matic interest to all history truly so called. | poser with whom Mendelssohn had not From the time when old Marbeck, by his much in common, though, as we shall see, solemn services, secretly consoled himself he had his own matter and mode of the and his brethren under persecution, to that loftiest order. We do not, indeed, mean in which an English diplomatic earl wields to say that the actual products of Mendelsbow or baton to the sound of his own mass- sohn's genius fully bear out an analogy es in the cathedral of Vienna-from Ma- with Goethe. "Ars longa, vita brevis," renzio, fretted to death by the resentment was more mournfully true for the compoof one pope, to Rossini, swelling with his ser than for the poet. Though the former melody the premature enthusiasm of Italy early began his work and bent to it with a for another-from Jusquin, slyly writing brave earnestness through all his brief caa vocal part consisting of one long note reer, many a golden link is wanting to the for a vain French Louis who had more am- chain with which we might have taken the bition than ability to sing, down to Men- full measure of his powers. delssohn, regenerating Greek and French. tragedy with his music at the bidding of a Prussian virtuoso, Frederick-music has had its share in the evolution of historical events, and musicians have been actors in many a scene of varied human interest. The lives of some of them, indeed, have been marked by incidents as thrilling as those which make the lives of Italian poets rival their own romances. The escape of Stradella from assassins, whose fell purpose was melted from their hearts by the pathos of his music, heard in St. John Lateran as they lay in wait for his exit, is such an incident. Handel himself narrowly evaded the deathblow aimed by a baffled rival in his art. Madame Dudevant has drawn a beautiful picture of the relations between Porpora and Joseph Haydn, and more recently, and with darker tints, of her own association with the wild and subtle Pole, Chopin, who held the whole world of romance in his two attenuated hands.

Unquestionably the most striking passage in the history of music is the rise and unbroken continuity of that series of composers which has made Germany, for the last century and a half, the musical centre of the world. The great period of German poetry began almost simultaneously. The thunders with which Bach, from his organ, inaugurated the grandest triumphs of the one art, would scarcely be subsided before Klopstock, in his Odes, sung a noble advent hymn to the Augustan era of the other. They were alike, too, in rapid progress towards perfection. As poetry culminated in Goethe, who has himself shown how far his all-inclusive genius represented that which had gone before, so, at a later period, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy resumed in the great circle of his creative power those splendors of musical faculty which had preceded him. From Bach down to Beethoven there is no great com

The general parallel between German music and German poetry fails in one particular. Other countries besides Germany had great living poets, but the music of that land was the music of all the world. In imaginative writing France had great names, and England still greater; but the sturdiest patriotism of both could but admit that there were but one Haydn, one Mozart, and one Beethoven. The only other contemporary school of music, that of Italian opera, serves, by contrast with its own light and sensuous character, to show where the soul and intellect of the art found their native energy. The Rhine and its wines were not more unique phenomena to the touring and bibbing portion of European society than the music which sprung into being in their neighborhood was to all lovers of the tuneful art. After the existence of this concentrated interest for more than a hundred years, Mendelssohn, in succession to Beethoven, was its direct heir. In the presence of Weber, Meyerbeer, and Spohr, he was facile princeps amongst the composers of his time and country. As a proof and a consequence of this, there is now scarcely a performance of high-class music in any part ofthe world, from the programme of which Mendelssohn's name is omitted. How, and under what circumstances, he attained this great position within the few years vouchsafed to him, is an inquiry, we hope, not without interest to general readers.

In the early life of Mendelssohn not one favorable augury for a noble future was wanting. The very race from which he sprung was the primeval fountain of sacred melody. He held kinship to Miriam, and "the-sweet singer of Israel." His more immediate genealogy was not undistinguished. His grandfather was Moses Mendelssohn, a kind of Hebrew-German Plato, who, in the years when German literature

was putting on its strength, stood with al records can show. A warm and dismild philosophic countenance by the side cerning affection charged the atmosphere of Lessing, Wieland, and Klopstock, and in which he grew up with every influence was in no degree dwarfed by the stature that could elicit and strengthen his latent of his contemporaries. To the dignified capacities. About his third or fourth year Theism of the grandfather the sacred music the family removed to Berlin, and here, of the grandson seems to succeed in the under the training of Berger, he acquired same relative order as the new to the old his mastery over the piano-forte, which in dispensation. While, however, a great his eighth year he played with wonderful Jew philosopher was well enough for the finish; while in the theory of music he had penultimate link in Mendelssohn's ances- made so much progress under rough old try, the ultimate was still better, for his Zelter-best known as the friend and corfather was a rich banker, possessing all re- respondent of Goethe, that his tutor was sources to lavish upon the culture of the fond of telling with a grim smile how the son, and an eye to see in him something child had detected in a concerto of Bach worthy to tax them all. The genial banker six of those dread offences against the occupied his proud intermediate position grammar of music consecutive fifths. between Moses and Felix without shar-"The lad plays the piano like the devil," ing the genius of either; but that position says Zelter to Goethe, amongst many was not to him the "point of indifference" for he showed a humorous appreciation of the honor in his habitual saying, "When I was a boy people used to call me the son, and now they call me the father of the great Mendelssohn. Nor was there wanting to the early direction of the composer's powers that blessed influence which has entered as a primary element into nearly all that is great in human deed-the fostering care of a tender and thoughtful mother. She was of a distinguished family of the name of Bartholdy, but it was her chief distinction and happiness that she gave to her son his last name and his first musical impressions.

