or Signor Tarone.'

"'Nobody who knows me,' said Theodore, 'need feel any surprise at my
having thrown everything else overboard, and devoted myself, body and
soul, to the glorious art, music. Even when I was a mere child, music
was the only thing I really cared about. I would hammer all day, and
all night, too, if people would have allowed me, upon my uncle's old
rattle-trap of a piano. Music was at an extremely low ebb in the little
place where we lived; there was nobody to give me any instruction but
an old, conceited, self-opinionated organist. His music was of the
lifeless, mathematical order. He wearied my soul with a lot of ugly
gloomy _toccatas_ and _fugues_. However, I did not let this discourage
me, but laboured faithfully on. The old fellow would often gird at me
in bitter and unsparing terms; but he had only to sit down and play me
something in his severely accurate manner, to reconcile me to life and
art in a moment. Often the most wonderful ideas would come into my head
on such occasions; many of Sebastian Bach's works, for instance, and
they above all others, would fill me with a weird awe, as if they were
legends about spirits and enchanters. But a perfect paradise opened
upon me when, as happened in winter, the town band gave a concert,
assisted by a few local amateurs, and I was allowed to play the
kettledrums in the symphony, a favour granted to me on account of the
accuracy of my time. It was many a day before I knew what wretched and
ludicrous affairs those concerts were. My master, the organist,
generally played a couple of pianoforte concertos of Wolff or Emanuel
Bach; one of the bandsmen tortured himself--and his hearers--with some
violin solo of Stamitz, and the excise officer blew terrifically on a
flute, and wasted so much breath in the process, that he kept blowing
out the candles on his desk, so that they had to be constantly lighted
up again. Nothing in the shape of singing could be accomplished, and
this was a source of deep regret to my uncle, a "great" amateur
musician. He remembered the days when the choir-masters of the four
churches used to sing "Lottchen am Hofe" at the concerts, and he used
to refer, with high approbation, to the fine spirit of religious
tolerance which actuated those musicians, who laid aside their
religious differences, and united in these performances, coming
together, irrespective of creed, on a common basis of art. For, besides
the Catholic and the Evangelical