"Industry and love" Goethe claims for his countrymen. No artist ever exercised these qualities with regard to his art in a higher degree than did Beethoven. _She_ was to him the highest good--no care, no joy of life could separate him from her. Neither riches nor honours estranged him from the ideal which he perceived and strove after so long as he breathed. He never could do enough to satisfy himself either in single works or in his whole career. He spared himself no trouble in order to work out his thoughts to the fullest maturity, to the most transparent clearness. To the smallest tone-picture he brought the fullest power. His first sketches, like the autographs of his scores, show in the plainest manner that inflexible persistency, that unwearied patience, which we presuppose in the scientific investigator, but which, in the inspired singer, fill us with astonishment and admiration. In all conflicts (and every artistic creation is a conflict) the toughest difficulty is _to persevere_. Truth was a fundamental part of Beethoven's character. What he sang came from his deepest soul. Never did he allow himself to make concessions either to the multitude and its frivolity, or to please the vanity of executants. The courage which is bound up with this resembles the modest bravery of the citizen, but it celebrates even fewer triumphs than the latter. Beethoven was proud, not vain. He had the consciousness of his intellectual power--he rejoiced to see it recognised--but he despised the small change of every-day applause. Suspicious and hasty, he gave his friends occasion for many complaints, but nowhere do we find a trace of any pretension to hero-worship. He stood too high to feel himself honoured by such proceedings; but, at the same time, he had too much regard for the independent manliness of others to be pleased with a homage which clashed against that.