ss crowd, whose feet could scarcely be restrained from bounding to
the magic measure. It was the horn of Oberon realized. The composition
of the music displayed great talent, but its charm consisted more in the
exquisite combination of the different instruments, and the perfect,
the wonderful, exactness with which each performed its part--a piece of
art of the most elaborate and refined character.

The company, which consisted of several hundred, appeared to be full of
enjoyment. They sat under the trees in the calm, cool twilight with the
stars twinkling above, and talked and laughed sociably together between
the pauses of the music, or strolled up and down the lighted alleys. We
walked up and down with them, and thought how much we should enjoy such
a scene at home, where the faces around us would be those of friends and
the language our mother-tongue.

We went a long way through the suburbs one bright afternoon to a little
cemetery about a mile from the city to find the grave of Beethoven. On
ringing at the gate a girl admitted us into the grounds, in which are
many monuments of noble families who have vaults there. I passed up the
narrow walk, reading the inscriptions, till I came to the tomb of Franz
Clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. On turning
again my eye fell instantly on the word "Beethoven" in golden letters on
a tombstone of gray marble. A simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal,
above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly--the emblem of
resurrection. Here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit
who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a
height did he draw his glorious conceptions.

The perfection he sought for here in vain he has now attained in a
world where the soul is freed from the bars which bind it in this. There
were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius;
only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long
ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their
bright blossoms over the slab. It might have been wrong, but I could not
resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was
busy preparing a new tenement. I thought that other buds would open in a
few days, but those I took would be treasured many a year as sacred
relics. A few paces off is the grave of Schubert, the composer whose
beautiful songs are heard all over Germany.

We visited t