Then came _Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt_,--a reproduction as Overture of two sea-pictures from two little poems of Goethe; the first conveying the sensation of a dead calm at sea; then the rising of a breeze, the boatswain's whistle, the setting of sails and swinging round of the huge, heavy hulk, the addressing itself to motion, making smooth, gallant headway (with ever and anon great, deep, mysterious sighs!) and entering port amid a triumphal blaze of trumpets. It is a wonderfully graphic and imaginative reproduction of the subjects. The instrumentation is as telling and artistic as the thematic working. The introduction of the piccolo and of the deep serpent and contrafagotto conveys a sense of illimitable height and depth. The third, to "the Fair Melusina," Felix tells his sister, he wrote for an opera of Conradin Kreutzer's, based on Tieck's _Mährchen_, which he saw at a theatre. He disliked Kreutzer's music, especially the Overture, which was encored, and he resolved to write another "which the people might not encore, but which would cause them more solid pleasure." It is romantic music in the fullest sense. In the two contrasted themes,--the first (in F) watery, cool and rippling, tempting one beneath the waves,--the other (F minor) chivalric, heroic, proud, impatient,--he clearly had in view the princess Melusina (supposed to be a mermaid in the hours denied to her lord), and the brave knight who weds her. Schumann says it revives "those fables of the life deep down beneath the watery abyss." How bright and beautiful the mingling colors of the instruments! With what fine contrapuntal unity in variety the imitation and development proceeds! More to the humor of to-day, perhaps, is his much later powerfully dramatic Overture to _Ruy Blas_. It is exciting, with bold contrasts, fraught with impending tragic crises, clear, strong, concise, and very effectively instrumented. Not so great as Beethoven's _Coriolanus_ overture, it is his nearest approach to that, and shows that Mendelssohn was capable of something more impassioned, concentrated, fateful, than dreams of fairyland, breathings of sentiment and reproductions of romance.