He grew up behind the scenes of a theatre. One can easily imagine the value of the familiarity with the mimic world thus obtained after he had become a dramatic composer, but it fastened a clog upon his talent which he was never quite able to fling off. When a good teacher, who valued his gifts and devoted himself assiduously to their development, was found in Hilburghausen, study had already become irksome to the lad. Michael Haydn had been his master for only six months when, his mother having died of consumption in March, 1798, he accompanied his father to Vienna and remained there till July. Next came a removal to Munich, and study under Kalcher for composition and Wallishauser (of Valesi, as he called himself) for singing. Even with imperfect cherishing, however, the boy's creative faculty asserted itself. The first of his music which was published consisted of six fughettos written under the eyes of Michael Haydn. Guided by Kalcher he composed an opera, "Die Macht der Liebe und des Weins," a mass and several vocal and instrumental pieces in the smaller forms. All of this music is lost except a set of variations which he dedicated to his teacher and printed himself by the new lithographic method. [Illustration: WEBER'S BIRTHPLACE IN EUTIN, NORTH GERMANY.] We have written with somewhat disproportionate fullness of the beginning of Weber's career because of the light which the recital throws upon his moral as well as his musical development. Fate had it in store that a lovely character and a genius of high order should emerge from the unsightly and much-abused chrysalis; but before then another decade had to be spent under such circumstances as ordinarily wreck men's souls. In this period the interruptions of the peripatetics which had been the curse of his childhood, were few and comparatively brief. Freiberg, in Saxony, Chemnitz, Salzburg, and Augsburg, were in turn the lad's stopping-places, and a tour was made through Northern Germany. Then came two years of study in Vienna with Abbé Vogler, rewarded by an appointment which the Abbé procured for the youth of seventeen and a half as Capellmeister in Breslau. For two years he performed the duties of this office, and then disaffections and quarrels between him and the citizens who maintained the company led to his resignation. The influence of a pupil got him the title of Musik-Intendant to Duke Eugene of Wirtemberg, which he intended to use for advertising purposes on a concert tour; but war interfered with the plan and he went to Schloss Carlsruhe to participate in the music-making at the Duke's court. The conquest of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 led the Duke to dismiss his band, but he obtained for Weber the post of Private Secretary to a brother, Duke Ludwig, at Stuttgart. The associations into which this new life threw him were more demoralizing a thousand times than any of his past experiences. The profligacy and immorality of