he play
abounds. It is a work instinct with musicianly feeling, and its
strength is borne out by the soundness and skill displayed in its
construction. As a great musical judge[29] has said of it: 'No one
piece of music contains so many points of harmony and orchestration
that had never been written before, and yet none of them have the air
of experiment, but seem all to have been written with certainty of
their success.'

But we must not linger over this portion of our story, though we are
tempted to do so; for there can be no doubt that these years spent in
the Leipziger Strasse house, when the members of the family were all
together, each contributing his or her share to the intellectual
intercourse that went on beneath its hospitable roof, afford the
happiest pictures of Mendelssohn's young life. It was so full and
many-sided a life, hard work alternating with gymnastics, dancing,
swimming, riding, and, of course, music, each occupation pursued with
such zest and heartiness as to convey the impression at the moment of
its being the most absorbing of all.

Amidst these pleasures, however, a new project had taken hold of his
mind, one which, like many another great undertaking fraught with
far-reaching results, owed its inception to the feeling aroused by the
indifference and lack of sympathy shown by others towards what he
himself believed to be deserving of the highest praise. Two years
before, Felix's grandmother had presented him with a manuscript score
of Bach's 'Passion according to St. Matthew,' which Zelter had
permitted to be copied from the manuscript in the Singakademie. A more
devoted lover of Bach's music than Zelter could not have been found,
and the old man had infused some of this love into his pupil;
consequently, when the score of the 'Passion' was placed in
Mendelssohn's hands, he set to work to master it, and with such
earnestness had he applied himself to the study that at this point of
our story he knew the whole of it by heart.

The more he studied this great work, the more was he impressed by its
beauty and the grandeur of its conception. Could it possibly be true,
he asked himself, that throughout the length and breadth of Germany
so stupendous a work as this remained unheard, unknown? that a
creation so deathless in itself could be permitted to sleep without
even the hope of an awakening? 'Alas!' replied Zelter, when the
question was put to him--'alas! it is nearly a hundred years since o