Perchance Liszt may yet visit us; we may yet hear the matchless Pianist
call from their graves in the white keys, the delicate arabesques, the
undulating and varied melodies, of Chopin. We should be prepared
to appreciate the great Artist in his enthusiastic rendering of the
master-pieces of the man he loved; prepared to greet him when he
electrifies us with his wonderful Cyclopean harmonies, written for his
own Herculean grasp, sparkling with his own Promethean fire, which no
meaner hand can ever hope to master! "Hear Liszt and die," has been said
by some of his enthusiastic admirers--understand him and live, were the
wiser advice!

In gratitude then to Chopin for the multiplied sources of high and pure
pleasure which he has revealed to humanity in his creations, that human
woe and sorrow become pure beauty when his magic spell is on them, the
translator calls upon all lovers of the beautiful "to contribute a
stone to the pyramid now rapidly erecting in honor of the great modern
composer"--ay, the living stone of appreciation, crystalized in the
enlightened gratitude of the heart.

"So works this music upon earth
God so admits it, sends it forth.
To add another worth to worth--

A new creation-bloom that rounds
The old creation, and expounds
His Beautiful in tuneful sounds."

CHAPTER I.

Chopin--Style and Improvements--The Adagio of the Second
Concerto--Funeral March--Psychological Character of the Compositions of
Chopin, &c., &c.

Deeply regretted as he may be by the whole body of artists, lamented by
all who have ever known him, we must still be permitted to doubt if
the time has even yet arrived in which he, whose loss is so peculiarly
deplored by ourselves, can be appreciated in accordance with his
just value, or occupy that high rank which in all probability will be
assigned him in the future.

If it has been often proved that "no one is a prophet in his own
country;" is it not equally true that the prophets, the men of the
future, who feel its life in advance, and prefigure it in their works,
are never recognized as prophets in their own times? It would be
presumptuous to assert that it can ever be otherwise. In vain may the
young generations of artists protest against the "Anti-progressives,"
whose invariable custom it is to assault and beat down the living with
the dead: time alone can test the real value, or reveal the hidden