It was a head of Liszt.

It is no part of my present scheme to describe the battle which
romanticism in music waged against the prevalent conventionalities. We
know the general outcome of the struggle culminating, after the most
prodigious artistic convulsions, in the musical supremacy of Richard
Wagner, who certainly marks firmly and broadly enough the greatest
stride in musical development made since Beethoven.

In 1842 Liszt visited Weimar, Berlin, and then went to Paris; he was
meditating a tour in Russia. Pressing invitations reached him from St.
Petersburg and Moscow. The most fabulous accounts of his virtuosity
had raised expectation to its highest pitch. He was as legendary even
among the common people as Paganini. His first concert at St.
Petersburg realized the then unheard-of sum of L2,000. The roads were
crowded to see him pass, and the corridors and approaches to the Grand
Opera blocked to catch a glimpse of him. The same scenes were repeated
at Moscow, where he gave six concerts without exhausting the popular
excitement.

On his return to Weimar he accepted the post of Capellmeister to the
Grand Duke. It provided him with that settled abode, and above all
with an orchestra, which he now felt so indispensable to meet his
growing passion for orchestral composition. But the time of rest had
not yet come.

In 1844 and 1845 he was received in Spain and Portugal with incredible
enthusiasm, after which he returned to Bonn to assist at the
inauguration of Beethoven's statue. With boundless liberality, he had
subscribed more money than all the princes and people of Germany put
together, to make the statue worthy of the occasion and the occasion
worthy of the statue.

The golden river which poured into him from all the capitals of
Europe now freely found a new vent in boundless generosity. Hospitals,
poor and needy, patriotic celebrations, the dignity and interests of
art, were all subsidized from his private purse. His transcendent
virtuosity was only equalled by his splendid munificence; but he
found--what others have so often experienced--that great personal
gifts and prodigious _eclat_ cannot possibly escape the poison of envy
and detraction. He was attacked by calumny; his gifts denied and
ridiculed; his munificence ascribed to vainglory, and his charity to
pride and ostentation; yet none will ever know the extent of his
private charities, and no one who knows anything of Liszt can be
ignorant of the sim