shall
think when in the midst of crowded assemblies of music and dancing. Of
Staffa, again, with its strange, basaltic pillars and caverns, he
says: 'A greener roar of waves surely never rushed into a stranger
cavern--its many pillars making it look like the inside of an immense
organ, black and resounding, and absolutely without purpose, and quite
alone, the wide, grey sea within and without.' How deeply the Hebrides
impressed him he shows by a few lines of music added to his letter,
which he says were suggested to him by the sight of these lonely
sister isles. Later on this very piece of music formed the opening to
his 'Overture to Fingal's Cave.'

How thoroughly music entered into his daily life and permeated his
thoughts, we may know from his habit of seating himself at the piano
in the evening, and improvising music to express what he had both
_seen_ and _felt_ throughout the day. To Mendelssohn music was a
natural language by which he could express, in the most perfect
manner, the emotions which had been aroused by reading or by the
contemplation of Nature. Thus, when he went from Scotland to North
Wales to stay with some friends named Taylor, he wrote for Susan
Taylor a piece called 'The Rivulet,' which was a representation of an
actual rivulet visited by them in their rambles. Again, Honora Taylor
had in her garden a creeping plant (the _Eccremocarpus_), bearing
little trumpet-shaped flowers, and Mendelssohn was taken with a fancy
for inventing the music which the fairies might have been supposed to
play on those tiny trumpets. The piece was called 'A Capriccio in E
minor,' and when he wrote it out he drew a branch of the plant all up
the margin of the paper. For another member of the family he wrote a
piece which was suggested by a bunch of carnations (his favourite
flower) and roses arranged in a bowl, and he put in some arpeggio
passages to remind the player of the sweet scent rising up from the
flowers.

Felix had just returned to London, and was contemplating an early
departure for Berlin, when an injury to his knee, the result of a
carriage accident, compelled him to lie up for several weeks, and
hence to forego a pleasure to which he had been looking forward with
feelings of eager affection. Shortly before he left home Fanny's
engagement to William Hensel, a young painter of promise, had received
her parent's sanction, and it had been confidently expected that Felix
would return in time for the marria