class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="VI"/> had been delayed some months by Mendelssohn's ill health; he had begun to feel the first symptoms of the nervous disease, affecting the brain, from which he was destined henceforth to suffer, and of which, finally, he was fated to die.

After his marriage he undertook the direction of the Leipzig Concerts. All over Germany, Mendelssohn was in requisition; his immense genius as a composer, his great skill as a conductor, his gentle, fascinating manners, gave him extraordinary popularity. It was England, however, after all, who appreciated him most. Sacred music seems to appeal especially to the English taste. Haydn, Händel, Beethoven have all found more patronage and appreciation in England than in their own country. So it was with Mendelssohn; the greatest musical triumph ever achieved, was the performance of the oratorio of Elijah, given at Birmingham, the work on which Mendelssohn's fame will rest. He was nine years in composing this oratorio; and notwithstanding the most flattering ovation, Mendelssohn's serene temperament was not moved to vanity or conceit. In the very moment of his success, he sat down modestly to correct many things that had not satisfied him. The trio for three female voices (without accompaniment) one of the most beautiful pieces in the oratorio, was added by the composer after the public had declared itself satisfied with the work as it originally stood. Elijah was produced in 1847, but Mendelssohn had been several times to England before this, playing at the ancient and Philharmonic concerts; at that time, the resort of the élite in London.

It was during one of these visits in 1842, that Prince Albert, who as a German and a musician, had sought his acquaintance, introduced him to Queen Victoria. The visit was entirely devoid of formality, for without any previous announcement, the Prince conducted Mendelssohn from his private apartments, to the Queen's study, where they found her surrounded by papers, and just terminating her morning's work. The Queen receiving him most graciously, apologized to the composer for the untidiness of the room, beginning herself to put it in order and laughingly accepting his assistance. After some agreeable conversation Mendelssohn sat down to the piano and played whatever the Queen asked of him. When at length he rose, Prince Albert asked the Queen to sing, and gracefully choosing one of Mendelssohn's own compositions, she complied with the request. Mendelssohn of course applauded, but the Queen laughingly told him, that she had been too frightened to sing well. "Ask Lablache," (Lablache was her singing master) added the Queen, "he will tell you that I can sing better than I have done to-day." Prince Albert and the Queen were ever warm patrons and friends of Mendelssohn.

During all this time so brilliantly filled up, Mendelssohn's health was continually and gradually declining. His nervous susceptibility was such that he was often obliged to abstain from playing for weeks together, his gentle and affectionate wife watching him and keeping him as much as possible from composition. This was a very difficult task, for Mendelssohn was a great worker. Even when travelling, he would take out pen and ink from his pocket and compose at one corner of the table, whilst the dinner was getting ready.

Little was Mendelssohn prepared, either mentally or physically at this time, to bear the one great sorrow that overwhelmed this happy life, on which the sun of prosperity had ever shone. His sister Fanny, to whom many of his letters were written, and who had been the companion of his studies, possessing the same tastes and a great deal of the same genius; his sister Fanny, who was the nearest and dearest affection of his life, was suddenly taken from him. She had married and was living in Frankfort, where she was the ornament of society, in this enlightened and art-loving city, when in the midst of a rehearsal of Faust, a symphony of her own composition, she was struck with apoplexy and fell back dead in her chair. There is no doubt that this shock considerably increased the disease from which Mendelssohn was suffering, and though he used to rally and even appear resigned, this sorrow, until the day of his death, lay heavy at his heart. Again he tried to find health and peace in travel; he went to Switzerland with his wife, who strove to keep him from all occupation and labor, but he would gently urge her to let him work. "The time is not far off, when I shall rest; I must make the most of the time given me." "I know not how short a time it may be," would he say to her. On his return from Switzerland and Baden-Baden, he went to Berlin; and once more all that remained of this tenderly attached family, were united for a short time. At length he returned to his home in Leipzig, serene as ever, but worn to a shadow by the acute and continued pains in the head for which he could obtain no relief. On the 9th of October, he went to the house of a friend, one of the artists of the Leipzig concerts, and entreated her to sing for him a song he had that night composed. By a strange coincidence, this song began with these words, "Vanished has the light of day." It was Mendelssohn's last composition, the last music he heard on earth, for whilst the lady was singing it, he was seized with vertigo and was carried insensible back to his house. He recovered, however, comparatively from this attack, but a second stroke of apoplexy placed his life in extreme peril, and a third, on the 3rd of November, made him utterly unconscious. Towards nine o'clock on the evening of the 4th, (1847,) he breathed his last, going to his everlasting rest as easily and as calmly as a tired child sinks to sleep. He was in the thirty-ninth year of his age.

Mendelssohn's death was looked upon, throughout Germany, as a public calamity. The funeral ceremonies at Leipzig were of a most imposing character, and all the way from Leipzig to Berlin, where the corpse was taken, to be buried in the family vault, the most touching honors greeted it. Nearly all the crowned heads of Europe wrote letters of condolence to his widow.

Mendelssohn as a musician is profoundly original. In his oratorios "Paul" and "Elijah" he has swerved from the conventional religious style; eschewing all fugues, his oratorios are full of power, and contain great dramatic effects—at once grand and solemn. His other music is remarkable for the sweetness of its melodies—its earnest simplicity. His instrumentality is scientific without being pedantic or heavy, and utterly devoid of antiquated formalism; though pathetic often, there is always a vigor and life in all his inspirations; the low mournful wail that runs through all Chopin's works, arising from a morbid condition of health and heart, is never felt in Mendelssohn. There is none of the bitterness, the long suffering that artists' lives entail and that artists infuse into their works, for Mendelssohn was a happy man from first to last.

Mendelssohn the happy, "the boy born on a lucky day," has left a life-record that amid the gloomy heart-rending and often degrading histories of artists, shines with a chaste and holy life. Nature, the world and circumstance had done every thing for him. To the great and all-sufficient gift of his musical genius he added many others,—he had the eye of a painter, the heart of a poet, his intellect was of the highest order; he was tall, handsome, graceful, his social position one of the finest in Berlin, rich, and surrounded by the tenderest family affections. With all these advantages, with all the success that attended him, with all the flattery lavished on him, Mendelssohn was never vain or proud, and throughout his life was utterly free from envy. His fine, fearless, childlike spirit, led him through the