enteen pieces for the
organ.

Of Beethoven, Professor F.L. Ritter, in one of his excellent lectures
on music, says, "Beethoven's compositions appeal to the whole being of
the listener. They captivate the whole soul, and, for the time being,
subdue it to an intense, powerful, poetical influence, impressing it
with melancholy, sorrow, and sadness, elevating it heavenwards in
hopeful joy and inspired happiness."

The following description[6] of Beethoven's last hours on earth, as he
was nearing the time

"When all of genius which can perish dies,"

although replete with sadness, is yet a tribute so touchingly
beautiful and eloquent as to make it well worthy of insertion here.

[Footnote 6: Anonymously contributed to the Boston Folio for May,
1877.]

"THE LAST MOMENTS OF BEETHOVEN.

"He had but one happy moment in his life, and that moment
killed him.

"He lived in poverty, driven into solitude by the contempt
of the world, and by the natural bent of a disposition
rendered harsh, almost savage, by the injustice of his
contemporaries. But he wrote the sublimest music that ever
man or angel dreamed. He spoke to mankind in his divine
language, and they disdained to listen to him. He spoke to
them as Nature speaks in the celestial harmony of the winds,
the waves, the singing of the birds amid the woods.
Beethoven was a prophet, and his utterance was from God.

"And yet was his talent so disregarded, that he was destined
more than once to suffer the bitterest agony of the poet,
the artist, the musician. He doubted his own genius.

"Haydn himself could find for him no better praise than in
saying, 'He was a clever pianist.'

"Thus was it said of Gericault, 'He blends his colors well;'
and thus of Goethe, 'He has a tolerable style, and he
commits no faults in orthography.'

"Beethoven had but one friend, and that friend was Hummel.
But poverty and injustice had irritated him, and he was
sometimes unjust himself. He quarrelled with Hummel, and for
a long time they ceased to meet. To crown his misfortunes,
he became completely deaf.

"Then Beethoven retired to Baden, where he lived, isolated
and sad, in a small house that scarcely sufficed for his
necessities. There his only pleasure was in wandering amid
the green alleys of a beautiful forest in the neighborhood