rster was living in the upper
part of his house, he gave music-lessons to his friend's little
six-year-old boy. The lessons could only be given before breakfast,
and as Beethoven was an early riser, the boy had to get up in the dark
on those winter mornings and go down to the practice-room. May we not
picture for ourselves the little child seated beside the grave
composer in the dimly-lighted room, striving with chilly fingers to
find the right notes, whilst the master, bending over him, sets him
right with a tenderness which no one else is near to witness?

'I feel as if I had written scarcely more than a few notes,' were the
words used by Beethoven in writing to a friend in 1824, when he was
near the close of his full and eventful life; and they serve to show
how exhaustless was that energy which neither sorrow nor disease had
the power to repress. Still, he yearns to 'bring a few great works
into the world, and then,' he adds, 'like an old child, to end my
earthly course somewhere amongst good people.' These latter years had,
indeed, been very full ones, both of work and anxieties, and the
inroads of disease had been steadily undermining his strength. Yet the
picture which is given to us of the composer when within a few months
of his death is a vivid portrayal of the triumph of mind-force over
physical weakness. He was staying in the country, at the house of his
brother Johann, and the picture of his daily life there is drawn by
the hand of his serving-man. 'At half-past five he was up and at his
table, beating time with hands and feet, singing, humming, and
writing. At half-past seven was the family breakfast, and directly
after it he hurried out of doors, and would saunter about the fields,
calling out, waving his hands, going now very slowly, then very fast,
and then suddenly standing still and writing in a kind of pocket-book.
At half-past twelve he came into the house to dinner, and after dinner
he went to his own room till three or so; then again in the fields
till about sunset, for later than that he might not go out. At
half-past seven was supper, and then he went to his room, wrote till
ten, and so to bed.'

One more picture, and our story ends. Beethoven was lying on his
death-bed when the news was brought to him that Hummel, the musician,
with whom he had been intimate in the old Vienna days, had just
arrived in the city. Many years had elapsed since Beethoven had
severed his friendship with Hummel in a