ery object on which its rainbow colours
rest, and who have been equally tried by affliction and
misconstruction, and equally tempted by brilliant opportunities of
pleasure in the intervals of penury and pain--these, if they stand
fast, may be allowed to speak, and they will seldom speak
uncharitably, of their brethren who have fallen; or, if they fall,
they may be heard to plead a somewhat similar excuse. But let ordinary
men, and men less extraordinary than those we speak of, beware how
they either refer to them as a reproach, or follow them as an example.

The excesses of men of genius are always exaggerated by their enemies,
and often overrated even by their friends and companions. With
characteristic fervour they enter enthusiastically into every thing in
which they engage; and, when they indulge in dissipation, delight to
sport on the brink of all its terrors, and to outvie in levity and
extravagance the most practised professors of their new art. Few that
see or hear them think, that even in the midst of their revels their
hearts are often far away, or are extracting good from the evil spread
before them; and that all the waste of time and talent, so openly and
ostentatiously exhibited, is compensated in secret by longer and
intenser application to the true object of their pursuit, and by acts
of atonement and self-denial, of which the conscious stars of heaven
are the only created witnesses. The worst operation of dissolute
indulgences on genius is not, perhaps, in producing depravity of
heart or habits, for its pure plumes have a virtue about them that is
a preservative against pollution; but in wearing out the frame,
ruffling the temper, and depressing the spirits, and thus embittering
as well as shortening a career that, even when most peaceful and
placid, is often destined to be short and sad enough.

The good-natured sympathy which Mozart always felt in the welfare of
the very humblest of his brethren of the lyre, is highly creditable to
him. But the extent to which he sacrificed his own interests to serve
them, was often any thing but prudent. He was devoid of every sordid
and avaricious feeling, and indeed carried his generosity to an
excess.

"The extreme kindness of his nature was grossly abused by artful
performers, music-sellers, and managers of theatres. Whenever any
poor artists, strangers in Vienna, applied to him for assistance,
he offered them the use of his house and table, int