Weber's significance lies in his dramatic works. His songs, charmingly poetical and beautiful as many of them are, have been pushed into the background by those of his contemporary Schubert and his successors in the song-field, Schumann, Franz and Brahms. His part-songs for men's voices, especially his settings of Körner's patriotic lyrics, will probably be sung as long as the German gives voice to his love of Fatherland through the agency of _Männergesangvereine_. It is no depreciation of their artistic merit, however, to say that they fill a much larger page in the social and political history of Germany than in the story of musical evolution. As a composer for the pianoforte Weber long ago became archaic. His sonatas are seldom heard now-a-days outside of historical recitals whose purpose is, in the first instance, instructive. The "Concertstück," once the hobby of nearly all performers of the brilliant school, is rapidly sinking into neglect, and one might attend concerts for a decade in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, Boston or New York without hearing either of the other concertos. The circumstance that in the "Concertstück" and the "Invitation to the Dance," Weber displayed a distinctly Romantic tendency in the sense of striving to give expression to a poetical conceit placed at the foundation of the composition and kept in mind throughout, accounts in a great degree for the greater vitality of these two works. Yet even the "Invitation" is admired more to-day in the embellished version of Tausig and the orchestral paraphrase of Berlioz than in its original shape. The value of this exquisite little dramatic poem in tones, we are inclined to place so high that the estimate may seem out of all proportion with the rest of this review. The world has learned, however, that merit lies in contents and felicity of expression rather than pretension and dimension, and in view of the subsequent idealization of the dance by Chopin and his followers, we incline to the belief that what once may have been regarded as a trifle really outweighs in importance the bulk of Weber's pianoforte pieces whose formal titles give them dignity. The professor and the amateur are one in their admiration for this delicious composition, and there is no one so unlearned in music that he may not arrive at the composer's purpose from a simple hearing, so he bring love and a bit of fancy into the concert-room. How many pretty pictures of brilliant ball-rooms and loving couples has not this music conjured up in the minds of imaginative people. Even old Dr. Brown, whose "Rab and his Friends" will ever keep him dear to Anglo-Saxon hearts, felt the intoxication of these strains a quarter century ago, and put on record in _The Scotsman_ one of the most eloquent critical rhapsodies extant. He pictures the ball-room, the lovers, the meeting in a shadowy recess, where she (the interested maiden) had been left by her mother. He (a