philosophic inquiry which was copied from the French was a mere intellectual toy, and had no effect upon the practical conclusions of those who amused themselves with it. The merits of republican institutions and the inviolability of the rights of man were discussed as abstract questions, without a thought that the conclusions would ever be applied to modern life, or to the daily relationships of nobles and peasants and townspeople. Before the bursting of the torrent which was to sweep it out of existence, the old world slumbered in a rainbow-tinted evening light of delicately fancied culture and repose.

The habits and appearance of university students have changed more completely than those of any other class. In the most advanced cities even in those days they dressed completely in the French manner, in embroidered suits and powdered hair, fluttering from toilette to toilette, and caring little for lectures or professors. In the old stately city of Wenigstaat, it may be easily understood, the ideas and habits of the past existed with a peculiar unchangeableness.

I regretted leaving the life of hill and forest and dreamy phantasy in which I had found so much to delight me, but the natural love of youth for change and adventure consoled me. One great advantage I derived from the choice the Graffin had made for me was that I did not change the character of my outward surroundings. I was nearly nineteen when I left Geiselwind and arrived one evening in a postchaise at Wenigstaat.

The city lay in a wooded valley surrounded by hills covered to their summits with woods of beech and oak

and fir through these woods running streams and cascades forced their way now through the green mountainmeadows, now over rocky steeps and dingles a soft blue sky brooded over this green world of leaf and grass and song-birds, and sunlit showers swept over the woodland and deepened the verdure into fresher green. In the centre of this plain, almost encircled by a winding river, the city was built upon a hill which divided itself into two summits, upon one of which stood the cathedral and upon the other the King's palace. Between these summits the old town wound its way up past gates and towers and marketplace and rathhaus and the buildings of the university, with masses of old gabled houses of an oppressive height and of immemorial antiquity, with huge over-hanging stories and tiers of rooms wandering on, apparently without plan or guide, from house to house and street to street-a human hive of intricate workmanship, of carpentry-work and stone-work and brick-work, all crowded together in the little space of the rising hill-street above the rushing stream, a space small in itself but infinite in its thronged stories of centuries of life-a vast grave, not only of generations of the dead, themselves lying not far from the foundations of their homes, but of buried hopes, of faded beauty, of beaten courage and stricken faith and patience crushed and lost at last in the unequal fight with fate. The dim cathedral, full of storied windows of deep blood-stained glass and of colossal figures of mailed heroes guarding emblazoned tombs, faced the King's palace, a massive ivy-covered fortress relieved here and there with façades of carved work of the later Renaissance.

The tired horses of my postchaise struggled up over the stone pavement of this steep street amid the crowd of loiterers and traffickers and gay pleasure-seekers that thronged it and drew up before the Three Roses in the Peterstrasse, where a room had been

provided for me. Here I slept, and here I dined every day at an ordinary frequented by many of the principal citizens, by some of the wealthier students, and by some officials and courtiers, when it was not the turn of the latter in waiting at the palace. This table was one at least of the centres of life and interest in the little kingly city.

To a boy, reared in a country parsonage and an old half-deserted manor house, all this, it may be conceived, was strange enough; but somehow it did not seem to me wholly strange. I had been trained at the table of the Graffinn to the usages of polite life, and the whispering wind and the solemn forests of my childhood had seemed to lift me above a sense of embarrassment, as though the passing scenes before me were but the shadows and visions of a dream. I looked down the long table at the varied faces, at the talkers and showy ones, at the grave citizens, at the quiet humorous students, who now and then said a few words that turned the laugh against the talkers, at the courtiers affecting some special knowledge of affairs of state about which the King probably troubled himself little; and I remember that it all seemed to me like turning the pages of a story-book, or like the shifting scenes of a play, about which latter, though I had never seen one, I had read and heard much.

On the second and third day I found myself seated by a little elderly man, very elaborately dressed, with powdered hair and a beautifully embroidered coat. I have always felt an attraction towards old men: they are so polite, and their conversation, when they do talk, is always worth listening to. Something of this feeling, perhaps, showed itself in my manner. On the third day he said to me on rising from dinner: "I perceive, sir, that you are a stranger here: you seem to me to be a quiet well-bred young man, and I shall be glad if I can be of any use to you. You are doubtless come to the university and are evidently well con

nected. I am a professor-a professor of belles lettres and music, and I have been tutor to the Crown Prince. I may possibly be of some service to you some of the great professors are rather difficult of access.'

"I am the adopted son of the Graffinn von Wetstein, sir," I answered. "I have letters to several of the professors of the university, but I find them much occupied in their duties, and not very easy of approach."

"We will soon remedy all that," he said smiling. "To what course of study are you most inclined, and what is the future to which your friends design

you?"

"I fear, sir," I returned, "that my future is very undefined. I am, as you say you are a professor of music, very fond of the violin; but I am a very poor performer, and I fear I shall never be a proficient."

"I profess music," said the old gentleman, with his quaint smile, "but do not teach it: I only talk about it. I will introduce you, however, to a great teacher of the violin, and, indeed, if you would like it we can go to him now. This is about the time that we shall find him disengaged."

We went out together into the crowded market-place and turned to the left hand up a street of marvellous height, narrowness and steepness, which led round the eastern end of the cathedral, and indeed nearly concealed it from sight. At the top of this street, on the side farthest from the cathedral, the vast west window of which could just be seen over the gables, chimneys and stork-nests of the opposite houses, we stopped before the common door of one of the lofty old houses, against the posts of which were attached several affiches notices of differing forms and material. Among these my companion pointed out one larger and more imposing than the rest: " Veitch, teacher of the violin."

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"I ought to tell you," said the old gentleman," that my daughter is

reader to the Princess, and that she comes to Herr Veitch for lessons on the violin, that she may assist her Highness. If the Graf von Wetstein should take lessons here also, he may possibly meet her."

