t philandering while every hour cholera was carrying off
its tens and sometimes hundreds of victims. He himself was
light-hearted and gay then; and having seen what there was to be seen
he went back to Leipzig _via_ Prague. Here he sketched _Die Hochzeit_;
met Dionys Weber, who had known Mozart, and Tomaschek, who had at all
events seen Beethoven; and made the acquaintance of Friedrich Kittl, a
fat, double-chinned amateur, just blossoming into a full-blown
professional musician, who ten years later succeeded Dionys Weber as
principal of the Prague conservatoire.

He still had very much to learn. But an Overture in D minor was
performed at the Gewandhaus concerts on February 23, 1832; a Scena and
Aria were sung by one Henriette Wuest at a "declamatorium" in the
Hoftheater on April 22 of the same year; a C major Overture was given
at the Gewandhaus eight days later; on January 10 of the following
year the C Symphony was played at the Gewandhaus after being tried by
a smaller orchestral society; an Overture to a preposterous play,
_King Enzio_, in which Rosalie took a part, had been played nightly
while the piece ran. I don't know what the "Scena with Aria" may be; a
"declamatorium" seems to be a fine term for a recitation or evening of
spouting; the C major Symphony was the last work of Wagner's to appear
on a Gewandhaus programme. At the same concert Clara Wieck--afterwards
Schumann--played a piano-concerto by Piscio. Reinecke's malicious
idiocy need rouse no bitterness now; but I may repeat that under his
directorship these concerts earned the contempt of musical Europe as
thoroughly as did our own Philharmonic Society. Until lately, when
one mentioned either, every musician laughed: now both are trying to
rehabilitate themselves, without much success. Both the Philharmonic
and the Gewandhaus represented musical vested interests; musicians
like Reinecke in Leipzig, and non-musicians like Cusins in London,
owed their handsome incomes to the positions into which good-luck had
thrust them; and we could hardly expect them to show their publics
what much abler men were about. It was because Reinecke and Cusins
(and with him J.W. Davison of the _Times_) knew Wagner to be a great
musician that they "kept him out" by the simple plan of saying he was
not a musician. It was not the truth, of course, and they knew it was
not the truth; but it is too much to expect truth to be considered
when solid incomes are at stake.

At the G