It is but fair to allow myself an allusion to my violin, as it was becoming a very essential feature in my history. With eight hours' practice a day I had made some solid progress; but it did not convict me of itself yet, as I was not allowed to play, only to acquaint myself with the anatomy of special compositions, as exercises in theory. Iskar played so easily, and gave such an air of playing to practice, that it never occurred to me I was getting on, though it was so, as I found in time. At this era I hated the violin, just as pianoforte students hate the pianoforte during the period of apprenticeship to mechanism. I hated the sound that saluted me morning, noon, and night; I shrank from it ever unaccustomed, for the penetralia of my brain could never be rendered less susceptible by piercing and searching its recesses. I believe my musical perception was as sensitive as ever, all through this epidemic dislike, but I felt myself personally very musically indisposed. I could completely dissociate my ideal impression of that I loved from my absolute experience of what I served. I was patient, because waiting; content, because faithful; and I pleased myself albeit with reflecting that my violin--my own property, my very own--had a very different soul from that thing I handled and tortured every day, from which the soul had long since fled. For all the creators of musical forms have not power to place in them the soul that lives for ages, and a little wear and tear separates the soul from the body. As for my Amati, I knew its race so pure that I feared for it no premature decay. In its dark box I hoped it was at least not unhappy, but I dearly longed for a sight of it, and had I dared, I would have crept into the closet, but that whenever it was unlocked I was locked up. The days flew, though they seemed to me so long, as ever in summer; and I felt how ravishing must the summer be without the town. I wearied after it; and although the features of German scenery are quite without a certain bloom I have only found in England, they have some mystic beauty of their own unspeakably more touching; and as I lived then, all life was a fairy-tale book, with half the leaves uncut. I was ever dreaming, but healthfully,--the dreams forgotten as soon as dreamed; so it chanced that I can tell you nothing of all I learned or felt, except what was tangibly and wakingly presented to myself. I remember, however, more than distinctly all that happened the last evening I passed in that secluded house, to my sojourn in which I owe all the benisons bestowed upon my after artist life. We had supped at our usual hour, but when I arose and advanced to salute Aronach as usual, and sighed to see how bright the sun was still upon everything without and within, he whispered in my ear,--an attention he had never before paid me,--"Stay up by me until the other two are off; for I wish to speak to thee and to give thee some advice."