Mendelssohn, the second of four children, was born in Hamburg on the 3d February, 1809, in a house behind the church of St. Michael, which house the author of the German "Memorial" takes care to inform us was left standing by the great fire of Hamburg-a circumstance which, in these degenerate days, we find it difficult to attribute to any remains of that musical susceptibility which the elements were wont to show in the days of Orpheus and "old Amphion.' The child's leading taste, displayed itself at an amazingly early age, and it was carefully nurtured, and every appliance furnished for its development. No need in this case, as in poor little Handel's, for stealthy midnight interviews with a smuggled clavicord in a secret attic; nor, as in the case of Bach, for copying whole books of studies by moonlight for want of a candle, churlishly denied. Mendelssohn's childhood and youth present as fair a picture of healthy and liberal culture as education

other ejaculations of wonder at Mendelssohn's early musical development. Finally, in 1821, he brought his pupil on a visit to Goethe at Weimar, and with this event commenced the long-standing friendship and correspondence between the composer and the poet. We find amongst Goethe's minor poems a stanza to Mendelssohn, commemorative of this visit, and inviting its repetition. It is to be presumed that at this period Goethe was interested in the boy chiefly as a musical prodigy, but he soon found in him points of closer intellectual contact with the circle of his own genius. The immense musical faculty of Mendelssohn had not been allowed to stunt and maim his other powers of mind. He was a good classical scholar, and in 1826 he drew warm praise from Goethe by a translation of the Andria of Terence. He was skilful, too, in drawing, and could afterwards fix his impressions of the Hebrides or the Alps in other forms than they assumed in his great pictorial symphonies. This became to him a great resource as a diversion to his mind in the intervals of his wonderful musical activity. In general art-criticism he always displayed an insight and knowledge which might have done credit to the specialité of Waagen. Mendelssohn's mind was, indeed, as rich and facile in all departments of modern intellectual culture as if he had no specialité of his own. But whatever might be the sources of Goethe's regard for Mendelssohn, there is evidence enough of its strength.. When the young composer, on his first visit to England, in 1829, was thrown from a gig in London and wounded in the knee, the poet wrote to Zelter

"His presence was particularly beneficial to me, for I find my relation to music is ever the the same; I hear it with pleasure, sympathy, and reflection, but I like most its history; for who understands any phenomenon if he is not master of the course of its development? It was therefore of the greatest importance to find that Felix possesses a commendable insight into this gradation, and fortunately his good memory brings before him the classics of every mode at pleasure. From the epoch of Bach downward he has brought to life again for me Haydn, Mozart, and Gluck; has given me adequate ideas of the great modern theorists; and finally, made me feel and reflect upon his own productions, and so is departed with my best blessings."

thus: "I wish to learn if favorable news most to our very senses. An ardent and has been heard of the worthy Felix. I thoughtful boy-but one to whom leaptake the greatest interest in him, and am frog and cricket are by no means unfain the highest degree anxious that one miliar processes-takes his Wieland Shakwho has done so much should not be hin- speare, and is caught away by the moondered in his progress by a miserable acci- lit fantasy of the great fairy drama. He dent. Say something to reassure me." feels the beauty of the scene translating And when, in 1830, Mendelssohn had itself into exquisite rhythm in his brain, spent a pleasant fortnight in Weimar, and, impelled by a resistless inspiration, Goethe thus characteristically reported he throws all the resources of his art into the results to himself of this visit: the process, until the tricksiness of Puck, the delicate grace of Titania, and the elvish majesty of Oberon, are so made to alternate and to blend in the movement, that it forms a perfect tone-picture of the poet's dream, finally fading away in a few high, soft chords, like a dissolving view, at the first obtrusive ray of morning. Everywhere a genial and fluent fancy is apparent, but this by no means completes the wonder. The boy has that great cunning of his art so to control his melodic conceptions, and knit them up into strength by the use and distribution of modern orchestral resources that the science seems a portion of the inspiration, and the dream is the more dream-like that thought is woven into its filmiest tissue. And so the youthful hand jots the signs. which fix and convey his ideas, and henceforth there is in the world a new pleasure, and a pleasure of a new kind. It is unfortunately possible that some may see in all this only a fresh impulse to an already too strenuous catgut; but in the mature and masterly workmanship of the boy Mendelssohn we discern a clear pledge of a new endowment for the world, and see something of that stout fibre out of which is spun the thread of a great destiny. We now understand something of old Zelter's prophetic raptures.

