the violin, they are not particularly
significant as tone-poetry. They are pleasing and sensational, and at
times passionate, show pieces for the virtuoso.

II.

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), for whose genius Paganini had such
admiration, was perhaps the most remarkable French personality in
music during the nineteenth century, and one of the most commanding in
the whole world of music. He was born at Grenoble, in the south of
France. His father, a physician, intended that the son should follow
his own profession, but when the young Berlioz was sent to Paris to
study medicine, at the age of eighteen, music proved too strong for
him, and he entered the Conservatory as a pupil of Lesueur. His
parents were so incensed by this course that the paternal supplies
were cut off, and the young enthusiast was driven to the expedient of
earning a scanty living by singing in the opera chorus at an obscure
theater, _La Gymnase Dramatique_. The daring originality of the young
musician, and his habit of regarding every rule as open to question,
rendered him anything but a favorite with Cherubini, the director of
the Conservatory, and it was only after several trials that he carried
off the prize for composition. The second instance of this kind
occurred in 1830, the piece being a dramatic cantata "_Sardanapole_,"
which gained him the prize of Rome, carrying with it a pension
sufficient to maintain the winner during three years in Italy.

On his return to Paris, he found it extremely difficult to secure a
living by his compositions, their originality and the scale upon which
he carried them out, placing them outside the conventional markets for
new musical works designed for public performance. In this strait he
took to writing for the press, in the _Journal des Debats_, for which
his talent was little, if any, less marked than for musical
production upon the largest scale. As a writer, he was keen,
sarcastic, bright and sympathetic. A man of the world, and at the same
time an artist, he touched everything with the characteristic
lightness and raciness of the born _feuilletonist_. Very soon (in
1834), he produced his symphony "_Harold en Italie_," which Paganini
so much admired that he presented Berlioz with the very liberal, even
princely _douceur_ of 20,000 francs ($4,000). Meanwhile Berlioz was
unable to secure recognition in Paris. His compositions were regarded
as extravagant and fantastic, and Parisians were curiously surprised