d to receive him. Everywhere he was
feted, courted, caressed. This fair-haired, blue-eyed lad, with the seal
of genius burning on his face, had made the social world mad over him.
The young adventurer was sailing in a treacherous channel, full of
dangerous reefs. Would he, in the homage paid to him, an unmatured
youth, by scholars, artists, wealth, beauty, and rank, forgot in mere
self-love and vanity his high obligations to his art and the sincere
devotion which alone could wrest from art its richest guerdon? This
problem seems to have troubled his father, for he determined to take his
young Franz away from the palace of Circe. The boy had already made an
attempt at composition in the shape of an operetta, in one act, "Don
Sanche," which was very well received at the Academie Royale. Adolph
Nourrit, the great singer, had led the young composer on the stage,
where he was received with thunders of applause by the audience, and
was embraced with transport by Rudolph Kreutzer, the director of the
orchestra.

Adam Liszt and his son went to England, and spent about six months in
giving concerts in London and other cities. Franz was less than
fourteen years old, but the pale, fragile, slender boy had, in the deep
melancholy which stamped the noble outline of his face, an appearance
of maturity that belied his years. English audiences everywhere received
him with admiration, but he seemed to have lost all zest for the
intoxicating wine of public favor. A profound gloom stole over him,
and we even hear of hints at an attempt to commit suicide. Adam Liszt
attributed it to the sad English climate, which Hein-rich Heine cursed
with such unlimited bitterness, and took his boy back again to sunnier
France. But the dejection darkened and deepened, threatening even
to pass into epilepsy. It assumed the form of religious enthusiasm,
alternating with fits of remorse as of one who had committed the
unpardonable sin, and sometimes expressed itself in a species of frenzy
for the monastic life. These strange experiences alarmed the father,
and, in obedience to medical advice, he took the ailing, half-hysterical
lad to Boulogne-sur-Mer, for sea-bathing.

II.

While by the seaside Franz Liszt lost the father who had loved him
with the devotion of father and mother combined. This fresh stroke of
affliction deepened his dejection, and finally resulted in a fit of
severe illness. When he was convalescent new views of life seemed
to inspire