m to fresh
efforts to make himself successful, that he may be worthy and able to
establish a home. But to a woman this brings, only too often, yet
another heavy barrier in the way of success in any art or occupation.
So it was to Fanny Mendelssohn.

"Hensel was at first dreadfully jealous . . . even of Fanny's
art. . . . Only _her_ letters have been preserved. With
characteristic energy she refuses to sacrifice her brother to the
jealousy with which Hensel, in the beginning, regards her love for him,
but she consents to give up her friends, and even her music. . . . She
never, in her thoughts, loses sight of that letter of her father's, in
which he calls the vocation of a housewife the only true aim and study
of a young woman, and in thinking of the man of her choice she
earnestly devotes herself to this aim."

What reprobation and what just indignation would be showered upon a
woman who should try to make the man of her choice give up his art, to
attend to her private comforts!

Although Fanny's good father and mother, yielding to the prejudices of
their day, had struggled to make housekeeping her main interest, and
music only her recreation, yet they had not denied her musical genius a
complete education. Fanny was not only taught to play the piano in her
childhood, in company with Felix, but she was also allowed to receive
lessons in thorough bass and the theory of composition. She was thus
rendered capable of the expression of her musical talents; and in
between her household duties, after, as well as before she became a
wife and mother, she often found time to compose. Much of what she
wrote was of so high a character that her brother Felix felt no
hesitation in putting it forth to the world as _his_ own composition!
It is, apparently, impossible to discover which, amongst the works
published as those of Mendelssohn, were really those of his sister; but
references now and again occur in his private letters to the fact,
which thereby becomes incontrovertible, that he has claimed before the
public compositions which are hers exclusively. The most famous of
such passages is one that has became widely known in consequence of its
quotation in Sir Theodore Martin's "Life of the Prince Consort."
Mendelssohn is telling of his visit to the queen, at Buckingham Palace,
in 1842.

"The queen said she was very fond of singing my published songs. 'You
should sing one to him,' said Prince Albert, and after a little