at giant among
players, came to Prague. . . . His grand style of playing, and
especially his bold improvisation, had an extraordinary effect upon me.
I felt so shaken that for several days I could not bring myself to
touch the piano."

"His manner was to sit in a quiet way at the instrument, commanding his
feelings; but occasionally, and especially when extemporising, it was
hard to maintain the pose. At extreme moments he warmed into great
passions, so that it was impossible for him to hide from his listeners
the sacred fires that were raging within him. Czerny declares that his
playing of slow movements was full of the greatest expression,--an
experience to be remembered. He used the pedal largely, and was most
particular in the placing of the hands and the drift of the fingers
upon the keys. As a pianist, he was surnamed 'Giant among players,'
and men like Vogler, Hummel, and Woelffl were of a truth great players;
but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's _tours
de force_ in performance, his transposing and playing at sight, etc.,
'It was no quality of this kind that got him the name, but the
loftiness and elevation of his style, and his great power of expression
in slow movements, which, when exercised on his noble music, fixed his
hearers, and made them insensible to any fault of polish or mere
mechanism.'"

Beethoven has often served as a subject for painters, but, among the
numerous pictures dedicated to him, we recall none more impressive than
Aime de Lemud's "Beethoven's Dream." De Lemud, a Frenchman who died at
the age of seventy years, in 1887, first won success as a painter, and
then studied engraving. At the Salon of 1863 he received a medal for
his engraving of this picture, which was then entitled, simply,
"Beethoven."

[Illustration: Beethoven's Dream. From painting by Aime de Lemud.]

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in her story of "The Silent Partner," tells
how "a line engraving after De Lemud could make a 'forgetting' in the
life of a factory girl.

"An engraving that lay against a rich easel in a corner of the room
attracted the girl's attention presently. She went down on her knees
to examine it. It chanced to be Lemud's dreaming Beethoven. Sip was
very still about it.

"'What is that fellow doing?' she asked, after a while. 'Him with the
stick in his hand.'

"She pointed to the leader of the shadowy orchestra, touching the baton
through the glass, with her brown