We frequently encounter the impression that Beethoven, in contradistinction to the other loftiest tone-poets, is specially the singer of melancholy and sorrow--of the most intense, passionate soul-suffering. Nothing can be less true. Certainly he depicted the night side of the human mind as no one had done before him. But when we view his compositions as a whole, there speaks to us out of them all--even the last, so deeply furrowed--a predominating vigorous cheerfulness, a sympathetic joy, a loving meditativeness, an earnest, resolute, fresh life. How often he sinks into blissful dreams, or gives himself up to childlike merriment! A mature man, yet seized at times by the extravagance of youth, while the battle of life makes him earnest, sometimes gloomy, but never faint-hearted or misanthropic (_weltschmerzlich_). "He was a _man_, take him for all in all;" we have not looked upon his like. The special application of what has been said to the separate Sonatas would lead to nothing. Although it is indisputable that the emotions and frames of mind portrayed in them are almost infinite in compass, yet it would be proportionally difficult to express the same with regard to each single piece in words, the very definiteness of which would conclusively prove their inadequacy to the task. It is no empty phrase, however often it may have been repeated, that Music begins where Language ends,--of course with the proviso that the former content herself with the sovereignty in the domain assigned to her. How many tone-poems should we be compelled to characterize by words not only analogous to each other, but having the very same purport, even though a Goethe's wealth of language were at our command! and what a dissimilarity in the tone-forms would notwithstanding be apparent even to the most uninitiated listener! Far more important than the invention of characteristic expressions is it, for those who would devote themselves to the study of Beethoven's pianoforte sonatas, to get a clear idea of them in _outline_ as well as in _detail_. The comprehension of them is facilitated by this, with the natural result of a higher intellectual enjoyment. Is it not elevating to see how the most daring fancy, after having been nourished by deep thought, becomes the willing, submissive subject of the all-regulating mind? Beethoven never lost the reins, even in what seem the wildest flights of his genius: his Pegasus may spring up into highest space--he is able to direct and guide it.