The original works thus mentioned may seem to be brought into perilous conjunction with the greatest names of the musical Pantheon, but to those who know them there will seem nothing anomalous in the association. "Although scarcely twenty years old," says Mr. Benedict, "he had at this period composed his Ottetto, three quartets for piano and stringed instruments, two sonatas, two symphonies, his first violin quartet, various operas, a great number of separate Lieder, or songs, and the immortal overture to A Midsummer Night's Dream." In some of these works there were the inevitable crudities of boyish ambition, for the wings of early genius are not equable in their very first movements. In most of them, however, and notably in the great Shakspearean overture, composed at the age of sixteen, there are all the splendid vigor and symmetry of the young eagle sunning his newly perfected pinions.

This rapid outburst of a fresh and consummate creative power, differing essentially from all its predecessors, is not to be lazily regarded as an event of ordinary evolution, nor are its results to be valued only for their novel goût upon a jaded mental palate. The unlikeness of genius in its essence to any other thing dreamt of in our philosophy is here realized al

It was the performance of this work in London which initiated Mendelssohn's great and ever increasing English reputation. Without taking up a permanent abode amongst us, he became after this so frequent a visitor in England, with such an accession of pleasure and repute on each occasion, that his name and fame seemed to become as steadily English as were those of the more thoroughly domiciled Handel in his day. Nine times (not seven only, as Mr. Benedict says) he came to England, finding in our scenery and society, and in the immense executive resources placed at his disposal, constant impulses towards new "heavens of inventions," which continually opened up before

one emotion of wonder and delight. The the grave a great master of song, if less dramatic interest of the scenes of drought general-as being limited by conditions of and of rain seemed reproduced with a faculty and culture-is deeper and more double significance. As regards sacred impassioned. The gain of an invention, a composition the heavens had long been law, or a victory, is recognized by the inas brass" to our laments and invocations; tellect; but a new masterpiece of musical "but here at length were "the water-art addresses itself direct to the soul. Fine floods ;" and the great chorus of "Thanks music always carries in it something of apbe to God" resounded as if in its own ex- peal to personal feeling, and is personally istence were sufficient motive for the grate- responded to in the enthusiasm it elicits. ful adoration it embodied. It embodies the affections even more than the mental power of the artist, and it is the affections which it elicits and grasps. Another statesman, as wise as the last, may come and carry on his work; but, when Mendelssohn dies, an individual charm is gone clear out of the world, and cannot be renewed even by one greater than himself.

But if in this sense Mendelssohn was the prophet instrumental in quenching so noble a thirst, the prophet, too, who, in the language addressed to him by Prince Albert in this very year, 66 when surrounded by the Baal-worship of corrupted art, had been able by his genius and science to preserve faithfully the worship of true art" he was no less the prophet (and where, alas! is his mantle ?) destined to be too soon caught up from the sphere of his earthly labors, to be followed with sorrowing looks along the shining track of his translation. From this last visit to Engand he went, worn and weary, back to Germany. In Frankfort he met news of the sudden death of his sister, Madame Hensel, to whom he had always been ardently attached. He fell to the ground with a shriek, and though he afterwards rallied and even labored hard, because, as he often said to his wife, "the time of rest was approaching for him too," the blow was already struck upon his fine nervous system which was to shatter and destroy it. In October he wrote his last composition, a solemn melody to a night-song of Eichendorf, "Departed is the Light of Day," and on the 4th of November he expired, in his thirty-ninth year.

