assistance which his
position in the Paris Conservatoire helps to make most valuable. He
is now seventy-one years old, and, should he add nothing more to the
musical treasures of the present generation, much of what he has already
done will give him a permanent place in the temple of lyric music.

BERLIOZ.

I.

In the long list of brilliant names which have illustrated the fine
arts, there is none attached to a personality more interesting and
impressive than that of Hector Berlioz. He stands solitary, a colossus
in music, with but few admirers and fewer followers. Original, puissant
in faculties, fiercely dogmatic and intolerant, bizarre, his influence
has impressed itself profoundly on the musical world both for good
and evil, but has failed to make disciples or to rear a school.
Notwithstanding the defects and extravagances of Berlioz, it is safe to
assert that no art or philosophy can boast of an example of more perfect
devotion to an ideal. The startling originality of Berlioz as a musician
rests on a mental and emotional organization different from and in some
respects superior to that of any other eminent master. He possessed an
ardent temperament; a gorgeous imagination, that knew no rest in its
working, and at times became heated to the verge of madness; a most
subtile sense of hearing; an intellect of the keenest analytic turn; a
most arrogant will, full of enterprise and daring, which clung to its
purpose with unrelenting tenacity; and passions of such heat and fervor
that they rarely failed when aroused to carry him beyond all bounds
of reason. His genius was unique, his character cast in the mold of a
Titan, his life a tragedy. Says Blaze de Bussy: "Art has its martyrs,
its forerunners crying in the wilderness, and feeding on roots. It has
also its spoiled children sated with bonbons and dainties." Berlioz
belongs to the former of these classes, and, if ever a prophet lifted up
his voice with a vehement and incessant outcry, it was he.

Hector Berlioz was born on December 11, 1803, at Cote Saint Andre,
a small town between Grenoble and Lyons. His father was an excellent
physician of more than ordinary attainments, and he superintended his
son's studies with great zeal in the hope that the lad would also become
an ornament of the healing profession. But young Hector, though an
excellent scholar in other branches, developed a special aptitude
for music, and at twelve he could sing at sight, and pl