"I beg your pardon," I said: "I must correct an important mistake. I am only the adopted son of the Graffinn von Wetstein. I am not the Graf: my name is Saale."

The old gentleman seemed rather disappointed at this, but he rallied sufficiently to say: "You may nevertheless meet my daughter, Herr von Saale."

It sounded so pleasantly that I had not the hardihood to correct him again.

I was accordingly introduced to every one in Wenigstaat as Herr von Saale, and I may as well say, once for all, that I did not suffer for this presumption as I deserved. Some weeks later on I received a letter from the Graffinn, in which she said: "I have noticed that you have been mentioned to me in letters as Otto von Saale. As I have chosen to adopt you, and as Saale is the name of a river, and therefore is to a certain extent territorial, I think perhaps that this may not be amiss; and I flatter myself that I have sufficient influence at the Imperial Court to procure for you a faculty which will enable you to add the prefix von to your patronymic." Accordingly, some months afterwards I did receive a most important and wordy document; but I had by that time become so accustomed to my aristocratic title that I thought little of it, though its possession, no doubt, may have saved me from some serious consequences.

We have been standing too long on the staircase which led up to Herr Veitch's room on the second floor of the great rambling house. The room which the old gentleman led me into was one of great size, occupying the entire depth of the house. It had long deep-latticed windows at either end raised by several steps above the level of the room : the window towards

the front of the house looked down the steep winding street: from the other I saw, over the roofs of the city, piled in strange confusion beneath the high-pitched windows of the upper town, a wide prospect of sky and river and valley, and the distant blue mountains and forests of the Fichtelgeberge, where my home had been.

The room was somewhat crowded with furniture, chiefly large old oaken presses or cabinets apparently full of books, a harpsichord, clavichord, and several violins. In the centre of this apartment, as he rose to receive us, stood an elderly man, rather shabbily dressed, with an absent expression in his face.

"Herr Veitch," said my guide, "permit me to present to you Herr von Saale, a young gentleman of distinguished family and connections, who has come to reside in our uni

versity. He is anxious to perfect himself in the violin, upon which he is already no mean performer."

I was amazed at the glibness with which this surprising old gentleman discoursed upon that of which he knew so little.

The old violinist looked at me with a dazed and even melancholy expression, his eyes seemed to me to say as clearly as words could have spoken: "Here is another frivolous impostor intruded upon me.'

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"Is this one of my daughter's days?" said my friend, the gentleman.

"No, I expect her to-morrow about this time."

"The Princess," said my friend, "is very shy: she dislikes taking lessons from men, and prefers to gain her knowledge of music from my daughter."

The old master took up a violin that lay upon the table and handed it to me. I played a simple lesson that had been left me by the Italian, the only one that had taken my fancy, for it had in its few notes, as it seemed to me, something of the pleading of the whispering wind.

The old man took the violin from me without a word: then he drew the bow across the strings himself and played some bars, from I imagine some old forgotten Italian master. As he played the solemn chords of the sonata, in the magnetic resonance of its full smooth rich notes there was something that seemed to fill all space, to lead and draw the nerves and brain, as over gorgeous sun-coloured pavements and broad stately terraces, with alluring sound and speech.

He laid down the violin after he had played for a few minutes and went to the harpsichord, which stood near to the window looking down into the street.

"You know something of music," he said to me: "do you understand

this?"

He struck a single clear note upon the harpsichord and turned towards the window, a casement of which was open towards the crowded street.

"Down there," he said," where I know not, but somewhere down there,

-is a heart and brain that beats with that beat, that vibrates with the vibration of that note, that hears and recognises and is consoled. To every note struck anywhere there is an accordant note in some human brain, toiling, dying, suffering, here below."

He looked at me and I said: "I have understood something of this also."

"This is why," he went on, “in music all hearts are revealed to us: we sympathise with all hearts, not only with those near to us but with those afar off. It is not strange that in the high treble octaves that speak of childhood and of the lark singing and of heaven, you, who are young, should hear of such things; but, in the sudden drop into the solemn lower notes, why should you, who know nothing of such feelings, see and feel. with the old man who returns to the streets and fields of his youth? He lives, his heart vibrates in such notes: his life, his heart, his tears exist in them, and through them in you. Just

as one looks from a lofty, precipitous height down into the teeming streets of a great city, full of pigmy forms, so in the majestic march of sound we get away from life and its littleness, and see the whole of life spread out before us and feel the pathos of it with the pity of an archangel, as we could never have done in the bustle of the streets there below."

"You are cutting the ground from under my feet, my friend," said the old Professor, rather testily. "It is your business to teach music, mine to talk about it."

The old master smiled at this sally, but he went on all the same. I thought that he perceived in me a sympathetic listener.

"Have you never felt that in the shrill clear surging chords of the higher octaves you were climbing into a loftier existence, and do you not feel that for the race itself something like this is also possible? It will be in and through music that human thought will be carried beyond the point it has hitherto reached."

He paused a moment and then went on in a lower, less confident voice. "This is my faith, and I shall die in it. There is one thing only which saddens me. There are men, ay, great performers, real masters of the bowwho know nothing of these things, who have no such faith. There is none whom I would sooner regard as a devil than such a one. Sometimes when I hear them they almost destroy the faith that is in me-the faith in my art."

"Pooh! Pooh! my friend," said the Professor. "They are not so bad as that! They have simply the divine gift of the perception of harmony the instinctive harmonic touch. They know not why or how.

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They are not devils. Herr von Saale,' he went on, with for him considerable earnestness, "do not believe it. I fancy that you are in danger of falling into the fatal error of supposing that you can play on the violin in the same way that

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