nlisted in this contest on the side of
the new school. His free, unconventional nature found in its teachings
a musical atmosphere true to the artistic and political proclivities of
his native Poland; for Chopin breathed the spirit and tendencies of his
people in every fibre of his soul, both as man and artist. Our
musician, however, in freeing himself from all servile formulas, sternly
repudiated the charlatanism which would replace old abuses with new
ones.

Chopin, in his views of his art, did not admit the least compromise
with those who failed earnestly to represent progress, nor, on the other
hand, with those who sought to make their art a mere profitable
trade. With him, as with all the great musicians, his art was a
religion--something so sacred that it must be approached with unsullied
heart and hand. This reverential feeling was shown in the following
touching fact: It was a Polish custom to choose the garments in which
one would be buried. Chopin, though among the first of contemporary
artists, gave fewer concerts than any other; but, notwithstanding this,
he left directions to be borne to the grave in the clothes he had worn
on such occasions.

II.

Frederick Francis Chopin was born near Warsaw, in 1810, of French
extraction. He learned music at the age of nine from Ziwny, a pupil of
Sebastian Bach, but does not seem to have impressed any one with his
remarkable talent except Madame Catalani, the great singer, who gave
him a watch. Through the kindness of Prince Radziwill, an enthusiastic
patron of art, he was sent to Warsaw College, where his genius began to
unfold itself. He afterward became a pupil of the Warsaw Conservatory,
and acquired there a splendid mastery over the science of music. His
labor was prodigious in spite of his frail health; and his knowledge of
contrapuntal forms was such as to exact the highest encomiums from his
instructors.

Through his brother pupils he was introduced to the highest Polish
society, for his fellows bore some of the proudest names in Poland.
Chopin seems to have absorbed the peculiarly romantic spirit of his
race, the wild, imaginative melancholy, which, almost gloomy in the
Polish peasant, when united to grace and culture in the Polish noble,
offered an indescribable social charm. Balzac sketches the Polish woman
in these picturesque antitheses: "Angel through love, demon through
fantasy; child through faith, sage through experience; man through
the brain, w