"There are two worlds then in music," I thought; for it had been ever a favorite notion of my own, but I did not say so, I was watching him. He took from the breast pocket of his coat--that long brown coat--a little leather book, rolled up like a parchment; this he opened, and unfolded a paper that had lain in the curves, and yet curled round unsubmissive to his fingers. He deliberately bent it back, and held it a moment or two, while his eyes gathered light in their fixed gaze upon what he clasped, then smoothed it to its old shape with his palm, and putting on his horn-set eye-glasses, which lent him an owl-like reverendness, he began to read to me. And as I have that little paper still, and as, if not sweet, it is very short, I shall transcribe it here and now:-- "When thou hearest the folks prate about art, be certain thou art never tempted to make friends there; for if they be wise in any other respect, they are fools in this, that they know not when to keep silence and how. For art consists not in any of its representatives, and is of itself alone. To interpret it aright we must let it make its own way, and those who talk about it gainsay its true impressions, which alone remain in the bosom that is single and serene. If thou markest well, thou wilt find how few of those who make a subsistence out of music realize its full significance; for they are too busy to recall that they live for it, and not by it, even though it brings them bread. And just as few are those who set apart their musical life from all ambition, even honorable,--for ambition is of this earth alone, and in a higher yearning doth musical life consist; so the irreligious many are incapable of the fervor of the few. And the few, those I did exclude,--the few who possess in patience this inexhaustible desire,--are those who compose my world." "You mean, sir," I exclaimed, so warm, so glowing at my heart, that the summer without, brooding over the blossomed lindens, was as winter to the summer in my veins, so suddenly penetrated I felt,--"you mean, sir, that as good people I have heard speak of the world, and of good people who are not worldly, apart, and seem to know them from each other,--in religion I mean,--so it is in music. I am sure my sister thought so,--my sister in England; but she never dared to say so." "No, of course not; there is no right to say so anywhere now, except in Germany, for here alone has music its priesthood, and here alone, though little enough here, is reverentially regarded as the highest form of life, subserving to the purposes of the soul. But thou art right to believe entirely so, that, young as thou art, thou mayest keep thy purity, and mighty may be thy aptness to discern what is new to thee in the old, no less than what answers to the old in the new.