something, while I wish for nothing at all!” In this and other letters of a similar character one gets the impression that Jenny Lind was extremely proud of her humility. She often alluded to the fact that managers could get other singers who would do as well as she for the same money, and who really enjoy singing on the stage. But through it all there is a note of superiority to those poor deluded persons, an unconscious implication that the right attitude is her attitude, and the sly, lurking assurance that really there are no other singers who would be worth the same money. The Jenny Lind fever is so interesting in artistic annals, because it was not merely a popular excitement, but just as much a _succès d’estime_. There were mad rushes to get to her concerts, and frenzied efforts to catch a glimpse of her face, but wherever she performed she also conquered the critics and gained high praise from musicians of enduring fame. Her voice must have been one of the best Europe has ever heard. The people will readily rush to worship a golden calf, but Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Meyerbeer could not be stampeded into inordinate praise, and if their opinions seem to us to-day somewhat extravagant, we must remember that they were written under the influence of an extraordinary emotional accomplishment. Even Richard Wagner, who would not have been moved by the white dresses and holy innocence of this operatic virgin, was impressed with her voice and individuality when he heard her at Berlin in Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_. Chopin wrote of her art: “She does not show herself in the ordinary light, but in the magic rays of the aurora borealis. Her singing is infallibly pure and true and has an indescribable charm.” Moscheles, Thalberg, Taubert, and Schumann were her admirers, and Mendelssohn, who wrote his _Elijah_ for her, kept up a correspondence which only ended with his death in 1847. He said of Jenny Lind, “She is as great an artist as ever lived; and the greatest I have known.” It is rumored that Mendelssohn was in love with her, and it may be so; however, he was married, apparently quite happily, and Jenny Lind could never have been cast in the rôle of home-breaker. Jenny Lind, if she had met Mendelssohn before he had met his wife, might have had a greater artistic fame than she enjoyed, for she needed the humanizing and inspiring influence of an artist to counteract the religious repression to which she constantly subjected herself. She also needed some one to tell her, or at least to make her realize, what was art, for even Mendelssohn was constrained to admit in bewildered perplexity, “She sings bad music the best.”