sured swaying and balancing. It is difficult for
those who have not frequently heard him play to catch this secret of
their proper execution. He seemed desirous of imparting this style
to his numerous pupils, particularly those of his own country. His
countrymen, or rather his countrywomen, seized it with the facility
with which they understand every thing relating to poetry or feeling; an
innate, intuitive comprehension of his meaning aided them in following
all the fluctuations of his depths of aerial and spiritual blue.

CHAPTER IV.

Chopin's Mode of Playing--Concerts--The Elite--Fading Bouquets and
Immortal Crowns--Hospitality--Heine--Meyerbeer--Adolphe Nourrit--Eugene
Delacroix--Niemcevicz--Mickiewicz--George Sand.

AFTER having described the compositions palpitating with emotion in
which genius struggles with grief, (grief, that terrible reality which
Art must strive to reconcile with Heaven), confronting it sometimes
as conqueror, sometimes as conquered; compositions in which all the
memories of his youth, the affections of his heart, the mysteries of his
desires, the secrets of his untold passions, are collected like tears
in a lachrymatory; compositions in which, passing the limits of human
sensations--too dull for his eager fancy, too obtuse for his keen
perceptions--he makes incursions into the realms of Dryads, Oreads, and
Oceanides;--we would naturally be expected to speak of his talent
for execution. But this task we cannot assume. We cannot command the
melancholy courage to exhume emotions linked with our fondest memories,
our dearest personal recollections; we cannot force ourselves to make
the mournful effort to color the gloomy shrouds, veiling the skill we
once loved, with the brilliant hues they would exact at our hands. We
feel our loss too bitterly to attempt such an analysis. And what result
would it be possible to attain with all our efforts! We could not hope
to convey to those who have never heard him, any just conception of that
fascination so ineffably poetic, that charm subtle and penetrating
as the delicate perfume of the vervain or the Ethiopian calla, which,
shrinking and exclusive, refuses to diffuse its exquisite aroma in the
noisome breath of crowds, whose heavy air can only retain the stronger
odor of the tuberose, the incense of burning resin.

By the purity of its handling, by its relation with LA FEE AUX MIETTES
and LES LUTINS D'ARGAIL, by its rencounters with the SERAPH