success as universal and well deserved, and did
not hesitate to predict a great future for her under her honoured
father's wise guidance.

Wieck has been the subject of much criticism on account of his supposed
harshness and severity. In the matter of Clara's musical training,
however, these charges cannot be sustained, as one of her own letters
will show. "My father has come before the world in an entirely false
light," she writes, "because he took art earnestly, and brought me up to
regard it earnestly. People have no idea how utterly different from the
usual standards must be the whole education and career of any one who
wishes to accomplish something worth while in art. In connection with
artistic development, my father kept the physical development especially
in view also. I never studied more than two hours a day in the earliest
times, or three in later years; but I had also to take a daily walk with
him of just as many hours to strengthen my nerves. Moreover, while I was
not yet grown up, he always took me home from every entertainment at ten
o'clock, as he considered sleep before midnight necessary for me. He
never let me go to balls, as he judged I could use my strength for more
important things than dancing; but he always let me go to good operas.
In many free hours I used to grow enthusiastic over piano arrangements
of operas and other music. One cannot do that when one is tired out.
Besides that, I had, even in earliest youth, intercourse with the most
distinguished artists. They, and not dolls, were the friends of my
childhood, though I was not deprived of the latter. Those people who
have no comprehension of such a serious bringing up ascribed it all to
tyranny and severity, and held my accomplishments, which may indeed have
been more than those of a child, to be impossible unless I had been
forced to study day and night. As a matter of fact, it was wholly my
father's genius for teaching that brought me so far, by cultivation of
the intellect and the feelings united with only moderate practice."

"To my pain," she continues, "I must say that my father has never been
recognized as he deserved to be. I shall thank him during my entire
lifetime for the so-called severities. How would I have been able to
live through a career of art, with all the heavy difficulties that were
laid upon me, if my constitution had not been so strong and healthy
because of my father's care?"

About this time there came upon the