al powers in boyhood--though none of them as children showed that
full maturity of mind which distinguished Mozart, and which only a few
of those who witnessed it could fully appreciate. Mozart's
organization was obviously of the finest and tenderest texture; but he
had also many advantages in his nurture, and, among others, the
inestimable blessing of a happy home, where harmony reigned in the
hearts, as well as upon the lips and fingers of the inmates. His
father was a man of sense and education, as well as of musical talent,
and in all respects did his duty to his son throughout life, amidst
many difficulties and disappointments, resulting partly from his own
dependent situation at Salzburg, and partly from an over-estimate of
the worldly prosperity which his son's genius should have commanded.
His mother seems also to have been an excellent person; and from the
remarkable letters which Mozart wrote from Paris to prepare his father
for her death, after the event had happened, she appears to have been
the object of the tenderest affection to her family. Mozart uniformly
discharged towards his parents all the offices of pious devotion; and
he was always affectionately attached to his sister, who was a few
years older than himself, and whose early and distinguished skill as a
performer must have been useful in assisting her brother's tastes. In
1829 the Novello family saw this lady at Salzburg, a widow and in
narrow circumstances.

"We found Madame Sonnenberg, lodged in a small but clean room,
bed-ridden and quite blind. Hers is a complete decay of nature;
suffering no pain, she lies like one awaiting the stroke of
death, and will probably expire in her sleep.... Her voice was
scarcely above a whisper, so that I was forced to lean my face
close to hers to catch the sound. In the sitting-room still
remained the old clavichord, on which the brother and sister had
frequently played duets together; and on its desk were some pieces
of his composition, which were the last things his sister had
played over previous to her illness."

With becoming delicacy, the fruits of an English subscription were
presented to her on her name-day, as a remembrance from some friends
of her brother.

The bane of Mozart's fortunes was the patronage on which he was
dependent. His father had got into the trammels of the Archbishop of
Salzburg--a sordid, arrogant, and ignorant man, who saw Mozart's value