sad news he
sank into a fit of profound despondency and grief, from which he did not
soon recover. All Paris mourned with him, and even Germany forgot its
critical dislike to join in regret at the loss of one who, with all his
defects, was so great an artist and so good a man.

Meyerbeer seems to have been greatly afraid of being buried alive. In
his pocketbook after his death was found a paper giving directions that
small bells should be attached to his hands and feet, and that his body
should be carefully watched for four days, after which it should be sent
to Berlin to be interred by the side of his mother, to whom he had been
most tenderly attached.

The composer was the intimate friend of most of the celebrities of his
time in art and literature. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, George Sand, Balzac,
Alfred de Musset, Delacroix, Jules Janin, and Theophile Gautier were his
familiar intimates; and the reunions between these and other gifted
men, who then made Paris so intellectually brilliant, are charmingly
described by Liszt and Moscheles. Meyerbeer's correspondence, which was
extensive, deserves publication, as it displays marked literary faculty,
and is full of bright sympathetic thought, vigorous criticism, and
playful fancy. The following letter to Jules Janin, written from Berlin
a few years before his death, gives some pleasant insight into his
character:

Your last letter was addressed to me at Konigsberg; but I was in Berlin
working--working away like a young man, despite my seventy years, which
somehow certain people, with a peculiar generosity, try to put upon me.
As I am not at Konigsberg, where I am to arrange for the Court concert
for the eighteenth of this month, I have now leisure to answer
your letter, and will immediately confess to you how greatly I was
disappointed that you were so little interested in Rameau; and yet
Rameau was always the bright star of your French opera, as well as your
master in the music. He remained to you after Lulli, and it was he who
prepared the way for the Chevalier Gluck: therefore his family have a
right to expect assistance from the Parisians, who on several occasions
have cared for the descendants of Racine and the grandchildren of the
great Corneille. If I had been in Paris, I certainly would have given
two hundred francs for a seat; and I take this opportunity to beg you
to hand that sum to the poor family, who can not fail to be unhappy in
their disappointment. At the s