ns, then in some of the successive
heavens to which, perhaps, I may be allowed to climb (if to any) I shall
be a painter of pictures; a mere idea that suggests a heavenly state of
long-desired capacity, to possess which, here on earth, I would give at
once the finger of either hand least indispensable to an artist. Of the
two pursuits, a painter's or a musician's, considered not as arts but as
accomplishments merely, the former appears to me infinitely more
desirable, for a woman, than the latter far more frequently cultivated
one. The one is a sedative, the other an acute stimulant to the nervous
system. The one is a perfectly independent and always to be commanded
occupation; the other imperatively demands an instrument, utters an
audible challenge to attention, and must either command solitude or
disturb any society not inclined to become an audience. The one
cultivates habits of careful, accurate observation of nature, and
requires patient and precise labor in reproducing her models; the other
appeals powerfully to the imagination and emotions, and charms almost in
proportion as it excites its votaries. With regard to natural aptitude,
the most musical of nations--the German--shows by the impartial training
of its common schools how universal it considers a certain degree of
musical capacity.

Our musical literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
glees, madrigals, rounds, and catches, requiring considerable skill, and
familiarly performed formerly in the country houses and home circles of
our gentry, and the noble church music of our cathedral choirs, bear
witness to a high musical inspiration, and thorough musical training in
their composers and executants.

We seem to have lost this vein of original national music; the
Lancashire weavers and spinners are still good choristers, but among the
German half of our common Teutonic race, the real feeling for and
knowledge of music continues to flourish, while with the Anglo-Saxons of
Britain and America it has dwindled and decayed.

GREAT RUSSELL STREET, November 8, 1830.
DEAREST H----,

I received your note, for I cannot honor the contents of your last
with the name of a letter (whatever title the shape and quantity of
the paper it was written on may claim).

I have made up my mind to let you make up yours, without urging you
further upon the subject; but I must reply to one thing. You s