the cold and hunger of life.  All the good fairies and graces seemed to have smiled benignly on his birth, and to have showered on him their richest gifts.  Many successful wooers of the muse have been, fortunately for themselves, the heirs of poverty, and became successful only to yield themselves to fat and slothful ease.  But, with every incitement to an idle and contented life, Mendelssohn toiled like a galley-slave, and saw in his wealth only the means of a more exclusive consecration to his art.  A passionate impulse to labor was the law of his life.

Many will recollect the brilliant novel “Charles Auchester,” in which, under the names of Seraphael, Aronach, Charles Auchester, Julia Bennett, and Starwood Burney, are painted the characters of Mendelssohn, Zelter his teacher, Joachim the violinist, Jenny Lind, and Sterndale Bennett the English composer.  The brilliant coloring does not disguise nor flatter the lofty Christian purity, the splendid genius, and the great personal charm of the composer, who shares in largest measure the homage which the English public lays at the feet of Handel.

As child and youth Mendelssohn, born at Hamburg, February 3, 1809, displayed the same precocity of talent as was shown by Mozart.  Sir Julius Benedict relates his first meeting with him.  He was walking in Berlin with Von Weber, and the latter called his attention to a boy about eleven years old, who, perceiving the author of “Der Freischuetz,” gave him a hearty greeting. “’Tis Felix Mendelssohn,” said Weber, introducing the marvelous boy.  Benedict narrates his amazement to find the extraordinary attainments of this beautiful youth, with curling auburn hair, brilliant clear eyes, and lips smiling with innocence and candor.  Five minutes after young Mendelssohn had astonished his English friend by his admirable performance of several of his own compositions, he forgot Weber, quartets, and counterpoint, to leap over the garden hedges and climb the trees like a squirrel.  When scarcely twenty years old he had composed his octet, three quartets for the piano and strings, two sonatas, two symphonies, his first violin quartet, various operas, many songs, and the immortal overture of “A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.”

Mendelssohn received an admirable education, was an excellent classicist and linguist, and during a short residence at Dusseldorf showed such talent for painting as to excite much wonder.  Before he was twenty he was the friend of Goethe and Herder, who delighted in a genius so rich and symmetrical.  Some of Goethe’s letters are full of charming expressions of praise and affection, for the aged Jupiter of German literature found in the promise of this young Apollo something of the many-sided power which made himself so remarkable.

II.