But the gift for music which had impressed its stamp upon the race was exhibited in a still greater degree by the three brothers already referred to, Johann, Christoph and Heinrich Bach. Christoph, born in 1613, became _Stadt-Musikant_ in Erfurt, and later was transferred to Arnstadt, where Heinrich, born in 1615, was established as organist. Johann, born in 1604, discharged the double office of town-musician and organist in Erfurt. All three, it will be seen, united in turning their attention to instrumental music in general and to church music in particular, cultivating more especially the science of organ-playing, and it may here be remarked that no one of their descendants up to the time of Sebastian Bach departed from this sphere of activity. It was in this great man that true German art first sought expression, and therefore the family in its totality must forever be regarded as an embodiment of the artistic aspiration of the nation. Singularly enough, neither the three brothers, nor their sons and grandchildren, were ever moved by the desire to visit Italy, although so many of their comrades in art were constantly repairing thither. The splendors of the royal courts of Germany were equally powerless to attract; they perseveringly employed their talents in the service of their fellow citizens, faithful alike in their ecclesiastical and civil relations, and bearing with patience the privations to which they were often subjected. During the lifetime of the trio of brothers, three principal gathering-places for the continually increasing branches of the family were appointed, at Erfurt, Arnstadt and Eisenach respectively, and between these three towns there was a constant interchange of visits. If a piece of good-fortune came to any one in either place, he called upon the others to follow him, or, falling into distress, he hastened away in order to try his fate anew under the sheltering care of his kinsmen. In this way the bond of family union was closely cemented between them. In Erfurt, the brothers and their children were able to hold in exclusive possession for a century all musical positions in the gift of the government, and even fifty years later, the town musicians in the place continued to be called "the Bachs," although there was no longer any one among them who bore the name. One branch of the family was permanently established in Arnstadt until 1739, another in Eisenach till 1777, where some of its descendants still remained only twenty years ago, though no longer following the profession of their ancestors. In summing up the qualities of this race of musicians, it is not too much to say that they exhibited the most salient features of the Thuringian type of character, and, with the exception of one of the descendants of Christoph Bach, who settled on Frankish soil, no disposition was ever shown to depart from the region which gave them birth. Indeed, so strongly possessed were they by the necessity of