work presentable and calculated to produce an effect, he declared his only regret was that he was no longer at the head of a theatre, because, had he been, he would have thought himself extremely lucky to secure such a man as myself permanently for his enterprise.  At this announcement my family was overcome with joy, and their feelings were all the more justified seeing that, as they all knew, Bierey was by no means an amiable romancer, but a practical musician well seasoned by a life full of experience.

The delay was now borne with better spirits, and for a long time I was able to wait hopefully for what the future might bring.  Among other things, I now began to enjoy the company of a new friend in the person of Laube, who at that time, although I had not set his Kosziusko to music, was at the zenith of his fame.  The first portion of his novel, Young Europe, the form of which was epistolary, had appeared, and had a most stimulating effect on me, more particularly in conjunction with all the youthful hopefulness which at that time pulsated in my veins.  Though his teaching was essentially only a repetition of that in Heinse’s Ardinghello, the forces that then surged in young breasts were given full and eloquent expression.  The guiding spirit of this tendency was followed in literary criticism, which was aimed mainly at the supposed or actual incapacity of the semi-classical occupants of our various literary thrones.  Without the slightest mercy the pedants, [Footnote:  Zopfe in the German text.—­ Translator.] among whom Tieck for one was numbered, were treated as sheer encumbrances and hindrances to the rise of a new literature.  That which led to a remarkable revulsion of my feelings with regard to those German composers who hitherto had been admired and respected, was partly the influence of these critical skirmishes, and the luring sprightliness of their tone; but mainly the impression made by a fresh visit of Schroder-Devrient to Leipzig, when her rendering of Borneo in Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet carried every one by storm.  The effect of it was not to be compared with anything that had been witnessed theretofore.  To see the daring, romantic figure of the youthful lover against a background of such obviously shallow and empty music prompted one, at all events, to meditate doubtfully upon the cause of the great lack of effect in solid German music as it had been applied hitherto to the drama.  Without for the moment plunging too deeply into this meditation, I allowed myself to be borne along with the current of my youthful feelings, then roused to ardour, and turned involuntarily to the task of working off all that brooding seriousness which in my earlier years had driven me to such pathetic mysticism.