al youth and of
juventine gaiety; of intimate tenderness; of swagger that winks while it
swaggers; of love that is ever deep but sunlit to the depth; and of
tragedy with a touch of fatalistic horror,--all those qualities that are
found scattered through his sonatas and symphonies and his various
operas--all the qualities that are combined in "Don Giovanni," are the
qualities of Mozart's own nature, always excepting the ruthlessness and
the fanatic libertinism of his Don Juan.

Schopenhauer says that the genius is he who never quite outgrows the
childhood of his attitude toward the world. Mozart was always the
sublime child.

All the qualities of youth give life and personality to his letters, and
place them consequently among the most delightful letters in existence.
Ludwig Nohl collected most of them into two volumes, and Lady Wallace
has translated them into English, with a certain amount of inaccuracy,
but a surprising amount of spirit withal. They may be picked up without
much difficulty, though they are out of print; and any one interested in
musicians or in lovers or in letters, should make haste to add these two
golden volumes to his library.

As the first letter was written in his thirteenth year and the last in
the thirty-fifth and final year of his life, and as they constitute two
volumes of the size of this one, it is manifest that I am here empowered
only to make a skimming summary of his heart-history--woe's me!

The human affections grow by exercise. Mozart was so devoted and so
enthusiastic in his fondness for his father and mother and his sister
that his heart was graduated early for any demand. The most unmusical
people know that Mozart stands unrivalled among infant prodigies, that
he was a pocket-Paderewski, at a period when most children cannot even
trundle a hoop, and that he was deep in composition before the usual
child is out of kilts. Everybody has seen the pictures of the littler
Mozart and his little sister perched like robins on a piano stool and
giving a concert before crowned heads, with the assistance of the father
and the mother, themselves musicians.

The elder Mozart made a life-work out of the career of his children,
though he was a gifted musician and a shrewd and intelligent man on his
own account. He was in no sense one of your child-beating brutes who
make an easy livelihood by turning their children into slaves. He
believed that his son was capable of being one of the world's