prelude, began a low and hymn-like melody. Oh! that you had heard the lull, like a dream dying, dissolving from the awakening brain,--the deep and tremendous, yet living and breathing stillness,--that sank upon each pulse of that enthusiasm raised and fanned by him, and by him absorbed and hidden to brood and be at rest! I know not which I felt the most, the passion of that almost bursting heart of silence, as it were, rolled together into a purple bud from its noon-day efflorescence by the power that had alone been able to unsheathe its glories,--or that stealing, creeping People's Song, that in few and simple chords, beneath one slender, tender pair of hands, held bound, as it were, and condensed in one voice the voice of myriads. For myself, I writhed with bliss, I was petrified into desolation by delight; but I was not singular on that occasion, for those around me seemed alone to live, to breathe, that they might receive and retain those few precious golden notes, and learn those glorious lineaments, so pale, so radiant with the suddenly starting hectic, as his hands still stirred the keys to a fiercer inward harmony than that they veiled by touch. It was not long, that holy People's Song; I scarcely think it lasted five minutes,--certainly not more; but the effect may be better conceived, and the power of the player appreciated, when I say not one note was lost: each sounded, rang almost hollow, in the intense pervading silence. "It is over," I thought, as he raised those slender hands, after a rich reverberating pause on the final chord, swelling with dim arpeggios on the harmony as into the extreme of vaulting distance,--"it is over; and they will make that dreadful noise unless he plays again." Never have I been so mistaken: but how could I anticipate aught of him? For as he moved he fixed his eyes upon the audience, so that each individual must have felt the glance within his soul,--so seemed to feel it; for it expressed a command sheathed in a supplication, unearthly, irresistible, that the applause should not be renewed.