The English type of beauty appears to have especially won his approval. "When she spoke it sounded like the whispering of angels," he says of an Englishwoman, "as pretty as a picture," whom he met. Elsewhere he says, laconically: "On the 24th I arrived at Mainz with the steamer, in company with twenty to thirty English men and women. Next day the number of English increased to fifty. If I ever marry, it must be an English woman." Some years later, however, with the fickleness of genius, he writes about Ernestine, the daughter of a rich Bohemian Baron, "a delightfully innocent, childish soul, tender and pensive, attached to me and to everything artistic by the most sincere love, extremely musical--in short, just the kind of a girl I could wish to marry." He did become engaged to her, but the following year the engagement was dissolved; and soon after this he discovered that his artistic admiration for Clara Wieck had assumed the form of love. Although her father opposed their union several years, on account of Schumann's poverty, the young couple often met, and not only in the music-room. In 1833 he writes to his mother regarding Clara: "The other day, when we went to Connewitz (we take a two or three hours' walk almost daily), I heard her say to herself, 'How happy I am! how happy!' Who would not like to hear that! On this road there are a number of very useless stones in the midst of the footpath. Now, as it happens in conversation that I more frequently look up than down, she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat at every stone, lest I may fall."