tself; he needs no critical editing; and if we
may yet have more strictly musical letters from his pen, the influence
of the two volumes now under notice will be largely increased.

It is not enough to say of these volumes that they are bright, piquant,
genial, affectionate; nor is it enough to speak of their artistic
worth, the subtile appreciation of painting in the first series, and of
music in the second; it is not enough to refer to the glimpses which
they give of eminent artists,--Chopin, Rossini, Donizetti, Hiller, and
Moscheles,--nor the side-glances at Thorwaldsen, Bunsen, the late
scholarly and art-loving King of Prussia, Schadow, Overbeck, Cornelius,
and the Duesseldorf painters; nor is it enough to dwell upon that
delightful homage to father and mother, that confiding trust in brother
and sisters, that loyalty to friends. The salient feature of these
charming books is the unswerving devotion to a great purpose; the
careless disregard, nay, the abrupt refusal, of fame, unless it came in
an honest channel; the naive modesty that made him wonder, even in the
very last years of his life, that _he_ could be the man whose entrance
into the crowded halls of London and Birmingham should be the signal of
ten minutes' protracted cheering; the refusal to set art over against
money; the unwillingness to undertake the mandates of a king, unless
with the cordial acquiescence of his artistic conscience; and the
immaculate purity, not alone of his life, but of his thought. How he
castigates Donizetti's love of money and his sloth! how his whip
scourges the immorality of the French opera, and his whole soul abhors
the sensuality of that stage! how steadfastly he refuses to undertake
the composition of an opera till the faultless libretto for which he
patiently waited year after year could be prepared! We wish our
religious societies would call out a few of the letters of this man and
scatter them broadcast over the land: they would indeed be "leaves for
the healing of the nations."

There is one lesson which may be learned from Mendelssohn's career,
which is exceptionably rare: it is that Providence does _sometimes_
bless a man every way,--giving him all good and no evil. Where shall we
look in actual or historic experience to find a parallel to Mendelssohn
in this? He had beauty: Chorley says he never looked upon a handsomer
face. He had grace and elegance. He spoke four languages with perfect
ease, read Greek and Latin wi