possesses: each recognizes the respect
that is due to the mind that knows and the heart that feels. "All souls
are of one age."

* * * * *

With one exception, Felix Mendelssohn was unlike all the great composers
who lived before him--he was born in affluence; during his life all the
money he could use was his. No struggle for recognition marked his
growth. He never knew the pang of being misunderstood by the public he
sought to serve. Whether these things were to his lasting disadvantage,
as many aver, will forever remain a question of opinion.

Felix Mendelssohn was the culminating flower of a long line of exquisite
culture. He was an orchid that does not reproduce itself. With him died
the race. All that beauty of soul, vivacity, candor and sparkling
gaiety, with the nerved-up capacity for work, were but the flaring up of
life ere it goes out in the night of death. Such men never found either
a race or a school. They are the comets that dash across the plane of
our vision, obeying no orbit, leaving behind only a memory of blinding
light.

The character of Mendelssohn was distinctly feminine, and it follows
that his music should be played by men and not by women, otherwise we
get a suggestion of softness and tameness that is apt to pall. Man, like
Deity, creates in his own image.

Sorrow had never pierced the heart of this prosperous and very
respectable person.

He was never guilty of indiscretion or excess, and no demon of
discontent haunted his dreams.

In Mendelssohn's music we get no sense of Titanic power such as we feel
when "Wagner" is being played; no world problems vex us. The delicate,
plaintive, spiritual seductions of Chopin, who swept the keys with an
insinuating gossamer touch, are not there. The brilliant extravaganzas
of Liszt--passages illumined by living lightning--are wholly wanting.
But in it all you feel the deep, measured pulse of a religious
conviction that never halts nor doubts. There are grace, ease, beauty,
sweetness and exquisite harmony everywhere. In the "Saint Paul," as in
his other oratorios, are such arias for the contralto as, "But the Lord
is mindful of His own"; for the bass, "God have mercy upon us," and for
the tenor, "Be thou faithful unto death." These reveal pure and exalted
melody of highest type. It uplifts but does not intoxicate. Spontaneity
is sacrificed to perfection, and the lack of self-assertion allows us to
keep our wits and ad