ti's great pupil, no one had raised such
a furore among the music-loving Russians. Schumann's music, which it was
his wife's dearest privilege to interpret, found a much warmer welcome
than among his own countrymen at that date. In the Sclavonic nature
there is a deep current of romance and mysticism, which met with
instinctive sympathy the dreamy and fantastic thoughts which ran riot in
Schumann's works.

On returning from the St. Petersburg tour, Schumann gave up the "Neue
Zeitschrift," the journal which he had made such a powerful organ of
musical revolution, and transferred it to Oswald Lorenz. Schumann's
literary work is so deeply intertwined with his artistic life and
mission that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to separate the two.
He had achieved a great work--he had planted in the German mind the
thought that there was such a thing as progress and growth; that
stagnation was death; and that genius was for ever shaping for itself
new forms and developments. He had taught that no art is an end to
itself, and that, unless it embodies the deep-seated longings and
aspirations of men ever striving toward a loftier ideal, it becomes
barren and fruitless--the mere survival of a truth whose need had
ceased. He was the apostle of the musico-poetical art in Germany, and,
both as author and composer, strove with might and main to educate his
countrymen up to a clear understanding of the ultimate outcome of the
work begun by Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber.

Schumann as a critic was eminently catholic and comprehensive. Deeply
appreciative of the old lights of music, he received with enthusiasm all
the fresh additions contributed by musical genius to the progress of
his age. Eschewing the cold, objective, technical form of criticism,
his method of approaching the work of others was eminently subjective,
casting on them the illumination which one man of genius gives
to another. The cast of his articles was somewhat dramatic and
conversational, and the characters represented as contributing
their opinions to the symposium of discussion were modeled on actual
personages. He himself was personified under the dual form of Florestan
and Eusebius, the "two souls in his breast"--the former, the fiery
iconoclast, impulsive in his judgments and reckless in attacking
prejudices; the latter, the mild, genial, receptive dreamer. Master
Raro, who stood for Wieck, also typified the calm, speculative side of
Schumann's nature. Chiara