,
and as discreet silence has been maintained on the subject for years, it
is not for me to solve the mystery to-day.

After an absence of some six or eight months I returned to London, to
that 3 Chester Place so full of memories, personal and artistic.

There were quite as many infant prodigies in those days as there are
now; little exotic plants, forced in artistic hothouses, artificially
developed, and prematurely produced in drawing-rooms and concert halls;
glittering little shooting-stars, nine-days' wonders, to be soon
forgotten, and ere long to be buried.

But then, there were also wonder-children, as the Germans call them, who
thrived and lived, and who seemed to combine in themselves all the
qualities that had belonged to the little victims of forced training.
Such a one was Joachim. He first appeared in public when he was seven;
five years later be played in Leipsic at Madame Viardot's concert; and
when he was not yet fourteen he gathered his first laurels in London at
the Philharmonic. That year--it was 1844--Mendelssohn was in England,
and mightily interested in the young violinist. One evening, after
singing at our house, Mendelssohn wanted to take him to a musical party;
a pair of gloves were deemed necessary to make him presentable, and we
two boys were sent out to get them; we had a walk, and a talk besides,
and I remember thinking what a nice sort of sensible boy he was; no
nonsense about him and no affectation; not like the other clever ones I
knew. The gloves we bought in a little shop in Albany Street, Regent's
Park, and as these were the first pair of English gloves that Joseph
wore, I duly record the historical fact for the benefit of all those who
have at one time or the other been under the spell of the fingers we
fitted that evening.

When two years later we met in Leipsic, it so happened that I was
suddenly fired with the desire to play the violin too. My friend Joseph
was quite ready to teach me, and we started operations, but two or three
lessons were sufficient to convince him and me, that mine was an unholy
desire, which, if gratified, would give me the power of inflicting much
suffering on my fellow-creatures, and which therefore was calculated to
lead me into trouble. So we gave it up, and Joachim has had to rely on
other pupils for his reputation as a teacher.

Liszt too had been a juvenile phenomenon, but had long arrived at full
maturity at the time I first remember him. I was the