love music-do not let that feeling plead for Robert, but consider his age, his means, his strength and his future. I beg, I implore you, as a husband, a father, and the friend of my son, act like an honest man! and give me your plain, frank opinion, let me know what he has to fear or to hope."

As in most cases, Robert's youthful years belonged almost wholly to his mother, and under her influence chiefly was developed that pure fervour of feeling particularly demanded by his high artistic position, to which his whole life bore witness; this, however, soon estranged him from the busy world, and was the prime factor in producing that profound melancholy which often overcame him "almost to suicide."

But from his father he seems to have inherited that energy of soul which struggles to attain the appointed end despite the most opposing obstacles. And Robert Schumann required this energy even more than his father did. The artistic career afforded him more thorns than roses; far more frequent disappointment than realization of his hopes, and that siren, "popular favour," which has lured many a genius over the fatal precipice, hovered before him also, more seductive to him than to many another, so that he needed all his moral courage to escape her toils and avoid the rocks.

Robert enjoyed his first educational advantages in his sixth year, at a common school; he probably began to take music lessons in his seventh year. His piano teacher, Kuntsch, was perhaps better than is usually the case in small towns. Although Schumann afterwards showed great respect for this instructor, sending him a silver laurel wreath, with a cordial letter, from Godesberg, near Bonn, on the occasion of his jubilee in 1850, yet we may safely assume that he had no noteworthy influence in the

development of our master. This was, as already said, scarcely a thing to be educated, and as will be shown later, was far more largely conditional upon other influences than upon mere music lessons.

It is much more important for us to know how early the boy's creative impulse sprang to life. He had scarcely conquered the elements of piano "technique," when he tried his hand at little fantasias, and the simplicity and honesty with which he contrived to give a musical picture of the peculiar traits of many of his young contemporaries excited their great admiration.

Thus, even then, music seemed to the boy a language, the art by which mental ideas might gain outward visible form, and all his future artistic efforts were governed exclusively by this conviction. It guided his otherwise rather planless and aimless studies, and prevented him from ever regarding music as a mere amusement; it forbade his being led away by the mere love of creation, and caused him always to work under the influence of strong and plastic ideas. But here too we find the origin of a natural shrinking from theoretical studies, and we shall try later on to show the influence which this again exercised upon Schumann's development.

The father favoured his son's love of music, and although, as we have already said, he was in no position to give it any special training or to lead the boy in the beaten path, he took all adequate pains to nourish and promote it. He was often present with his son Julius, and the schoolmates of the boys, at the performance of the "robber comedies," written by Robert. Later on, musical exercises seem to have gained the ascendancy in Schumann's home; and after Robert had heard Ignaz Moscheles, the renowned pianist, at Carlsbad, where he went with his father, he turned to music with the strongest predilection.

“When, more than thirty years ago," he writes, Novembe 20th, 1851, to Moscheles, "I treasured as a sacred relic concert programme which you had touched, I little dreame that I should ever be honoured in such fashion by so illu trious a master." 1

After he entered the fourth class of the grammar scho in his native town (Easter, 1820, in his tenth year) his d votion to music became somewhat more methodical. H found a fellow-pupil in the son of the leader of a reg mental band-named Piltzing—and with him he eager played not only the piano compositions of Carl Maria vo Weber, Hummel, and Czerny, but also the great instr mental works of Haydn, Mozart, and later of Beethove all arranged for four hands, a new Streicher piano bein brought from Vienna for the use of the two friends. Whe Robert found the orchestral score of Rhigini's overture "Tigranes" among his father's music, its performance wa made possible by the formation of a little orchestr Violins, flutes, clarionets, and horn were played by h schoolfellows; the other parts Robert executed on t piano, and, as this first attempt succeeded far beyond the hopes, it was soon repeated, and followed by a series similar performances. These inspired Schumann's fir effort at composition. In his twelfth or thirteenth ye he set the 150th psalm to music, to be rendered by th amateur orchestra, and various overtures and operat sketches also date from this epoch,

His great gifts soon found admiring acknowledgment home. In those families who loved music he was, course, a welcome guest; and the evening entertainmen at the grammar school found in him an active promoter. His father presently recognized his son's true callin 1 Moscheles dedicated his Sonata (Opus 121), for piano and violoncel

to him.

and although the mother struggled against it, he resolved to educate the boy for a musician. Carl Maria von Weber, who had lived in Dresden since 1819, as director of an orchestra, was chosen for his master. We cannot say why this plan was never carried out, although von Weber agreed to it, the correspondence relative to the subject being apparently lost. Robert remained in the house of his parents, and no change was made in his course of study. His father even declared it to be his firm intention that Robert should follow the legal profession.

Nevertheless music was by no means neglected; it still remained his favourite pursuit in leisure hours. The death of his father on the 10th of August, 1826, caused no important alteration in Robert's life. His bright young spirit had already begun to yield to a more sombre melancholy; and that silence and reserve, which afterwards made personal intercourse with him so difficult, now showed their first traces. It was only in musical communion that he expressed himself freely, and he considered a love of music and of our great poets-particularly Shakespeare and Jean Paul-an essential condition of friendship. In society, only those houses attracted him where "good music" might be heard. The house of the merchant Carus is often mentioned as one which he visited often and gladly, especially in the summer of 1827, when a skilled amateur, the wife of Dr. Carus, who was afterwards professor at the universities of Leipsic and Dorpat, resided there.

This young woman made an unusual impression upon him by her singing, and inspired him to write a series of songs,

Unmistakable as his true vocation was to all, and great as was the success he had already achieved by his rich musical gifts, he could not yet gain his mother's consent to his pursuance of the artistic career, She was upheld in her

opposition by his guardian, a merchant named Rudel, so that he found himself forced to enter college at the end of his grammar school career.

In March, 1828, being then in his eighteenth year, he went to Leipsic, and was there entered at the university, returning immediately afterwards to his native town, as the examination was still to be passed. We see by the excellent certificates which he received on leaving school that he had by no means neglected his scientific musical studies up to this time.

A journey to Munich, undertaken after passing his examination, affords certain not extraordinary, but still interesting incidents, which may help to perfect our portrait of the youth. He had made a sudden, but sincere and, as we shall see, a lasting bond of friendship with the law student, Gisbert Rosen, at Leipsic. The latter, about to move to Heidelberg, accepted Schumann's invitation to visit him, and lingered until the college examination was over. When he set out for Heidelberg, Schumann accompanied him as far as Munich. The two spent a day in Baireuth, to visit the places made memorable by Jean Paul-the Fantasy, the Hermitage, and the house of Rollwenzel-and to learn further details of the poet himself from the lips of his friend.

Jean Paul having died but two years before (November 14, 1825), his memory was still fresh in the minds of his immediate neighbours. And if here Schumann entered into closer communion with the spirit only of the poet so nearly allied to him, he was destined to meet in Munich that greatest lyric writer of the period immediately after Goethe, Heinrich Heine, by whose genius the richest and fairest side of his nature was in later years inspired to a luxuriant outburst of song.

Heine was at this time living in Munich; and our two