as her mother said, with "Bach fugue fingers." The second child, Jakob Ludwig Felix, was born February 3, 1809. Before he was three years old, the French occupied Hamburg, and Abraham fled to Berlin, where he formed a new banking house, and his whole family were baptized into the Protestant Communion, taking the added name Bartholdy. The patriarchal rule, obedience and industry, was strict in the house. But the father was kind and gentle as well as severe, and Felix loved him dearly; called him "not only my father, but my teacher both in art and in life"; and wondered how it was possible that a father, not a technical musician, could criticize the son's early efforts in composition so shrewdly and so justly. After Felix became famous, Abraham said once humorously of himself: "Formerly I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son." The mother, a lady of fine person, with an air of much benevolence and dignity, was a model housewife; spoke several languages, read Homer in the Greek, played the piano, and gave the first frequent five-minute lessons to her two eldest children, Fanny and Felix. The boy was full of life and fond of out-door play, very attractive with his long brown curls and great brown eyes. He was frank, unspoiled, earnest in what he undertook, and could bear no foolish flattery, no nonsense. [Illustration: MENDELSSOHN'S BIRTHPLACE IN HAMBURG. Feb. 3--1809.] After a short visit of the family to Paris, in 1816, when Fanny was eleven and Felix seven years old, the children's education began systematically. Heyse (father of the novelist) was their tutor at large; Ludwig Berger, teacher for piano; the strict, conservative Zelter (Goethe's friend) for thorough bass and counterpoint; Henning for violin. Felix, whose pen and pencil sketches in his letters show such a facile gift for drawing, was taught landscape by Rösel. Greek he learned with his younger sister Rebecka, even reading Æschylus. The children were kept closely to their lessons; Felix used to say how much they enjoyed the Sundays, when they had not to get up at five o'clock to work. He was first heard in a public concert on Oct. 24, 1818, when he played the piano part in a trio with two horns with much applause. Early in his eleventh year he entered the singing class of the Singakademie as an alto. "There he took his place," writes his friend Devrient, "amongst the grown people, in his child's suit, a tight fitting jacket cut very low at the neck, and with full trousers buttoned over it. Into the slanting pockets of these he liked to thrust his hands, rocking his curly head from side to side, and shifting restlessly from one foot to the other."--He spoke French and English fluently; wrote a letter in good Italian; and translated the "Andrea" of Terence into German verse, besides making such good headway in Greek. He could ride and swim and dance, right heartily, but was not fond of mathematics.