Mendelssohn, too, died young-almost as young as was Mozart at his death. In both cases excessive application brought on the weakness which prematurely destroyed them, and in both cases the power of genius waxed greater up to the very time when that destruction arrived. The Elijah was to Mendelssohn what the Requiem was to Mozart, the crowning work on which were lavished the splendors of a matured and chastened imagination, and the resources of a consummate composing skill. The ancients piously accepted the death of youthful greatness as showing the love felt by the gods for it; and we might almost have dreamed that Mendelssohn's spirit had been supernaturally sublimed into fitness for the reception of harmonies nobler than his own, which "ear hath not heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." But no such dream could beguile the natural reThis event will be well remembered, gret everywhere felt that the school of even through the wild whirl of events-grand oratorio was not to be further enrevolutions and wars-which has filled the interval. In England, for reasons already intimated, Mendelssohn's death was felt by multitudes to be a personal sorrow. The saying, "let who will make the laws of a nation if I may make its songs," was probably elicited by a perception of the relative amounts of influence involved in the two spheres; but it might also have been dictated by a foresight of the more tender regard which the very memory of the song-maker would awake after his songs were all made. When a philosopher, a statesman, or a warrior dies, the nation mourns with a general and equable sorrow; but the emotion which follows to

riched by a faculty which had as yet only had time to show its wonderful capabili ties. With this painful sense of personal deprivation was mingled a boding fear that Mendelssohn's death was the death of the greatest productive era the art of music has ever known. This fear has derived nothing but confirmation from the interval that has since elapsed. It may be premature to presume on the exhaustion of the soil which has yielded such continuous and splendid fruit, but for the present, at least, the harvest is over. In music, as in literature, we have come upon the critical age which invariably follows the creative. The eye is turned to the past, and the ear

The sway of Mendelssohn's baton dissipated this doubt. St. Paul, The Hymn of Praise, and Elijah appeared successively. They were felt to be emphatically new, yet great enough to be matched with the old. The special triumph of these works is that they met with their earliest and fullest acceptance in this country, where the stature of Handel was the inevitable standard applied to them. Here at last was music which neither asked for any reduction of the proportions of the temple of religious musical aspiration, nor set us to perform chamber devotions in a cathedral. Amidst all those qualities of fulness, freshness, and finish which are more expressly elements of modern composition, was recognized that structural grandeur, both in the successive movements and in the total dramatic design, which was the attribute of an older time. For such reasons these works were sure of a wider and heartier appreciation here than any musical compositions have ever or anywhere met with on their first presentation.

works of Mendelssohn woke the echoes of praises whenever their predicted period the world. The sympathy which they should arrive. elicited in London and in our festival cities was the electric current, and the British press was the conducting medium through which his fame was flashed over Europe, including Germany itself. In this country the taste of the public had been kept faithfully true to the large and solid type of musical structure by the constant performance of oratorio. The masterworks of Handel and the Creation of Haydn had for many years been far more frequently produced in England than in any country in Europe. So familiar had the wonderful choral movements of these works become, that in many a country village the assembled peasants or artisans might be heard "practising," with clear or cracked voice, the invocation to the Everlasting Doors, or the ascription by the heavens of Glory to God, while every plain and plastered "conventicle" was doubly consecrated in its turn by the sound of the one great Hallelujah. In our large towns these works were known to a great proportion of the people of all classes. It was a grateful change for the workman to pass from the thunder of looms and jennies Enthusiastic ovations for the composer, to the more harmonious resonance of Han- on conducting his works, show how the del, while the shopkeeper gladly betook faculty of the country had been unconhimself for a Christmas treat to his twen-sciously trained for their recognition. It tieth hearing of the Messiah; and it is had hungered and thirsted for music of out of these circumstances that has arisen this express order. We well remember that singular vocal efficiency which has the scene in the Great Hall of one of our given to the Lancashire chorus so wide provincial cities, when, in April of the a fame. But this interest and efficiency fatal year 1847, Mendelssohn in person arose from the very narrowness of the unrolled, as it were, the great harmonies field within which, up to that period, they of his Elijah before six thousand people, could be displayed. Handel was in ora- to most of whom the name and genius torio not only supreme, but was almost of Handel were familiar. The interest, alone. Besides Haydn, no other great amounting, indeed, to excitement, everycomposer took up an abiding position where displayed, was something curious within the sacred circle of scriptural dra- and suggestive to one who could so far ma. Mozart had written no oratorios. free himself from the same feeling as to One movement only of Beethoven's become an observer. Every member of Mount of Olives-the Hallelujah-has the executing force, from the "first ladies" ever seized upon the popular imagination, in front to the agitator of tympani in the while the ingeniously modulated music of Spohr's Crucifixion and Last Judgment seems too thin and filmy to lodge within the common memory. It seemed, indeed, doubtful whether any composer could or would arise who might combine with the breadth and body of Handelian ideas all the wonderful uses which the orchestra has developed in the last hundred years. We almost imagined ourselves shut up to Handel for the form of our millennial

remotest rear, seemed bent with earnest devotion on realizing the great artistic will which gleamed with regal power and courtesy from the dark eyes and pale face of the composer. A motion of a hand drew the great composite choral unity through transitions and shades of tone which no nicety of the conductor's art or docility of the executive medium had ever produced in our hearing.

The whole vast area was charged with