Poor Schubert, who enjoyed little of the fame and less of the fortune that were due him during his brief life, and who was as unattractive in personal appearance as Haydn and Beethoven, does not seem to have cared as much for women as most other composers. Nevertheless he fell deeply in love with a countess, who, however, was too young to reciprocate his feelings. But one day she asked him why he never dedicated any of his compositions to her, whereupon he replied, "Why should I? Are not all my compositions dedicated to you?" This was as neat a compliment as Beethoven once made Frau von Arnim--an incident which also gives us a glimpse of his manner of composing. One evening at a party Beethoven repeatedly took his note-book from his pocket and wrote a few lines in it. Subsequently, when he was alone with Frau von Arnim, he looked over what he had written and sang it; whereupon he exclaimed: "There, how does that sound? It is yours if you like it; I made it for you, you inspired me with it; _I saw it written in your eyes_." Many similar cases might be cited, showing that although women may have done little for music from a creative point of view, they are indirectly responsible for many of the most inspired products of the great composers. And the moral of the story is that a young musician, as soon as he has secured a good poetic subject for a song or an opera, should hasten to fall in love, in order to tune his heart-strings and devotions to concert pitch. And a patriotic wag might, perhaps, be allowed to maintain that, as America has more pretty girls than any other country in the world, it is easier to fall in love here than elsewhere, and that there is, therefore, no excuse whatever for American composers if they do not soon lead the world in musical inspiration. Feminine beauty, however, is not the only kind of beauty that arouses dormant musical ideas and brings them to light. The beauty of nature appeals as strongly to musicians as to poets, and is responsible for many of their inspirations. When Mendelssohn visited Fingal's Cave, he wrote a letter on one of the Hebrides, inclosing twenty bars of music "to show how extraordinarily the place affected me," to use his own words. "These twenty bars," says Sir George Grove, "an actual inspiration, are virtually identical with the opening of the wonderful overture which bears the name of 'Hebrides' or 'Fingal's Cave.'" And an English admirer of Mendelssohn, who had the honor of entertaining him in the country, notes how deeply he entered into the beauty of the hills and the woods. "His way of representing them," he says, "was not with the pencil; but in the evenings his improvised music would show what he had observed or felt in the past day. The piece which he called 'The Rivulet,' which he wrote at that time, for my sister Susan, will show what I mean; it was a recollection of a real, actual rivulet.