Schumann's aim was to promote all high interests of art, a better knowledge of old masters, a loving appreciation of any merits of contemporaneous composers and the preparation of new fields for coming talents. How happy is he, when permitted to praise enthusiastically! how rare his ability, to so describe the beauty of a composition that we become really acquainted with its form and spirit! Yet he is not always enthusiastic, but sometimes quietly instructive, sarcastic and witty, or passionately angry, as in his one-sided, yet comprehensible attacks on Meyerbeer, Italian opera, or light piano music after the fashion of Herz. But it shows a generous and noble character that he, a rare productive genius, found almost his greatest pleasure in discovering new talents; that even after many years' retirement from all journalistic work, he once more raised his enthusiastic, prophetic voice to introduce Brahms to the musical world! Nor was he narrow-minded regarding nationality; no Pole could ever write of Chopin with more enthusiasm, no Frenchman of Berlioz with a keener appreciation than Schumann did, and how heartily did he welcome Gade the Dane, Bennett the Englishman, Verhulst the Hollander! He calls art a fugue, in which all the civilized nations participate alternately. His articles also abound in most remarkable statements of a general nature. Of a true work of art he demands a spiritual meaning and a form corresponding to the composer's individuality. "Music impels nightingales to utter love-songs, pug-dogs to yelp." "An equipped eye sees stars where others only clouds and shadows." "The critic must hasten past those who are sinking and fight for the men of the future." He ridicules those who "on a ladder try to measure a colossus like Beethoven with yard-sticks in their hands." In his reviews on new publications he confined himself to instrumental music, with a few exceptions. The famous article on Schubert's symphony in C has hardly more lasting value than the one on Berlioz, with the many significant remarks on the power of orchestral instruments for expression and description. But his many high praises of Mendelssohn honor him most. When once told that Mendelssohn was not true to him, he refused to believe it and always kept his memory as sacred as that of Schubert. Yet in speaking of their mutual relations Schumann confessed that he could learn much from Mendelssohn, but Mendelssohn could also learn something from him, and that, if he had been brought up in the same happy circumstances as his contemporaries, he would surpass them one and all. In Dresden Schumann kept a little theatre journal, in which he wrote short notes on old and new pieces; interesting remarks just like those in "Meister Raro's, Florestan's and Eusebius' Denk- und Dichtbüchlein" or the well known "Rules for young people." [Illustration: ROBERT AND CLARA SCHUMANN. From an engraving by F. Schauer of Berlin, after the medallion in relief by Prof. Rietschel.]