Your manner awakens no confidence, and in this way announces that you have none yourself.  How do you expect to exercise control over a grand seven octave piano, if you do not sit exactly in the middle, with the body erect and the feet on the two pedals?  You are not willing to look the friend straight in the face, with whom you are to carry on a friendly, confidential discourse!  Even if your attitude and bearing were not so injurious and dangerous for the performer as it is, still propriety and good sense would require that you should excite the confidence of your hearers in you and in your playing by a correct position of the body, and by a certain decision and resolution, and should prepare him to form a good opinion of you.

There are, indeed, many virtuosos who think they give evidence of genius, by throwing themselves on to the music-stool in a slovenly, lounging manner, and try to show in this way their superiority to a painstaking performance, and to make up by a showy nonchalance for what is wanting in their playing.  You are, however, a stranger to such assertion of superior genius, and to such an expression of intensity of feeling; you do it only from embarrassment, and from a modest want of confidence in your own powers, which is quite unnecessary.  Our great masters, such as Field, Hummel, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, and others, had no taste for such improprieties, for such manifestations of genius.  They applied themselves to their task with earnest devotion, and with respect for the public.

CHAPTER XIII.

ON MUSICAL TALENT.

A large and varied experience is required for a correct estimate of musical talent in the young.  Do not be deceived by the early evidences of talent; for instance, interest in melodies, correct feeling for time, an instinct for accenting the important notes, inclination for some peculiar though often perverted style of performance, quick apprehension, a natural aptitude for playing, a nice hearing, animation, rapid progress, docility, superficial gayety; even if all or a part of these traits are observable in early youth, they must not excite too sanguine hopes.  I have often met with such phenomena, and have been called upon to educate such little piano prodigies.  They advanced quite rapidly, and understood every thing readily, if I did not make too much demand upon their wavering attention.  I dreamed of the extraordinary surprises that these marvellous youths would create at twelve or fourteen years of age; but the fulfilment of my ideal I saw only in my mind’s eye, for just then the improvement came to a sudden stand-still,—­a fatal moment, when the teacher is perplexed to know what to do next.  The musical nature seemed to have exhausted itself, to have out-lived itself.  The pupil even felt this:  his interest in the piano and in music generally grew feeble, his playing suddenly became careless, powerless, spiritless; he