A few weeks after, I saw his death announced in the papers. And thus Liszt left the stage. I saw his entrance and his exit, and when I asked myself, What has he left behind? I could only think of the new school of brilliant executionists of which he may truly be called the founder and life-long apostle. I confess that, though I feel dazzled at the impossibilities which he and his pupils perform with their ten fingers, I often sigh for an Allegro or an Andante by Haydn and Mozart as they were played in my young days with simplicity and purity on very imperfect instruments. Players now seem to think of themselves only, not of the musical poets whose works they are to render. Mendelssohn, Clara Wieck (Madame Schumann) even Moscheles and Hummel acted as faithful interpreters. On listening to them, exquisite as their execution was, one thought far more of what they played than how they played. That time is gone, and no one has now, or will ever have again, the courage to bring it back. If one wants to enjoy a sonata of Haydn one has to play it oneself or hum it, because the old fingers will not do their work any longer. And Mendelssohn also, whom I had known as a young man, said good-bye to me for the last time in London. It was after the first performance of his “Elijah” in 1847. He too said he would come again next year, and then came the news of his sudden death. I saw him last at Bunsen’s house, where he played at a _matinée musicale_ always ready to please and oblige his friends, always amiable and charming, even under great provocation. Only once I remember seeing him almost beside himself with anger, and well he might be. He possessed a most valuable album, with letters, poems, pictures, compositions of the most illustrious men of the age, such as Goethe and others. The binding had somewhat suffered, so it was sent to be mended, and I was present when it came back. It was at his sister’s house, Fanny Hensel’s, at Berlin. Mendelssohn opened the album, jumped up and screamed. The binder had cut off the blue skies and tree-tops of all the Italian sketches, and the signatures of most of the poems and letters. This was too much for _Felix_, he was for once _infelix_. Still, happy and serene as his life certainly was, for he had everything a man of his talents could desire, there were bitter drops in it of which the world knew little, and need not know anything now. There are things we know, important things which the world would be glad to know. But we bury them; they are to be as if they had never been, like letters that are reduced to ashes and can never be produced again by friends or enemies.