us with that of Liszt, than I
should compare the Roman girandola with its sky-scaring fusees and
myriads of sudden scintillations and dazzling coruscations, with the
element that lights our homes and warms our hearths, or to the
steadfast shining of the everlasting stars themselves.

Of all the pianoforte players by whom I have heard Beethoven's music
more or less successfully rendered, Charles Halle has always
appeared to me the one who most perfectly communicated the mind and
soul of the pre-eminent composer.

Our temporary fellowship with Liszt procured for us a delightful
participation in a tribute of admiration from the citizen workmen of
Coblentz, that was what the French call _saissant_. We were sitting
all in our hotel drawing-room together, the _maestro_ as usual
smoking his long pipe, when a sudden burst of music made us throw
open the window and go out on the balcony, when Liszt was greeted by
a magnificent chorus of nearly two hundred men's voices; they sang
to perfection, each with his small sheet of music and his sheltered
light in his hand, and the performance, which was the only one of
the sort I ever heard, gave a wonderful impression of the musical
capacity of the only really musical nation in the world.]

WIESBADEN, Sunday, September.
MY DEAREST HARRIET,

I have already written to you from this place: one letter I wrote almost
immediately after taking a walk which you had taken with Catherine
Sedgwick, the year that you were here together, towards the Sonnenberg.
You wrote me letters from here too, which I received up at Lenox, and
read at a window looking out over a landscape very much resembling the
neighborhood of this place. I remember your epistolary accounts of
Wiesbaden were not very favorable: you did not like its watering-place
aspect and fashions; and neither should I, if I was in any way mixed up
with them. But we have hitherto none of us taken the waters; we have
pretty and comfortable rooms, with the slight drawback of hearing our
neighbors washing their hands and brushing their teeth, and drawing the
natural conclusion as to the reciprocity of communications we make to
them. We are at the Quatre Saisons, and with nothing but the Kursaal and
its arcades between us and the gardens; so I am not oppressed with the
feeling of a town, streets, houses, shops, etc., all whi