through Wieck's advice that the Schumann family
yielded their opposition to the young man's bent.

Once settled in his new career, Schumann gave himself up to work with
the most indefatigable ardor. The early part of the present century was
a halcyon time for the _virtuosi_, and the fame and wealth that poured
themselves on such players as Paganini and Liszt made such a pursuit
tempting in the extreme. Fortunately, the young musician was saved from
such a career. In his zeal of practice and desire to attain a perfectly
independent action for each finger on the piano, Schumann devised some
machinery, the result of which was to weaken the sinews of his third
finger by undue distention. By this he lost the effective use of the
whole right hand, and of course his career as a _virtuoso_ practically
closed.

Music gained in its higher walks what it lost in a lower. Schumann
devoted himself to composition and aesthetic criticism, after he had
passed through a thorough course of preparatory studies. Both as a
writer and a composer Schumann fought against Philistinism in music.
Ardent, progressive, and imaginative, he soon became the leader of the
romantic school, and inaugurated the crusade which had its parallel in
France in that carried on by Victor Hugo in the domain of poetry. His
early pianoforte compositions bear the strong impress of this fiery,
revolutionary spirit. I lis great symphonic works belong to a later
period, when his whole nature had mellowed and ripened without losing
its imaginative sweep and brilliancy. Schumann's compositions for the
piano and orchestra are those by which his name is most widely honored,
but nowhere do we find a more characteristic exercise of his genius than
in his songs, to which this article will call more special attention.

Such works as the "Etudes Symphoniques" and the "Kreisleriana" express
much of the spirit of unrest and longing aspiration, the struggle to
get away from prison-bars and limits, which seem to have sounded the
key-note of Schumann's deepest nature. But these feelings could only
find their fullest outlet in the musical form expressly suited to
subjective emotion. Accordingly, the "Sturm and Drang" epoch of his
life, when all his thoughts and conceptions were most unsettled and
visionary, was most fruitful in lyric song. In Heinrich Heine he found
a fitting poetical co-worker, in whose moods he seemed to see a perfect
reflection of his own--Heine, in whom the bitt