opin, Schmitt afforded the public of Vienna an opportunity of
hearing a number of his own compositions--which were by no means short
drawing-room pieces, but a symphony, overture, concerto, concertino,
&c.--and that he concluded his concert with an improvisation. One
critic, at least, described his style of playing as sound and
brilliant. The misfortune of Schmitt was to have come too late into the
world--respectable mediocrities like him always do that--he never had
any youth. The pianist on whom Chopin called first on arriving in Vienna
was Charles Czerny, and he

was, as he is always (and to everybody), very polite, and
asked, "Hat fleissig studirt?" [Have you studied diligently?]
He has again arranged an overture for eight pianos and
sixteen performers, and seems to be very happy over it.

Only in the sense of belonging rather to the outgoing than to the
incoming generation can Czerny be reckoned among the aged pianists, for
in 1831 he was not above forty years of age and had still an enormous
capacity for work in him--hundreds and hundreds of original and
transcribed compositions, thousands and thousands of lessons. His name
appears in a passage of one of Chopin's letters which deserves to be
quoted for various reasons: it shows the writer's dislike to the Jews,
his love of Polish music, and his contempt for a kind of composition
much cultivated by Czerny. Speaking of the violinist Herz, "an
Israelite," who was almost hissed when he made his debut in Warsaw, and
whom Chopin was going to hear again in Vienna, he says:--

At the close of the concert Herz will play his own Variations
on Polish airs. Poor Polish airs! You do not in the least
suspect how you will be interlarded with "majufes" [see page
49, foot-note], and that the title of "Polish music" is only
given you to entice the public. If one is so outspoken as to
discuss the respective merits of genuine Polish music and
this imitation of it, and to place the former above the
latter, people declare one to be mad, and do this so much the
more readily because Czerny, the oracle of Vienna, has
hitherto in the fabrication of his musical dainties never
produced Variations on a Polish air.

Chopin had not much sympathy with Czerny the musician, but seems to have
had some liking for the man, who indeed was gentle, kind, and courteous
in his disposition and deportment.

A much more congenial and intimate connection exis