eristic are the faces of all the Frankfort girls:
intellectual or beautiful few of them; the noses mostly Greek, often
snub-noses; the dialect I did not like."

The English type of beauty appears to have especially won his
approval. "When she spoke it sounded like the whispering of angels,"
he says of an Englishwoman, "as pretty as a picture," whom he met.
Elsewhere he says, laconically: "On the 24th I arrived at Mainz with
the steamer, in company with twenty to thirty English men and women.
Next day the number of English increased to fifty. If I ever marry, it
must be an English woman." Some years later, however, with the
fickleness of genius, he writes about Ernestine, the daughter of a
rich Bohemian Baron, "a delightfully innocent, childish soul, tender
and pensive, attached to me and to everything artistic by the most
sincere love, extremely musical--in short, just the kind of a girl I
could wish to marry." He did become engaged to her, but the following
year the engagement was dissolved; and soon after this he discovered
that his artistic admiration for Clara Wieck had assumed the form of
love. Although her father opposed their union several years, on
account of Schumann's poverty, the young couple often met, and not
only in the music-room. In 1833 he writes to his mother regarding
Clara: "The other day, when we went to Connewitz (we take a two or
three hours' walk almost daily), I heard her say to herself, 'How
happy I am! how happy!' Who would not like to hear that! On this road
there are a number of very useless stones in the midst of the
footpath. Now, as it happens in conversation that I more frequently
look up than down, she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat
at every stone, lest I may fall."

It was most fortunate for Schumann that his bride and wife was one of
the greatest living pianists. For, owing to the accident to his hand,
though he could still improvise, he could not appear in public to
interpret his own compositions, which depended so much for their
success on a sympathetic performance, since they differed so greatly
from the prevalent style of Hummel and the classical masters, that
even so gifted a musician as Mendelssohn failed to understand them.
But Clara made it the task of her life to secure him recognition, and
this was an additional bond that united their souls. "When you are
mine," he writes, "you will occasionally hear something new from me; I
believe you will often inspire