e understood and sung the loves and tears of his
contemporaries without having analyzed them in advance. He did not task
himself, nor study to be a national musician. Like all truly national
poets he sang spontaneously without premeditated design or preconceived
choice all that inspiration dictated to him, as we hear it gushing forth
in his songs without labor, almost without effort. He repeated in the
most idealized form the emotions which had animated and embellished his
youth; under the magic delicacy of his pen he displayed the Ideal, which
is, if we may be permitted so to speak, the Real among his people; an
Ideal really in existence among them, which every one in general and
each one in particular approaches by the one or the other of its many
sides. Without assuming to do so, he collected in luminous sheaves the
impressions felt everywhere throughout his country--vaguely felt it is
true, yet in fragments pervading all hearts. Is it not by this power of
reproducing in a poetic formula, enchanting to the imagination of
all nations, the indefinite shades of feeling widely scattered but
frequently met among their compatriots, that the artists truly national
are distinguished?

Not without reason has the task been undertaken of collecting the
melodies indigenous to every country. It appears to us it would be
of still deeper interest, to trace the influences forming the
characteristic powers of the authors most deeply inspired by the genius
of the nation to which they belong. Until the present epoch there have
been very few distinctive compositions, which stand out from the two
great divisions of the German and Italian schools of music. But with
the immense development which this art seems destined to attain, perhaps
renewing for us the glorious era of the Painters of the CINQUE CENTO, it
is highly probable that composers will appear whose works will be marked
by an originality drawn from differences of organization, of races, and
of climates. It is to be presumed that we will be able to recognize the
influences of the country in which they were born upon the great
masters in music, as well as in the other arts; that we will be able to
distinguish the peculiar and predominant traits of the national genius
more completely developed, more poetically true, more interesting to
study, in the pages of their compositions than in the crude, incorrect,
uncertain, vague and tremulous sketches of the uncultured people.

Chopin m