ate
the genius of Mozart by the insignificance of his exterior.' The
extremity of his animal spirits may occasion surprise. He composed
pantomimes and ballets, and danced in them himself, and at the
carnival balls sometimes assumed a character. He was actually
incomparable in Arlequin and Pierrot. The public masquerades at
Vienna, during the carnival, were supported with all the vivacity
of Italy; the emperor occasionally mingled in them, and his
example was generally followed. We are not, therefore, to measure
these enjoyments by our colder northern notions."

It should be added, what Mr Holmes tells us on good authority, that
the vice of ebriety was not among Mozart's failings. "He drank to the
point of exhilaration, but not beyond." His fondness for
ballet-dancing may seem strange to us, who have almost a Roman
repugnance to such exhibitions in men of good station. But it is
possible that in some minds the love of graceful motion may be a
refined passion and an exalted art; and it is singular that Mozart's
wife told of him, that, in his own estimation, his taste lay in
dancing rather than in music.

"That these scenes of extravagant delight seduced him into
occasional indulgences, which cannot be reconciled with the purity
of his earlier life, it would be the worst affectation in his
biographer to deny. Nor is it necessary to the vindication of
Mozart that such temporary errors should be suppressed by a
feeling of mistaken delicacy. Living such a round of excitements,
and tortured by perpetual misfortunes, there is nothing very
surprising in the fact, that he should sometimes have been drawn
into the dangerous vortex; but he redeemed the true nobility of
his nature by preserving, in the midst of his hasty inconstancies,
the most earnest and unfailing attachment to his home. It is a
curious illustration of his real character, that he always
confessed his transgressions to his wife, who had the wise
generosity to pardon them, from that confidence in his truth which
survived alike the troubles and temptations of their checkered
lives."

Let none lightly dare either to condemn or to imitate the
irregularities of life of such wondrous men as Mozart and our own
Burns. Those who may be gifted with equally strong and exquisite
sensibilities as they, as fine and flexible affections, as bright an
imagination, beautifying ev