ever seen a copy of these works of Pollini, nor any
other account of them than those in Riemann's dictionary and in
Weitzmann's history of the pianoforte, but it is altogether likely
that when they are examined we shall find in this case, as in many
others of progressive development, that the final result was reached
by a succession of steps, each one short, and apparently not so very
important. The chain of technical development for the piano extended
from Bach in unbroken progress, and the discovery of Pollini, who was
less known in western lands than others of the great names in the
list, enables us to fill in between Moscheles and Thalberg. Pollini's
work anticipates the Clementi _Gradus_ by about six years.

To return to Thalberg.--In 1856 he visited America, where his success
was the same as in all other parts of the world. Having accumulated a
fortune, he retired from active life, and bought an estate near
Naples, where he spent the remainder of his life. There were reasons
of a purely external and conventional kind why the playing of Thalberg
should have attracted more attention, or at least been more admired,
than that of Liszt, in Paris and in aristocratic circles everywhere.
His manner was the perfection of quiet. Whatever the difficulty of the
passages upon which he was engaged, he remained perfectly quiet,
sitting upright, modestly, without a single unnecessary motion.
Moreover, the general character of his passages, which progressed
fluently upward or downward by degrees, instead of taking violent
leaps from one part of the keyboard to another, permitted him to
maintain this elegant quiet with less restriction than would have been
possible in such works, for instance, as the great concert fantasias
of Liszt. It is to be noticed, further, that the peculiar sonority of
Thalberg's playing depended upon the improvements in the pianoforte,
made just before his appearance and during his career. His method of
playing the melody, moreover, while perhaps not distinctly so
recognized by him, employed a noticeable element of the arm touch,
while his passage work was a ringer movement of the lightest and most
facile description. His chords, also, were often struck with a finger
touch, and he was perhaps the originator of the peculiar effect
produced by touching a chord with the fingers only, but rebounding
from the keys with the whole arm to the elbow. A chord thus played has
the delicacy peculiar to finger work, but