iration, are virtually identical with the opening of the wonderful
overture which bears the name of 'Hebrides' or 'Fingal's Cave.'" And
an English admirer of Mendelssohn, who had the honor of entertaining
him in the country, notes how deeply he entered into the beauty of the
hills and the woods. "His way of representing them," he says, "was not
with the pencil; but in the evenings his improvised music would show
what he had observed or felt in the past day. The piece which he
called 'The Rivulet,' which he wrote at that time, for my sister
Susan, will show what I mean; it was a recollection of a real, actual
rivulet.

"We observed" he continues, "how natural objects seemed to suggest
music to him. There was in my sister Honora's garden a pretty creeping
plant, new at that time, covered with little trumpet-like flowers. He
was struck with it, and played for her the music which (he said) the
fairies might play on those trumpets. When he wrote out the piece he
drew a little branch of that flower all up the margin of the paper."
In another piece, inspired by the sight of carnations, they found that
Mendelssohn intended certain arpeggio passages "as a reminder of the
sweet scent of the flower rising up."

Mozart, as many witnesses have testified, was especially attuned to
composition by the sight of beautiful scenery. Rochlitz relates that
when he travelled with his wife through picturesque regions he gazed
attentively and in silence at the surrounding sights; his features,
which usually had a reserved and gloomy, rather than a cheerful
expression, gradually brightened, and then he began to sing, or rather
to hum, till suddenly he exclaimed: "If I only had that theme on
paper." He always preferred to live in the country, and wrote the
greater part of his two best operas, "Don Juan," and "The Magic
Flute," in one of those picturesque little garden houses which are so
often seen in Austria and Germany. In one of these airy structures, he
confessed, he could write more in ten days than he could in his
apartments in two months.

Berlioz relates somewhere that the musical ideas for his "Faust" came
to him unbidden during his rambles among Italian hills. Weber's
melodies are so much like fragrant forest flowers that one feels sure
before being told that he came across them in the woods and fields.
His famous pupil, Sir Julius Benedict, relates that Weber took as
great delight in taking his friends to see his favorite bits of
l