my mind to study for three years longer if I were certain that I should then reach the aim which I have kept in view.  So much is clear to me, I shall never become a copy of Kalkbrenner; he will not be able to break my perhaps bold but noble resolve—­to create A new art-era.  If I now continue my studies, I do so only in order to stand at some future time on my own feet.  It was not difficult for Ries, who was then already recognised as a celebrated pianist, to win laurels at Berlin, Frankfort-on- the-Main, Dresden, &c., by his opera Die Rauberbraut.  And how long was Spohr known as an excellent violinist before he had written Faust, Jessonda, and other works?  I hope you will not deny me your blessing when you see on what grounds and with what intentions I struggle onwards.

This is one of the most important letters we have of Chopin; it brings before us, not the sighing lover, the sentimental friend, but the courageous artist.  On no other occasion did he write so freely and fully of his views and aims.  What heroic self-confidence, noble resolves, vast projects, flattering dreams!  And how sad to think that most of them were doomed to end in failure and disappointment!  But few are the lives of true artists that can really be called happy!  Even the most successful have, in view of the ideally conceived, to deplore the quantitative and qualitative shortcomings of the actually accomplished.  But to return to Kalkbrenner.  Of him Chopin said truly that he was not a popular man; at any rate, he was not a popular man with the romanticists.  Hiller tells us in his “Recollections and Letters of Mendelssohn” how little grateful he and his friends, Mendelssohn included, were for Kalkbrenner’s civilities, and what a wicked pleasure they took in worrying him.  Sitting one day in front of a cafe on the Boulevard des Italiens, Hiller, Liszt, and Chopin saw the prim master advancing, and knowing how disagreeable it would be to him to meet such a noisy company, they surrounded him in the friendliest manner, and assailed him with such a volley of talk that he was nearly driven to despair, which, adds Hiller, “of course delighted us.”  It must be confessed that the great Kalkbrenner, as M. Marmontel in his “Pianistes celebres” remarks, had “certaines etroitesses de caractere,” and these “narrownesses” were of a kind that particularly provokes the ridicule of unconventional and irreverent minds.  Heine is never more biting than when he speaks of Kalkbrenner.  He calls him a mummy, and describes him as being dead long ago and having lately also married.  This, however, was some years after the time we are speaking of.  On another occasion Heine writes that Kalkbrenner is envied