share." If Haydn could really claim to be the inventor of the symphony, he would be a far more original genius than he is ever believed to be—though probably we do really underrate his originality, a fate which inevitably overtakes all such men. If we leave the form, then, and consider the spirit of Haydn's symphonies, it is, shortly, the spirit of eternal youth; just as one could apply to Mozart Gilfillan's appellation of Shelley, "the eternal child." We get a negative idea of Haydn if we reflect how infinitely removed from Hamlet! (Beethoven, on the contrary, how allied!—a German Hamlet). I do not believe that Haydn, any more than the other two of that glorious Orion's belt, was a "good Catholic." I imagine, all three had a proclivity rather to natural than revealed religion; and I believe that we may compass and understand, in a manner, that marvellous outburst of South German music, with all its freedom and glow, by considering it as Roman Catholic without Roman Catholicism; one feels and sees rather the eternal truth and poetry of nature than the warped narrow spirit and practice, and garish glare, of papal dogma, priest-presided slavery, and superstition. But, to quit these impossible difficulties, the music of all three is stamped by one grand common characteristic—it is German. When to nationality we add individuality, we are more or less near to a tolerable understanding of it. Race is mixed in every man—who can resolve it? The influence of religion—especially so-called religion—is nearly as obscure; but nationality and individuality we can to some extent comprehend. No better epithets are to be found for Haydn than the time-honoured ones of "genial," "cheerful." We like to think of him under his poor old gable-roof, that let in the rain—happy at his poor old spinnet. Touching picture! the irrepressible spirit of the obscure composer, miserably poor, and neglected, for the first fifty or sixty years of his life! But the stars, we know, shone in on him through that dim old gable; and the grass outside was not fresher in spring than the spirit of Joseph Haydn. If reading, alone, maketh a "full man," as Bacon says, then Joseph Haydn was, I imagine, a very empty one. He knew nothing of books, or society, and little of men; direct out of the fulness of his melodious heart he uttered himself forth in poetic music essentially genial and vigorous, "spraying over," as our German cousins say, with kindly humour. A "man child" he was, who will ever be historically—if not contemporaneously—immortal. The great forerunners! we owe them a debt which we must at last lose out of sight; but verily they have their reward! Haydn's fundamental simplicity and child-like objectiveness, utterly prevented him from giving us Beethovenian music. He neither read, nor thought—nor did he feel very deeply. The doubts and difficulties which Brendel finely (though mistakenly, perhaps) speaks of Mozart's having fought out beforehand unconsciously, Haydn neither consciously nor unconsciously experienced. He was simply and purely a German musical genius of his time, blessed with one of the happiest constitutions ever given to mortal—mens sana in corpore sano. The unfathomable and infinitely involved beauty of Beethoven's symphonies is not to be dreamt of in Haydn. Those of the latter, indeed, may smell at times rather of the peruke than of the lion's mane (whence what "dew-drops"!) But such melodious eloquence as Haydn's "Hymn to the Emperor," one cannot imagine perishing—it is like a rainbow out of the Eden-time, hung for ever in heaven. The "Creation," too, is so inexpressibly fresh, naïve, vigorous, and beautiful, that it has given to some more pleasure than the very "Messiah." "The heavens are telling," must be surely also melodious eloquence immortal, with its exquisite opening and noble culmination. The music of Haydn (Mozart too) may, perhaps, emphatically be called natural; in spite of—especially in the minuets—that non so che which summons up the old-fashioned continental noblesse and the frigid gardens of Versailles. If we want a taste of this—or, also, after our higher flights (and none the less after our intermediate and subterranean flights in the wizard world of a Wagner), a banquet in the unlaboured loveliness of old time, we shall recur to Haydn; but if we want the higher flights, and broader flights, and deeper flights themselves, the sublime loveliness and Alpine grandeur—not Saxon Switzerland, but Tell's—we shall hasten with reverence and gladness to Beethoven, who towers above Haydn—and also above these colossal upshoots of this later "tertiary" period; for these latter men seem rather intense than universal; whereof more anon. A German word or two (they are always interesting, because earnest,) about Haydn, and we turn to Mozart. "Köstlin's remark about Haydn holds good also for his symphonies:—With Haydn began the free-style epoch, the spring and golden age of music. In him, music became conscious that she was not system and science, but free motion, and lyrical." Free motion—yes, significant words. What e.g., would the sea, would light be, without that? Undulatory free light! And I had as lief compare music with light as anything. As postscript here, we may recall Haydn's indignant exclamation after a Dryasdust dictum by the then pedantic oracle, Albrechtsberger, respecting, forsooth—I believe—our old acquaintances, those irrepressible "consecutive fifths":—"This will never do"! exclaimed Haydn, "art must be free." How really curious it is, your pedant never flashes such a glance into things—into his own trade. But, indeed, the poor man can never have a glimmering of what one little word, yet so multum in parvo, like "free" means. He is full of learning, it is true, but still "in block"; and when the Apollo at his side suddenly takes wings, and flashes out of the marble, he knows not, poor man, whether he is more astounded or indignant. A clever man called Shakespeare, also, a barbarian. When will Dryasdust see that, cœteris paribus, where innovation is the step of genius, and not ignorance, he, Dryasdust, had better, at least for a while, hold his tongue; see, rather, if he can't, by a dead-lift effort, raise himself up to Apollo, than try (ridiculously enough) to drag down the god flashing to the sun. I fear the difficulty is insuperable, because subjective. The misfortune is, Dryasdust never can recognize genius, but wanders on with his blue "specs." to his unvisited grave.

But, to recur to Elterlein, ueber Haydn:—"When we look into Haydn's symphonies a little closer, with a glance at the same time at Haydn's followers, we find them stamped by greater simplicity in the expression of feeling, and by a limitation to certain well-defined spheres of mood and humour. This characteristic we may express in the definition, pure child-like ideality. Of course, we do not mean literal childhood, but rather abstract childhood in the soul and constitution, whose representation is worthy of the greatest of artists, e.g., of a Schumann in his charming 'Kinderscenen.' Naïve child humour plays a leading part in Haydn's symphonies; wherefore Brendel rightly names him the greatest master of sport and mood. Of inner necessity, the pangs and earnest of life, in their entirety, are excluded from these works. They do now and then appear, but only as light clouds skimming over. Haydn's restrictedness is, however, far from limiting his invention; on the contrary, we are astounded at it; he is veritably inexhaustible in his mode of expressing himself. The minuets are generally playgrounds for the most delicious sportive humour. (In Haydn himself we discover the germs of the so-called programme