secure his services for their city.

In the May following he set forth once more on his travels, bound for
Venice, Florence, and Rome. He could not pass through Weimar, however,
without paying a visit to Goethe; it proved to be the last meeting,
and it was filled with incidents that left a deep impression on his
mind. Never had the sympathy and friendship between the two been
closer or more confidential than on this occasion. 'There is much in
my spirit that you must light up for me,' said Goethe to Felix one day
when they had been conversing together. Goethe called upon him
continually for music, but showed an indifference towards Beethoven's
works; Felix, however, insisted that he must endure some of the
master, and played to him the first movement of the 'C minor
Symphony.' Goethe listened for a few moments, and then said: 'That
does not touch one at all; it only astonishes one.' But Felix played
on, and presently, after some murmuring to himself, the poet burst out
with: 'It is very great, it is wild! It seems as though the house were
falling! What must it be with the whole orchestra!'

The tour was a long one, for several cities had to be visited before
he could cross the Swiss frontier. Each day brought its full measure
of incident and delightful sight-seeing. It was in Switzerland,
however, that Mendelssohn's passionate love for Nature was stirred to
its depths. His Alpine walks were a revelation of Nature in her most
decided moods, and one particular walk over the Wengern Alp was
destined to be long remembered. The mountain summits were glittering
in the morning air, every undulation and the face of every hill clear
and distinct. Formerly it was their height alone that had impressed
him, 'now it was their boundless extent that he particularly
felt--their huge, broad masses; the close connection of all those
enormous fortresses, which seemed to be crowding together and
stretching out their hands to each other.'

He loved all beautiful things, but he loved the sea best of all; it
seemed to him to express in its varying moods every feeling which he
himself possessed. 'When there is a storm at Chiatamene,' he wrote to
Fanny when she was visiting Italy, 'and the grey sea is foaming, think
of me.' And now as he approached Naples, and saw the sea sparkling in
the sunlit bay, he exclaims: 'To me it is the finest object in Nature!
I love it almost more than the sky. I always feel happy when I see
before me the wide ex