Certainly not without significance for his development was the fact, that he was born on the lovely banks of our joyous old Rhine. Do we not sometimes hear it surging like a wave of the mighty stream through the Beethoven harmonies? Do we not feel ourselves blown upon by the fresh mountain air? And do not the cordial, true-hearted melodies, which so often escape from the master, breathe the very magic of one of those enchanting evenings which we talk or dream away on the shore of the most truly _German_ stream? The taste for an open-air life (a life _im Freien_, in freeness, as the German language so nobly expresses it) remained faithful to him until the end; and we can scarcely picture him to ourselves better than as wandering in forests and valleys, listening for the springs which sparkled within himself. Scientific knowledge, even in its most elementary form, was hardly presented to the notice of the young musician, and if at a later period any interest in such pursuits had arisen within him, he would have been obliged to dismiss it. On the other hand, he buried himself with his whole soul in the loftiest works of poetry, that second higher world, and always came back with renewed delight upon the works of Homer, Shakspere, Goethe, and Schiller. Many and varied were the influences which they exerted upon him. They were to him "intellectual wine," as Bettina once named his music. But those are completely mistaken who expect to find, either in them or anywhere else, positive expositions or elucidations of Beethoven's compositions, as some have occasionally attempted to do, building their theory partly on utterances of the master. When the latter refers the constantly inquiring secretary, Schindler (I know not on what occasion), to Shakspere's "Tempest," it was, after all, only an answer--nothing more. The awakening of pure musical imagination is just as inexplicable as are its results. One thing alone stands firm,--that which speaks to the heart, came from the heart,--but the life-blood which pulsates at the heart of the true artist is a thousand times more richly composed than that which flows in our veins. No æsthetic physiologist will ever be able to analyze it completely. And, in life, is it only the deep thoughts, the extraordinary occurrences, which call forth all our sensations, out of which alone our happiness and our misery are formed? Is not a calm, serene autumn day enough to entrance our inmost nature? a single verse to console us? the friendly glance of a maiden to throw us into the sweetest _reverie_? What trifling influences affect the eternally rising and falling quicksilver of our hopes! And thus the smallest occasions may have been sufficient to cause vibration in a soul so highly strung as Beethoven's. Most powerfully, however, in such a genius, worked the pure creative impulse, that eternally glowing fire in the deepest recesses of his nature, with its volcanic--but, in this instance, blissful eruptions.